The science of quantum theory is a socially constructed account of the universe, and just one of many possible accounts. In fact, all knowledge of the universe is socially constructed and complimentary, allowing physicists to connect observations in the everyday world of the laboratory with events and processes in the quantum world of the atom. Quantum science is not just a question of a consciousness measuring and perceiving an independent object, but it is a question of unification of object, measuring device and perceiver.
Also, it is not the mere presence of a three-dimensional quality in the environment that makes that quality real and useable; it is our forced and exclusive perception of it. In other words, our perception of reality is a result of our influence on the universe and its influence on us. This synergy weaves non-causal concepts into meaningful narratives to support and enhance the unified experience of animate existence.
Even in the microscopic world, quantum theory relates all aspects of reality standing as one total encompassing the ideal and the physically realized, the container and the contained, the one and the many, the observer and the observed, the human microcosm and the universal macrocosm. Physicist Werner Heisenberg states that quantum science is the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents no longer the behaviour of the particles, but rather our knowledge of this behaviour.
We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. The standard material features of animate experience are described not as independent immutable properties, but as interrelated parts of a systemic logic derived from purely biological imperatives.
The synergy of fundamental physical interactions is consistent with a philosophy of mathematics where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Obviously, either the one essence will be entire in all, or the many will rise from a one which remains unaltered and yet includes the one/many in virtue of giving itself, without self-abandonment, to its own multiplication.
The interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect leads inevitably to a social, perhaps many-minds interpretation of quantum theory. After all, reflection tells us that we are in sympathetic relation to each other, suffering, overcome, at the sight of pain, naturally drawn to forming attachments; and all this can be due only to some unity among us.
Quantum science can also draw a distinction between those structures which have relevance to physical reality and those which do not. At the microscopic level, we embrace the non-locality, uncertainty, elegant entanglement, decoherence, and indeterminacy of wave-particle duality. For example, we observe that a dynamic state cannot be predicted precisely when photons, neutrons and even whole atoms act sometimes like waves, sometimes like particles, but they actually have no definite form until they are measured.
These measurements, once made, can also be erased, altering the outcome of an experiment that has already occurred. A measurement of one quantum entity can instantaneously influence another far away. This paradox can occur not only in the microscopic realm but even in objects large enough to be seen with the naked eye. In fact, the philosophy of quantum science ambitiously extends physicist Niels Bohr’s complementary principle regarding this wave-particle duality of light to the whole of nature.
With quantum science, we all share a wave function which contains all the information about the geometry and matter content of the universe. The universal wave function is non-linear, non-causal, containing non-material qualities, but gives rise to omnipresent identity of dynamic randomness and universally defined complexity.
Biological life can be seen as having self-authored or co-created this specific logical system to consist of all views of the universe perceived and unperceived. Physicist Bertrand Russell, co-author of Principia Mathematica, defined this as a system of perspectives.
We perceive as a given: time as a line, extension and solidity, separateness from the environment, the concept of cause and effect, a sense of free will and of purpose and volition, and the positive valuation of continued life. Combined, these fundamental concepts define a bio-specific configuration of space and time that permeates our experience so thoroughly that its components are fully invisible to us or blindly assumed to be fundamental components of the universe.
If we understand ourselves as co-creators of meaning, we also acknowledge as probable that immediate objects of sense depend for their existence upon physiological conditions in ourselves. Indeed, Stephen Hawking remarks that quantum science cannot be described as absolute, especially when the influence of our observing disturbs the object so that we can never observe it accurately.
There is, then, the inseparability of perception from the material-energetic universe, so that quantum science defines a world which is not really external any more, and it makes the distinction between persons and non-persons, between agents and patients, and between subjects and mere objects more deeply connected. Albert Einstein comments that we have, throughout our biological evolution, been unwitting co-creators of our world and experience.
This co-creation can now be done with a newly realized conscious intention utilizing a potentially unlimited supply of creative approaches in the exploration, interpretation and even re-creation of our unity in the universe.
SOURCES:
Christopher Holvenstot, “The Next New World: an Introduction to Contextual Division” , Columbia University, Published in philoso.philica.com, available online at The Royal Library at http://www.philica.com/display_article.php?article_id=32
David Bohm, “On Quantum Mechanics, Wholeness and the Implicate Order”, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1980.
John Horgan, “Quantum Philosophy” Available online at http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/qphil.html
Philosophy Pathways, ISSN 2043-0728, Issue 152, 27 April 2010. Available online at http://www.philosophypathways.com/newsletter/
Philosophy of Recent Times, Vol. II: Readings in twentieth-century philosophy, edited by James B. Hartman, Scarborough College, University of Toronto, McGraw-Hill, 1967.
Stephen Hawking, “A Brief History of Time”, available online at http://www.nt.ntnu.no/users/lale/e_book/stephenHawking-ABriefHistoryOfTime.pdf
“The Enneads of Plotinus” available online at http://oaks.nvg.org/ennh.html#9
“The Mathematical Universe” at http://www.ipod.org.uk/reality/reality_mathematical_universe.asp
Werner Heisenberg, “Physics and Philosophy”, 1958; Chapters 2 (History), 3 (Copenhagen interpretation) and 5 (HPS), reproduced here; Published: by George Allen and Unwin Edition, 1959.
William Plank, “The Implications Of Quantum Non-Locality For The Archaeology Of Consciousness”, Montana State University-Billings.This paper was given at the 20th annual conference of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness at Tucson, Arizona, April 5-9, 2000. Available online at: http://www.msubillings.edu/CASFaculty/Plank/THE%20IMPLICATIONS%20OF%20QUANTUM%20NON.htm
See: arXiv:quant-ph/9908084v3
See: arXiv:physics/0404066v1
See: arXiv:physics/0310055v1
See: arXiv:physics/0603149v1
See physics/9806002
See: quant-ph/9902016
See: quant-ph/9511037
See: quant-ph/9511035
