ON QUANTUM MECHANICS AND OBJECTIVE REALITY
 

a rough trip to the quantum mechanical world.

It is a basic premise of Einstein's relativity theory that nothing (no signal)
can exceed light speed (about 300,000 kilometers per second).
For example, the nearest star to earth is 4 million light years away,
which means we are seeing it as it was 4 million years ago,
and it probably no longer exists.!
(a light year is nearly 6,000,000,000,000 miles,
equivalent to about 9 million return trips to the moon).

Time is believed to be slowed by gravity, and so moves faster in space.
The faster an observer travels, the slower time passes.
This implies that there is no universal "now", and that time is relative.
                                                                                                                                                                                         
Also from Einstein, mass and energy are the same thing.
Matter can neither be destroyed nor created.
Nor can it be exchanged for energy.
       Einstein's E = mc2 refers to mass, a property of matter, not matter itself.
                                                                                                                                                                                         
  *
But in the sub-atomic (quantum) universe
the relationship between mass and energy
is not so precise.

Louis de Broglie (1892–1987), the father of quantum wave theory,
who won the the Nobel Prize for Physics (1929),
showed that all matter can be described as waves
with infinitesimally small frequencies,
and that all bodies of matter wave to a certain extent.
 
Later quantum physicists showed that the waves emitted from a particle
cover the whole universe,
and their crests show where the particle is most likely to be
at any given instant...

   ...When light is shined through an opaque object with two parallel slits in it,
classical physics predicts that there will be two bands of light
showing on the wall behind the object.
Experiment shows that an interference pattern results .

If the frequency of the light is reduced so that
only one photon is emitted every ten seconds,
the interference pattern still appears,
but only after enough photons have reached the wall .
                                                                                                                                                                                        
This means that light is both a wave and a particle,
and that light particles can interfere with each other
even after they’ve collided with a surface.

This applies to all subatomic particles.

                                                                                                                                                                                        
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (for which he was given a Nobel prize in 1932)
states that sub-atomic (quantum) particles of matter flit in, and out
of existence and mostly exist as waves.
Only when observed/measured do they "freeze" into existence.

Essentially -      Observation changes the nature of the Observed.

                                                                                                                                                                                         
Thus, in 1935 Schrödinger asked :
when does a quantum system stop existing as a mixture of states
        and become one or the other?
The thought "experiment" he devised is both amusing and insightful.

But quantum mechanics merely provides mathematical probabilities of experimental outcomes.
It explains nothing.
                                                                                                                                                                                   
Mathematics is a useful tool once the physical concepts are correct,
 
but it isn't physics.
 
                                                                                                                                                                                        
Some theoretical physicists work on a "theory of everything".
(the so-called String and M theories, with their multiple parallel universes !).
                                                                                                                                                                                        
But can it be possible to have a theory of everything
until we know everything about the universe?
 
Even David Gross (American theoretical physicist 1941- ),
a major proponent of String theory,
who received a Nobel Prize in 2004 for his work on the strong nuclear force,
admitted in Dec. 2005 that "we don't know what we're talking about."

Astronomy prof. Herbert Dingle (1904-1978) wrote in 1953 :
"I am not yet convinced that facility in performing mathematical operations
must inevitably deprive its possessor of the power of elementary reasoning,
though the evidence against me is strong."

                                                                                                                                                                                        
Further doubt is cast by Kurt Gödel's (1935) Incompleteness Theorem,
which basically shows that :
 
"there exist meaningful mathematical statements
that are neither provable nor disprovable,
now or ever,
because the very nature of logic renders them incapable of resolution."

Equally,
"any theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic
                                                        cannot be both consistent and complete.",                                                   

or
"For any formal system, there are certain self-referencing assertions about the system
that can never be evaluated as either wholly true or false."
 
It would seem, because of Gödel's incompleteness theorem,
we will never be able to explain consciousness.
That is, reach an understanding of the universe through the use of symbolic (linear) logic,
since logic is the product of an objective, self-referencing system
based on words and symbols.

Thus every word in a dictionary is defined by another word !
                                                                                                                                                                                        
This paradox (word uncertainty principle) is attributed
to the Cretan Epimenides,
who pointed out that the statement "I am lying" is undecidable.
If it is true that I am lying, then it is false,
and if it is false that I am lying, then it is true.

Zen koans rely on similar "logic".
 
It is also self-evident (without recourse to Gödel's mathematics)
that one cannot use a human brain to analyze /research a human brain.
 
Something of a higher order of "magnitude" is needed,
of which ipso facto, we cannot ever conceive
 by linear (sequentially processed) means.
                                                                                                                                                                                     TOP

                                                                                                                                                                                        

Enlightenment and Endarkenment must concede each other.
This is the tao of Zen.


bob harbinson

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