Excerpt from my third chapter on Quantum Physics:

From the beginning quantum theory brought about prolonged conflict among physicists. Quanta were a big surprise to Max Planck himself when he first discovered them. They were a totally new concept for the established physics of his day. Einstein found them a useful concept in the beginning, but as quantum theory developed further, he turned against it because it seemed to refute his idea of reality. Niels Bohr never had any sense of alienation with quantum theory because his philosophy was similar to the existentialism of Kierkegaard, which states that fundamentally we can never directly know reality as it is in itself. This is called ‘existentialist pessimism’. Dirac had a similar viewpoint, apparently not influenced directly by any philosophy, but from his acute scientific insight. As quantum theory developed it soon became very obvious that we were almost totally unable to understand reality as it is in itself. The very word  “matter” was repudiated by Max Planck in the course of the speech he made at the time of receiving the Nobel Prize for physics in 1918. Planck said: “As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as the result of my research about the atoms this much: ‘There is no matter as such!’ All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force, which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together…. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the Matrix of all matter.”  In spite of that Planck always aspired to be a realist in the sense of hoping for a true mental model of reality as it is in itself.

Actually, we should first realize that all matter is energy, then that all energy is subject to the control of mind, and finally that mind is ultimately under the control of spirit. Mind controls matter/energy under the mechanism of Law given by spirit, and since the mechanism of Law is so perfect it appears to us to be a physical mechanism. But it is not. In matter by itself there is only chaos, and no mechanism whatsoever. In the last analysis it is the Mind of God, the Holy Spirit, the God of Action – Who controls all matter/energy. But all matter/energy emanates from the First Cause and Source, the Universal Father. In Him all things subsist, live, move and have their being. He is the Ipsum esse subsistens of Thomas Aquinas.

The solar system model of the atomic structure actually came first from Rutherford, and was modified by Niels Bohr in 1913 because it could not explain the durability of atoms. But every subsequent advance in quantum theory has confirmed Planck’s point that matter as such does not exist. Nowadays many quantum theorists say that matter as such has no real existence but only a mathematical propensity to exist, and then only in response to human consciousness. Perhaps the most decisive proof of this comes from an experiment carried out in 1982 at the University of Paris by Alaine Aspect and colleagues. This proved Einstein’s concepts about the reality of atoms as solid objects or things to be false, and the concepts of Niels Bohr to be correct. Dr.Paul Davies says in God and the New Physics: “The Paris experiment, taken together with other less accurate experiments performed during the seventies, leaves little room for doubt that the uncertainty of the microworld is intrinsic. Events without causes, ghost images, reality triggered only by observation--- all must apparently be accepted on the experimental evidence. Quantum theory reveals a ghostly world. It seems as if our world is similar to the virtual reality of a video or TV channel, except that we are trapped in it as actors, and we cannot appreciate that it is not fully real. People may take comfort in thinking that even if atoms are not real, the chair they sit on is real. But, like everything else, the chair they sit on is made up of atoms, so how can a collection of ghosts produce something that is not itself ghostly?”

The contention of the Copenhagen interpretation was that in the science of the macro world we should continue to utilize the old materialist/mechanical approach. There was no available alternative to that. But in using that approach we should be aware of the uncertainties within it that had been discovered by quantum theory. In other words we should realize that the results of our experiments could only be approximately correct.

The main point of dispute between Einstein and the Copenhagen School was that the latter followed the uncertainty principle and a statistical matrix mathematics of probability. Einstein complained that this method introduced a factor of random chance, which he found unacceptable. But the Copenhagen School argued that, because of the restricted environment and difficulty of experiments in the micro world we could only draw conclusions from a long series of repeated experiments. To tie the results together we have to introduce a probability wave into the mathematics of analysis and description of the whole series because the individual results introduce a wide range of variations. This probability wave is not only an epistemological one but has been proved to be ontological as well, especially by the Paris experiment. Against Einstein’s argument that this would mean that God is playing dice with the world, an idea he could not accept, the Copenhagen group says that the probability is forced on us by empirical observation but says nothing about how God actually works things out. All it says is that the human mind cannot know absolutely for certain how God works it out. Herein lies the existentialist pessimism factor of Bohr. Practical acceptance of modified realism in the macro world does not contradict the probability wave of the micro world, once it is realized that all scientific results are approximations.

However, it seems to be a fact that while the individual choices and destiny cannot be certainly known, the incidence of statistical analysis can be validitated as far as large numbers are concerned. This is true of both persons and electrons. It, therefore, seems that the infallibility of the divine plan is due to God’s actuarial skills. This is different from gambling. At least the insurance industry would think so, I hope.

            .                      
 Referring to the results of experiments done in particle accelerators, on pages 159-160 of his book Physics and Philosophy (1958 / Harper, New York, 1962 edition, Library of Congress catalogue card No.58-6150) Werner Heisenberg says: “The experiments have … at the same time shown that the particles can be created from other particles or simply from the kinetic energy of other particles, and they can again disintegrate into other particles. Actually the experiments have shown the complete mutability of matter. All the elementary particles can, at sufficiently high energies, be transmuted into other particles, or they can simply be created from kinetic energy and can be annihilated into energy, for instance into radiation. Therefore, we have here actually the final proof for the unity of matter. All the elementary particles are made of the same substance, which we may call either energy or universal matter; since they are just different forms in which matter may appear.”

(Bold letters supplied by me).

                       

“If we compare this situation with the Aristotelian concepts of matter and form, we can say that the matter of Aristotle, which is mere ‘potentia’, should be compared to our concept of energy, which gets into ‘actuality’ by means of the form, when the elementary particle is created.”

What Heisenberg saw was that the micro world dealt with by quantum theory could only be described by quantum mathematics. There was no correspondence between that world and the ordinary world of our own experience, which had given rise to our vernacular languages, and so it was impossible for us to describe it positively in these languages. It was also totally different from the macro world described by classical physics. But there was one way out and that was by negation, i.e. by pin-pointing the ways in which it was not the same as normal reality. The uncertainty principle was just such a negation. In effect his vision of the unity of all matter is also built on a negation, the denial that atoms and sub-atomic particles have a truly separate, individual, and objective existence. They are not ‘objects’ as the word is normally understood.

It was by this process of negation that he came to adopt Aristotle’s belief in the fundamental indeterminacy of matter. Basically that means that matter in and of itself contains no explanation for what it is or what it does. It is intrinsically chaotic and can do nothing unless and until higher forces come into play. As a result Heisenberg found himself on a collision course with the mechanistic materialism and atheism that was most powerful in the science and politics of that era.

As regards the unity of everything, including the physical cosmos, I quote here Paper 56 by a Mighty Messenger:

‘ 56.10.14 Every impulse of every electron, thought, or spirit is an acting unit in the whole universe. Only sin is isolated and evil gravity resisting on the mental and spiritual levels. The universe is a whole; no thing or being exists or lives in isolation. Self-realization is potentially evil if it is antisocial. It is literally true: “No man lives by himself.” Cosmic socialization constitutes the highest form of personality unification. Said Jesus: “He who would be greatest among you, let him become server of all.”’

 Before he died, soon after World War One, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, also known as Lenin, had already earmarked the quantum theory of Heisenberg as the number one enemy of the philosophy of dialectical materialism, and he directed the Soviet scientists to combat Heisenberg. In subsequent years, they spent a lot of time and energy trying to do so. Anyone who thinks that such theories have no bearing on our political fate is taking a very naïve view of world events.

It is a mistake to think that scientists can be completely impartial and detached from their social milieu in regard to their scientific approach and mindset. History has proved time and again that this is not the case. The last decade of the nineteenth century, which is often called the fin de siecle, was a time of growing atheism and rebellion among all classes of the intelligentsia. Politically it was mainly people with strong left-wing sympathies who supported materialist realism. For example, Einstein himself and his good friend Ehrenfest both came from humble origins, and were leftists in politics and materialistic realists in philosophy. On the other hand, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg came from comfortable upper middle class backgrounds, and politically they were probably somewhere right of center. Quantum Theory was finally formulated in 1927, and the main squabbles went on during the twenties. So the critical period was just after World War 1. This was a time when Germany was going through a period of strong conservative reaction, disillusionment and frustration. Led by the intellectual, Oswald Spengler, there was a loosely organized but militant movement in society against the ideas of classical materialist realism, as well as against causality. This was the (Romantic?) climate in which Hitler was soon to thrive. Shades of Wagner!

All scientific theory is shaped by the line of enquiry pursued by the scientist. His own paradigm or mental model of reality is what shapes his line of enquiry, persuades him to ask certain questions rather than others, decide upon certain experiments rather than others, include certain parameters as relevant rather than others, prefer certain axioms rather than others, settle on certain mathematical formalisms rather than others, and so on. Once this process is set up and running, the process itself takes over and more or less dictates what the scientist can discover and what he cannot discover. He gets locked into the formalisms of the process. This is particularly the case today with quantum physics where the text books are almost innocent of historical or critical thinking and the only thing the average student truly understands is that there is nothing to understand. Mathematical formalism is all! I think this is very dangerous for our culture and civilization. We seem to be creating a sort of zombie culture. We could end up with wonderful technologies and absolutely no sane ideas about how to use them in a humanistic way.

The greatest scientists are and were very much aware of this. Franco Selleri emphasizes it in Quantum Paradoxes and Physical Reality, Kluwer Academic Publishers,1990. He quotes the great mathematician Schroedinger:

“History is the most fundamental of all sciences, for there is no human knowledge that does not lose its scientific character when men forget the conditions in which it originated, the questions it answered and the functions it was created to serve.(Schroedinger 1956.)”

In a letter to his friend Ehrenfest, Einstein once wrote: “You are one of the few theoreticians who have not been deprived of their native intelligence by the mathematical epidemic.”

In his book Physics and Philosophy, Werner Heisenberg said, with reference to his discussions with Bohr in 1927: “ The final solution was approached in two different ways. The one was the turning around of the question. Instead of asking: How can one in the known mathematical scheme express a given experimental situation? The other question was put: Is it true, perhaps, that only such experimental situations can arise in nature as can be expressed in the mathematical formalism? The assumption that this was actually true led to limitations in the use of those concepts that had been the basis of classical physics since Newton. One could speak of the position and of the velocity of an electron as in Newtonian mechanics and one could observe and measure these quantities. But one could not fix both quantities simultaneously with an arbitrarily high accuracy. Actually the product of these two inaccuracies turned out to be not less than Planck’s constant divided by the mass of the particle. Similar relations could be formulated for other experimental situations. They are usually called relations of uncertainty or principle of indeterminacy. One had learned that the old concepts fit nature only inaccurately.”

For the layman it is very difficult to understand whether the physicists are confronted here with a mere epistemological problem, which could easily be cleared up, or an actual ontological problem as well, which would necessitate a complete revision of the materialistic view of reality. It seems that the triumphant Copenhagen school (including Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Pauli, Dirac, von Weizsaecker etc) opted for the ontological treatment of the problem, while Einstein, Max Planck, Schroedinger, de Broglie etc opted for purely epistemological treatment. The latter implied that quantum theory was incomplete and would need to be revised, but even after eighty years of trying no one has been able to figure out how to revise it. That is why the ontological treatment of the problem is nowadays prevalent among physicists. The result is that the ontological viewpoint is permeating down to the level of the general public to such an extent that while some (mainly British) biologists are clamoring in favor of atheism, the Hollywood script writers are beginning to question whether matter itself has any real existence at all. We are, therefore, in danger of ending up with neither a God, nor any matter to fall back on. This is becoming ridiculous.

Composed for blogging at Malbazar on Thursday January 12^th 2012 by

John Robert Thwaytes

This is an excerpt from the third chapter of my book God and Reality.