Hoovens, have you come to grips with quantum entanglement? Has it struck you yet that matter has no real "fundamental particle"? Of course it has. This bothers you. String Theory has gone down like the Hindenberg. You probably can't really rest until you've worked out the paradoxes revealed by the total inadequacy of "classical physics."
Hence, there is "The Essential David Bohm." Bohm was one of the pioneers of quantum theory, a protege of Einstein, a partner in dialogue with the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti. He's the only physicist who's really offered a way forward in these matters.
Here's a wonderful quote from Bohm — and this gives you a sense of what he's talking about with reference to the universe, and the importance of experience in science:
Consider, for example, what takes place when one is listening to music. At a given moment a certain note is being played but a number of the previous notes are still "reverberating" in consciousness. Close attention will show that it is the simultaneous presence and activity of all these reverberations that is responsible for the direct and immediately felt sense of movement, flow and continuity. . . . It is clear that one does not experience the actuality of this whole movement by "holding on" to the past with the aid of a memory of the sequences of notes, and comparing this past with the present. Rather, as one can discover by further attention, the "reverberations" that make such an experience possible are not memories, but active transformations of what came earlier, in which are to be found not only a generally diffused sense of the original sounds, with an intensity that falls off . . . but also various emotional responses, bodily sensations, incipient muscular movements, and the evocation of a wide range of yet further meanings, often of great subtlety.
Bohm's principal theory in physics, the "implicate order", basically says that the entire universe in one form or another is enfolded into every particle, and even into every point, in space. What is inside an electron, as one gets smaller, is the universe, or some enfolded version of it.
Consider any point in the air in the room where you're sitting. The light from every visible object in the room is passing into your eye. But it isn't drawn to your eye; rather, the light from every object is passing through every point in the room (except where it's obstructed by other objects of course). What's remarkable is that if you pick any point floating in space, that point somehow has all that optical information enfolded into it. not as a "stack" of signals, but as an enfolded piece of information.
Bohm suggests that all objects, all particles, actually emit "quantum fields", almost like light waves, but different in a fundamental way: These fields are non-local, meaning they don't travel across space-time at the speed of light, but are instead informing the universe instantaneously. What particles transmit is the reflection of the universe "as they see it." This nonlocal broadcast can explain many of the "paradoxes" of quantum observations, the apparent influence of experimental observation; the nonlocal influence that "entangled" particles have on eachother...
Jesus H. Christ, will you please read this book? Bohm's real classic is Wholeness and the Implicate Order, but The Essential... is perhaps a better introduction. In any event, you can expect more entries like this in the Hooven Flyer.
Love,
Michael of Boise
Comments