I still remember what it felt like when my solid foundation shook with my new realization — classical physics sits on a bedrock of faulty assumptions. The shaker? Quantum mechanics.
For some of you this statement might not mean much, but for me, it shook my world. I love physics — to me, it’s the practical, tangible application of technical truths. The known. The accepted. The credible. The subject I revered, trusted, and embraced as ultimate truth. The thing I could always turn to for straight, consistent, predictable answers.
It sits on faulty assumptions? What!?
This realization was mind-blowing. It made me question all of my previous assumptions. If my beloved physics can falter, what else can?
Though shocking at first, I was thankfully able to recover and shift perspectives from, “the world is ending” to, “wow the world just opened up.”
If my beloved physics no longer defines absolute truth, anything is possible.
That day marked my most significant personal breakthrough in my quest for answers.
How Do I Fit into This?
Good question. Well, you have thoughts. You are likely aware that you have thoughts. Have you ever stopped to watch a thought float in and out of your mind? If not, try it now. Watch your next thought. Become aware of your next thought.
In that moment of awareness, you create a separation between yourself and your thoughts. You are no longer your thoughts – you are the awareness of your thoughts. This is consciousness at its core. The state of being aware.
But what is that – being aware? Is it matter? Is it energy?
These are the questions that classical science has been unable to answer. What are we? Do we really have control over our lives? Can we really create what we want?
Yes, I believe we can, but what does science say about it?
Well, Quantum Mechanics has taken on the challenge – for the first time, there’s a hard science that might offer up explanations for what it means to be conscious and how that consciousness interacts with the material world.
I don’t have the answers for you at the moment (spoiler alert!), but I do have the curiosity and the determination to get after them. In this article I’ll be sharing a new perspective on an old science and how quantum mechanics is changing the game.
Before we get into those assumptions and the new physics that shook my solid world, let’s set the stage. This might seem a little off-base, but I think an important part in understanding who we are is understanding where we came from.
We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
How Did We Get Here?
A quick look at European history will give you insight into why religion and science are separate entities today. Scientists have been persecuted for centuries for challenging the ideas held by religious institutions.
A famous example is Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei. Galileo was sentenced to house arrest in 1633 for his wild notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun; an idea that challenged the Catholic Church’s scripture that puts the Earth at the center of the universe.
It will come as no surprise, then, why Rene Descartes, seventeenth century French mathematician and philosopher, chose to safety separate science from religion. He ingeniously divided the world into matter and mind, agreeing not to attack religion by leaving the mind to the religious institutions. In this way, scientists were safe to do what they wanted with matter.
A few decades after Descartes, Sir Issac Newton took these concepts and developed his famous three laws of motion – the beginning of classical physics and the foundation for the next 400 years of science.
Thankfully, over time, the persecutions weakened. Scientists again began challenging religious teachings. This time, from the perspective of material realism – that all things, to include the mind, are made of matter. This is a critical assumption of classical physics, and has proven to work well on the macro scale we live in.
At the turn of the 20th century, however, everything changed with a man named Max Planck. Quantum physics was born.
If you’re not already familiar with the basics of Quantum Mechanics, check out this post where I give a quick summary on the particle-wave nature of matter. This particle-wave concept was the breakthrough Bohr needed to crack the code on the new physics.
I’ll warn you (and apologize) ahead of time, this post gets a little technical…
The New Paradigm
I’m re-reading one of my favorite books, The Self-Aware Universe, by quantum physicist Dr. Amit Goswami. If you’re looking for a great read on this subject, do yourself a favor and get this book. He beautifully pulls together all the concepts we’re talking about here.
In his book, Goswami discusses the five assumptions that classical physics is built on and how quantum mechanics challenges each one of them. Let’s step through each one and talk about what it might mean to we conscious humans living here in the macro world.
Readers beware — for the classical physics lovers, these are the five faulty assumptions that led to my heart-breaking but life-changing realization that classical Newtonian physics was built on some shaky assumptions.
Assumption #1: We are separate from the rest of the universe
Goswami refers to this as “Strong Objectivity.” This is quite a logical concept. I am a human, I have a body, and that body is separate from the tree I’m looking at in my yard.
But quantum mechanics gets weird with it.
As I talk through these assumptions, I’m going to use an electron as my example because a lot of the early experiments were done with electrons. Though these tiny particles likely have no relevance to your everyday life, the craziness that happens at the micro level gives us insight into what’s going on at the macro level.
Remember how matter and energy behave as both a particle and a wave? Experiments show that we can’t measure an electron as both a particle and a wave at the same time. We, the humans conducting the experiments, have to choose whether we want to see the electron as a particle or a wave. Choice implies conscious awareness.
Even crazier, the only way that we see an electron as a particle is by observing it – by being aware of it. Our conscious observation of the electron is what determines its location in space. Weird.
Old Newtonian physics claimed that things have an objective reality separate from our perception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes.
Marianne Williamson
Think back to seventh grade science when we were learning the scientific method. The idea that the test conductor can influence the experiment simply by observing it was never part of that process. But here, the conscious observer is part of the experiment itself.
If my conscious choice to observe the electron determines its location in space, I am no longer distinct and separate from the world around me. There’s something there that’s connecting my mind to the electron.
Assumption #2: Everything is predetermined
Goswami refers to this as “Causal Determinism,” which is the premise that the behavior of an object is determined by its initial conditions and the forces acting on it. An initial condition is just a snapshot of where something is, how fast it’s going, and the direction it’s headed in.
This is the foundation of every mechanical engineering class – forces and initial conditions. Which works, when you’re talking about cars and planes and boxes moving on ramps.
But for people? Living, breathing, thinking people? What about free will and creativity? Classical physics says, yes, this even applies to thinking people. This assumption has some pretty major implications that I want to really drive home – this assumption means that all your thoughts and actions are predetermined and set in motion by the big bang.
This assumption, I think, is the least romantic notion of classical physics and makes for a very boring life. So, Newton, you’re telling me that every action I will ever take in my life is predetermined by my initial conditions at birth and the forces acting on my body? Essentially I have no say in anything that happens in my life?
I simply cannot believe this. Thankfully, neither can quantum mechanics.
In quantum mechanics there’s what’s called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which says that both the position and velocity (speed and direction) of an electron can’t be measured at the same time with certainty. The exciting implication here is that we’ll never be able to know for sure what an electron’s initial conditions are.
If the same goes for larger objects (like us!) as goes for the electron, this means that each moment has a new set of initial conditions and all my thoughts and actions weren’t determined by the big bang.
There’s hope yet that I have a say in my own life!
Assumption #3: Material objects interact locally
Goswami refers to this as “Locality.”
This one is easiest explained with an example. Talking to someone is “local” communication.
When you have a verbal conversation with a friend, the movement of your vocal cords creates a sound wave, or vibration, which travels through the medium of air and reaches your friend’s ears. The sound doesn’t jump from your throat to your friend’s ears instantaneously. It travels through the air, one molecule after the next.
Telepathic communication, on the other hand, is “nonlocal” communication.
Have you ever had an inexplicable knowing, or felt like a loved one in another state was upset and you couldn’t explain why? Then you called them and found out, yes they were upset and you were exactly the person they needed to talk to? In this case, the thought in your friend’s head connected instantaneously to yours, as they were having it – without traveling through space and time. It just appeared in your mind.
The notion that this telepathic scenario holds up to any reasonable scientific truth is completely ruled out by classical physics, on account of locality. There’s no way someone in another state could have a feeling and you instantly pick up on it – it hasn’t traveled through space and time to reach you.
Not so fast, says quantum mechanics.
One cool wave behavior of the electron is that it spreads out into space and time. Like the ripples in the pond, the waves get smaller as they spread out. When measuring the electron as a wave, we can only predict where it might appear as a particle somewhere in that wave. The moment we observe the electron, the wave “collapses” (i.e. shrinks to a single point in space and time) and the electron particle materializes.
For one, the electron itself travels non-locally. The little bugger jumps around in space, materializing where it pleases. Ane two, it only materializes with a conscious observation. I can cause an electron to appear somewhere in space simply by observing it. No matter where in space it happens to be. My mind and the electron are interacting non-locally.
If a human mind can influence an electron without touching it, the next question becomes, what else can it influence?
Assumption #4: Everything is made of matter
Also referred to as “Materialism,” this is a founding principle of classical physics that all things in the world are made of matter, including the mind and consciousness. This is here as an assumption because it has yet to be proven.
According to this assumption, your brain creates your mind and consciousness.
Since no one has been able to derive the mind and consciousness from matter, scientists had to add a fifth assumption.
Four and five are related, so let’s move on to five.
Assumption #5: All mental phenomena is the result of something physical
Otherwise known as epiphenomenalism, meaning secondary phenomena.
According to this assumption, mind and consciousness are phenomena of your brain.
Let’s think about these two assumptions for a second.
My brain creates my mind and my consciousness. (assumptions 4 and 5) My consciousness tells my mind and brain what to do. (observed reality)
We get into a weird self-perpetuating circle. Kind of like the question, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” The logic does not check.
Goswami challenges that if consciousness is simply a property of the brain, how can it make an electron appear somewhere just by observing it? As far as I know, my brain is in my head and not dancing around in an electron wave. My mind had to connect with that electron somehow.
This is where consciousness comes in, and where quantum mechanics steps up to help solve these mysteries. I’ll leave you with one more logic puzzle, then we’ll take a break from this.
If consciousness is not a property of my brain, as quantum mechanics suggests, then where did it come from? Logically, it must come from somewhere else. There is an inherent spiritual element to consciousness.
Though a few electron experiments far from prove spirituality, deliberate creation, and telepathic communication, they do provide an open door where there was previously a forbidding wall. With spikes and armed guards and hot oil. A door I am so ready to walk through!
All Is Well in Physics
Whew, that was a lot.
But before you go around telling everyone that classical physics is broken, it’s important to know that it’s still quite valid at the macro scale we live in. (That’s reassuring!).
What quantum mechanics does for us, is it expands our understanding. It builds on the Newtonian physics that has dominated science for 400 years and starts to answer the inexplicable questions that befuddled physicists at the turn of the century.
As a lover of physics, I am happy to report that all is still well. The laws of the universe – including Newton’s – remain intact. We just know a little bit more now. We now have a tool to start answering the tough questions from the hard lens of science – questions previously left to the great religions.