© 1997 Ken Glasziou
© 1997 The Brotherhood of Man Library
Over the past 100 years, quantum physicists have revealed a sub-atomic world that is consistent with an idealist rather than a materialist view of reality.
Broadly speaking, materialists support the notion of a clockwork, deterministic universe in which “matter” is primary, mind is its derivative, and free will is illusory.
In contrast, idealists believe mind is primary, the source and sustenance of all that is.
Despite the evidence of quantum physics, materialist thinking dominates the western world and is spreading its tentacles eastwards. For the most part it is anti-religious or else ignores religion as antiquated.
To the unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears, loves, longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of energy nor expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave. The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction. (UB 102:0.1)
Why is it important? Because the anti-religious, materialist philosophy based upon an out-dated science that dominates western culture is on a self-destruct course that must be stopped.
The Urantia Book has close affinities with idealist thinking and none with materialism. However, fifty years after first publication its teachings have made only marginal headway. Perhaps this will remain the case until materialism is laid to rest. So is it possible that Urantia Book followers will need to promote idealist science simultaneously with the teachings of the book? If so we will need to remember that the book’s spiritual aspects are mostly revelatory whereas its science is not. (UB 101:4.2)
Despite world-wide ignorance of the facts, at the frontiers of scientific research and advancing human knowledge, the death knell for the concepts of science-based materialism and a clockwork, deterministic universe was sounded almost 100 years ago. However, the carcass is still with us and kicking vigorously.
¶ There’s good
It is factual that science has brought enormous benefits to mankind because of its role in stimulating the invention of the means and the evolution of those means that brought us our modern industrial system.
¶ And there’s bad
The effects of science on modern society have not been all good. For example, science has played a prominent role in the production of the horrific machinery of modern warfare. But, if measured in terms of human misery and distress, even those effects would be dwarfed in comparison to the destructive effects of science-based materialism on the minds and lives of modern men and women.
Among its worst aspects is the expurgation of both faith, trust, and hope from the thought processes of modern youth, the absence of which has generated a degree of desperation such that escape may be sought via mind-numbing drugs or suicide. The tragedy of all this is that this whole scene is founded on ignorance of those scientific discoveries that nullify materialism as a valid philosophy of life.
It is also true that a large majority of scientists and philosophers are ignorant of both the advances made in quantum physics and the meaning of those advances when extrapolated to the macro-world.
¶ Laziness? Don’t care? Or nobody listens?
The dominance of materialist philosophy shows that communication of the message from quantum physics has been ineffective. Perhaps it is true that to have a full understanding of the evidence, knowledge of advanced mathematics and physics is essential. But it is also certain that even without such knowledge, a reasonable, qualitative appreciation of its consequences can be acquired.
That is a purpose of this article. In its presentation, the assumption will be made that many readers have only a minimal knowledge of chemistry, physics, and mathematics.
¶ What makes good science?
Let’s begin with gaining an appreciation of what constitutes science and the scientific method from a professional’s viewpoint. Science is based upon observation, repeatability, and measurement. Saying so does not make it so. Say so must be backed up by experimental observations from many different angles and these must be repeatable by independent observers.
When all the facts are gathered, theories may emerge. A theory that is impossible to test by experimental means has little or no value. For a theory to gain credence, it needs to be the basis of predictions that can be checked out by observation and experiment.
Einstein’s relativity theory predicted that as an object increases its speed, it gets heavier and shorter. Its clock also goes slower, eventually coming to a stop at the speed of light. To most people these predictions seemed quite ridiculous. Today they are verified by a multitude of observations and must even be taken into account when designing machinery that accelerates particles to very high speeds.
Einstein proposed his theories because of small deficiencies in the then current theories. To the present, no verified deficiencies have come to light with Einstein’s theories but if and when they do, they will have to give way to the new.
Science is a progressive and evolving undertaking. The true scientist is a dedicated and unbiased seeker after truth. Naturally, there is much that makes the claim of being science or scientific that is not actually so.
¶ And what makes dirt?
Now we get down to the nitty gritty of a science update. Matter, be it dirt, rocks, trees, cans of peaches, the hair on our heads, the flesh of our arms, the air, the wind, the rain, the ice or snow, all such matter is made from elements joined together in various kinds of combinations.
Elements are the basic bits and pieces. Other things are mixtures of elements, or elements that have joined together in a chemically combined form. Iron is a metallic element. Living things, be they trees or bees, consist mostly of atoms of the elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen chemically combined into the various kinds of molecules that make wood or flesh or feathers. Rocks and earth consist mostly of metallic elements in combination with those that form acids.
Elements are made from atoms. Near enough for our purposes, an atom is the smallest part of an element that can exist independently.
¶ What makes atoms?
For a long time it was believed that an atom was a fundamental unit that could not be split into parts. The composite nature of the atom was discovered at the beginning of this century by New Zealand physicist, Ernest Rutherford.
An atom has a nucleus that is about a thousand-billionth of a centimeter across. This nucleus is surrounded by a cloud of electrons, each of which has a negative charge that is matched by a positively charged proton within the nucleus of the atom. The very smallest element is hydrogen which consists of a single proton and single electron. Element number 100 is called Fermium and has 100 electrons and 100 protons.
¶ What do electrons do?
Electrons are arranged about the nucleus of the atom in specific shells which tend to gain or lose electrons depending upon how full a shell might be. This remarkable fact is why we can have so many different forms of matter.
Carbon, for example, has a form in which it likes to share four of its electrons with other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. By doing so, it can form millions of “organic” chemicals with an enormous range of properties. Hydrogen is good at sharing, its best known product being water. A molecule of water has two hydrogen atoms stuck to a single oxygen atom.
Whereas what the electrons do is responsible for the formation of the myriad of chemical compounds we find in our environment, it is the content of the nucleus that differentiates the elements from one another. Some of the elements we are familiar with are the gases hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, neon used in neon light bulbs and helium used in balloons.
Most of the common metals we use are elements—copper, lead, zinc, iron, aluminum, tin, mercury, silver and gold. A few non-metallic elements such as carbon and sulfur also occur free in nature. However, the great bulk of those materials we call matter—the earth and its rocks and the sea are composed of elements in chemical combinations called molecules.
¶ What makes electricity?
Electrons are important to us in free form. When liberated from their parent atoms they supply the electricity that powers our homes and our industries. An electric current is simply a moving stream of electrons, as are the lightning discharges we see during storms.
What does an electron look like? Well, it’s a bit queer. Sometimes it appears to be a wave and other times, a particle. More on that later. It used to be thought of as a “point,” which means it has no length or breadth. Now we know it is tiny, somewhere between 10-19 and 10-22m which is far too tiny to see. But it could be a billion billion times smaller and still have spatial dimensions (i.e. the electron is much bigger than the minimum possible size called the Planck length). So there is plenty of room for an electron to have a sub-structure.
¶ The insides of an atom
Now that we know how all this matter stuff is formed and we have become familiar with electrons, we can get on with taking a look at the inside of atoms. By the turn of the century it was known that the nucleus of an atom contained protons. These are particles about 2000 times heavier than an electron, each of which carries a positive charge that exactly matches (and cancels) the negative charge of an electron. A hydrogen atom is the simplest of all atoms having just one proton and one electron.
A carbon atom has six protons and six electrons. The protons are all bunched together in the nucleus and because they have all have positive charges, there is a tendency for them to fly apart. To help compensate for this “fly apart” tendency, all atoms larger than hydrogen also have neutrons in their nucleus. A neutron comes close to being a proton without its positive charge. Their presence helps to stabilize the nucleus.
Is that all there is to this atom story? It was thought so for a long time, but anomalies arose that could not be explained by current theories. By the 1970’s, it had been realized that the proton and neutron were not fundamental particles but rather were composed of particles called quarks which are accompanied by other particles known as “virtuals” that keep popping in and out of existence. In fact, if the total momentum (product of mass and motion) of a proton or a neutron is measured, the quarks account for only about half. Other particles so far identified in protons and neutrons are the gluons and pions. These are known to play a vital role in maintaining nuclear stability.
¶ For whom the bell tolls
The first ringing of the bell that tolled the end of materialism occurred at the turn of the century when Max Planck, a German professor of physics, suggested that electromagnetic radiation comes in indivisible packets called “quanta.”
We will meet this and other key concepts in more detail later. But first we need an outline of what scientists have been doing during this century that has so drastically revised the work of earlier times.
The first mental picture of the atom that emerged was that the electrons were embedded in its nucleus like currents in a pudding. The work of Rutherford showed the incorrectness of the picture and the “Bohr” picture of the atom gradually emerged with electrons circulating around the nucleus like planets around the sun. [Neils Bohr was a pioneer of quantum theory.]
¶ Let there be light
When we use a prism to break up sunlight into the colors of the rainbow, we see many dark lines that have been identified as being due to the absorption of specific parcels of light energy by various atoms in the sun itself.
Atoms can emit as well as absorb light. For example, if a hot, glowing iron bar from a blacksmith’s forge is looked at through a prism, we see bright bands instead of dark ones.
Eventually it was realized that both kinds of bands were due to electrons absorbing or emitting light in specific energy packets, the “quanta” or quantity of energy required to promote the electron to a higher energy “planetary orbit” or the “quanta” emitted when an electron dropped back to a lower energy level. These packets get the name “photons.”
¶ Perpetual motion??
If electrons actually circulated around a nucleus like planets around the sun and if they can lose energy by emitting photons of light, why do they not get closer and closer to the nucleus and finally collapse onto it?
From this vexing question, a new picture of the atom emerged in which electrons behaved more like stationary waves that occupy “shells” centered upon the atomic nucleus, the shells representing the various energy levels an electron can occupy. An electron absorbing a quantum of light energy through collision with a photon of light would be promoted to a higher energy level. It could then re-emit a photon of light in a quantum “jump” that would drop it back to its former level.
¶ Where did that go?
A key point in this new picture is that the electron is either in one allowed orbit or another. It is never found anywhere in between. The energy levels for all orbits are fixed—quantized. How does the electron jump from one level to another without ever being in the space-time in between those levels? Good question.
We have noted above that the electron fits better to the description of a stationary wave in the vicinity of the nucleus than to an object circulating in planetary orbit. So is it a wave or is it a particle? The same question can be asked for the nature of light, the atom, and even larger “particles.” In fact it has been shown that even you and I have a wave associated with us.
In 1804, a physician named Thomas Young did a memorable experiment. He aimed a beam of light at a screen with two very fine parallel slits just a tiny distance apart. On the other side of the screen he placed a second movable screen. When it was located very near the first screen, there were just two “bars” of light. But as this second screen was moved further away, a series of bright and dark parallel bars appeared. If either slit was covered, there was only one bright bar. With both slits open, the pattern of bright and dark bars returned.
Most of us have seen what happens if a stone is thrown into a still pond. Where the stone lands in the water, a series of circular waves move away towards the edges of the pond. Throw in another stone so that the wave patterns will meet and we see that where wave crest meets wave crest, they add together to make a bigger wave but if a crest meets a trough, the two cancel and the wave disappears. This phenomenon gets the name “interference.”
The interference patterns that Young observed provided the evidence that, for the next 100 years, led physicists to accept that light was a wave. But then Einstein shattered this conclusion when he was able to interpret the so-called photoelectric effect (used with solar panels to get electricity from the sun) as evidence for a particle nature of light.
In 1927, Clinton Davisson at Bell Laboratories did a similar experiment to Young but used electrons. He fired an electron beam at a screen with two slits behind which he had columns of tiny Geiger tubes, each of which recorded a hit if an electron reached it. With one of the slits closed off, the electrons going through the single slit scattered sufficiently to cause every Geiger tube to, sooner or later, register a hit. But when he had both slits open, some columns of Geiger tubes registered no hits at all. This is just like the light and dark bands observed by Young in his experiment using a light beam.
¶ Coffee break?
Davisson could do more. He could reduce the number of electrons being fired at the screen to about one per minute. Left for long enough, he obtained the same result as previously. With a single slit open, all Geiger tubes eventually fired. With both slits open, some columns of tubes never fired.
How did electrons passing through Davisson’s screen at the rate of one per minute manage to make all the Geiger tubes fire if only one slit is open but to prevent whole columns of tubes from firing when both slits are open? Does a single electron go through both of the slits to create an interference pattern? Note too that it is the experimenter who makes a conscious decision to open or close a slit and that his conscious decision affects whether the electron performs purely like a particle or as a wave.
The very pessimism of the most pessimistic materialist is, in and of itself, sufficient proof that the universe of the pessimist is not wholly material. Both optimism and pessimism are concept reactions in a mind conscious of values as well as of facts. If the universe were truly what the materialist regards it to be, man as a human machine would then be devoid of all conscious recognition of that very fact. Without the consciousness of the concept of values within the spirit-born mind, the fact of universe materialism and the mechanistic phenomena of universe operation would be wholly unrecognized by man. One machine cannot be conscious of the nature or value of another machine. (UB 195:7.8)
¶ Unbelievable!
It gets worse. What would happen if we delayed our choice to open or close one of the slits until after an electron (or photon) had passed through but before it reached the detector set up?
Many of this “delayed choice” type of experiment has been performed, often using a split-beam approach. The eerie result is that individual electrons or photons appear to travel via both pathways but register either as a wave or a particle depending only on the decision of the observer—what he/she wants to observe, a wave or a particle.
How can such a crazy thing occur. And how can the mind of the observer causally determine whether a electron or a photon shall act as a wave or as a particle?
Einstein was one of those who could not cope with mental gymnastics required from the disciples of quantum physics. Yet he was the one who told us that distances get shorter, clocks run slower, weights gets heavier as objects go faster and faster. He also did away with the attractive force of gravity and told us we are stuck to the earth because space is curved! It seems that he was right on all counts but he still could not cope with the indeterminacy implied by quantum theory. Hence his famous exclamation that God does not play dice with us.
Einstein also realized that the determinate world he advocated left no room for free will. In answer to a question, he was forced to agree that his deterministic philosophy meant that criminals could not be held responsible for their actions. They do what they do because they cannot do otherwise.
¶ Locality
Einstein was undoubtedly among the top half dozen of the most creative geniuses of all time. Another of his discoveries was that no physical object can exceed the speed of light. This speed limit also means that all influences between material objects happening in space-time must be local. That is they must travel through space one bit at a time with a finite velocity—which gives us the principle physicists call “locality.”
¶ And non-locality
Non-locality is implied by the quantum jumps made by electrons of an atom when they either are promoted to a higher energy level or fall to a lower level. Quantum theory says they do this without ever being anywhere in between. Non-locality is also implied by a two-slit type experiment using light in which the experimenter delays choosing whether one or both slits are open until after the photon has gone past the slits. If it had to “look back” to see the state of the slits no “signal” could catch up with it.
¶ Requiem
Einstein carried out a life long campaign to find a way to avoid the implications of quantum theory. However, he failed—but died still holding the hope that hidden variables would one day be discovered that explained all of the puzzling observations. The hope was a vain one, the final nail being driven into the coffin of materialist realism by Irish physicist, John Bell in 1965.
To be consistent with material realism, Einstein’s hidden variables would have to act in a local fashion as causal agents on quantum objects, their influence travelling through space-time with a finite velocity and during a finite time. Bell suggested a set of mathematical relationships to test the locality of hidden variables. His work also required that, to be compatible with quantum mechanics, hidden variables must be non-local. Bell’s postulates were thoroughly tested in the well known experiments of Alain Aspect and co-workers in Paris in 1982.
¶ Interment
The Aspect experiments used polarization-correlated photons that emerged simultaneously and in opposite directions from radioactive calcium. A detector was set up on the path of each beam of photons. The crucial feature of the experiment—the one that made its conclusions irrefutable—was the inclusion of a switch that changed the polarization setting of one of the detectors every ten billionth of a second. This was shorter than the time light would have taken to travel between the two detectors.
The result of the experiment showed that the polarization setting of this detector changed the outcome of the measurement at the other detector in accordance with the predictions of quantum theory and contrary to those of classical physics, thus destroying forever, Einstein’s hope that hidden variables would eventually emerge that would restore materialist realism and determinism.
¶ Holism
The evidence from the Aspect and other experiments has the implication that once two particles have interacted with one another, they remain linked in some way, communicating instantaneously and in a manner that is independent of space-time. This forces us to think about the universe holistically, a vast network of interacting particles such that, in some sense, it is a single quantum system.
The interelectronic space of an atom is not empty. Throughout an atom this interelectronic space is activated by wavelike manifestations which are perfectly synchronized with electronic velocity and ultimatonic revolutions. This force is not wholly dominated by your recognized laws of positive and negative attraction; its behavior is therefore sometimes unpredictable. This unnamed influence seems to be a space-force reaction of the Unqualified Absolute. (UB 42:8.2)
Of course the total cosmos is so complex and so large that we fail to appreciate this unity except when it is revealed in experiments specially devised to demonstrate the point. However, quantum theory has conclusively shown that the clockwork universe idea is a dead duck.
To be scientifically consistent with empirically demonstrated facts, we must learn to live with intrinsic uncertainty at the quantum level and to consider its wider implications on matters of consciousness, free will, even the criminal’s responsibility for his/her actions. The alternative is to bury our heads in the sand, ostrich fashion, and, in doing so, to ignore a full century of extraordinary scientific advances—which is what a majority of scientists and philosophers have done.
¶ Review
Before proceeding to philosophical considerations, let’s review some of the major concepts of the quantum world. Radiation, as it is emitted or absorbed by matter is quantized, meaning that it is in discrete packets that are related to the energy levels of electrons accompanying atoms. These packets of light, the photons, have both wave and particle characteristics. Color, for example, is a wave property, but a single photon hitting a sensitive photographic plate registers as a tiny, particle-like spot.
When electrons in an atom “jump” between energy levels, this energy is quantized, an exact amount, that can never be anything in between. These quantum jumps are discontinuous, the electron is either “here” or “there,” at “here’s” energy level or “there’s” energy level. The jump occurs with no movement through space or passage through time. The transition is a non-local event.
¶ Uncertainty
There are correlated properties of a quantum particle that can never be known at the same time. Two of these are momentum (includes speed) and position. Called Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, it states that if we know the position of a particle with total accuracy we can know nothing about its momentum—and vice versa. A consequence is indeterminacy at the quantum level.
This is a major difference from the deterministic clockwork universe of materialism. In the early 1800’s, Pierre Laplace proposed that, given knowledge of all the forces of nature and the status of the bodies of which it is composed, all past, present, and future events could be determined.
The uncertainty principle of quantum theory makes the materialist proposal forever incorrect—even in theory.
¶ Lack of evidence—case dismissed
Many materialists believe that matter is all there is, that life is an accidental emergent property of matter, that mind is an emergent property of life, and that consciousness, free will, creativity and so forth are emergent epiphenomena of mind that are basically illusory. This is belief, not science.
¶ Observers and superpositioning
Two of the more difficult components of quantum theory to comprehend are the roles of the observer and the concept of superposition. In a quantum situation nothing happens until a conscious observer looks!! What is there before he “looks” is a multitude of superposed possibilities, some of them highly probable, others less so. The act of looking instantaneously makes one of the possibilities become reality. There are literally thousands of experiments to show this is so. One of these was described in detail in Innerface International Vol.2 (1), and is reviewed in this issue.
Quantum theory says that when we set up an experiment and before we have taken a measurement (looked to see the result), all of the possible results are already present superposed in “ghost” form. The act of measuring (looking) makes one of the “ghost” forms become reality. [Bohr’s group used the word “ghosts;” Einstein called them “spooks.”]
The meaning of these superposed “ghosts,” where they are, who or what they are, is a much debated point. Before they ever come to confront the “strangeness” of quantum theory, most scientists of western world origin have already been indoctrinated with preconceived ideas implying such esoteric nonsense is unscientific. Unless they are physicists, the likelihood is they know little or nothing about quantum theory—which is part of the reason that philosophies such as materialism and positivism have such a strong hold.
This infinite and universal mind is ministered in the universes of time and space as the cosmic mind; and though extending from the primitive ministry of the adjutant spirits up to the magnificent mind of the chief executive of a universe, even this cosmic mind is adequately unified in the supervision of the Seven Master Spirits, who are in turn co-ordinated with the Supreme Mind of time and space and perfectly correlated with the all-embracing mind of the Infinite Spirit. (UB 56:2.3)
¶ Some unmentionables
Some quantum physicists allow that the “ghosts” are a component of a “universal consciousness.” Some call this “consciousness” the “ground of all being.” In a short article that follows this, Werner Heisenberg refers to a “central order.” David Bohm attempted to endow the “ghosts” with respectability by tacking a term onto the standard Schrodinger equation describing a quantum event. He called it the “quantum potential” and had it represent information giving form to what particles do. Scientists brought up in the Eastern world appear to have less of a problem with a term like “universal consciousness.” Some, such as Amit Goswami, Professor of Physics at the University of Oregon, occasionally use the word “God,” as being the true reality of “universal consciousness.”
¶ Where does the brain come in?
To accommodate the non-locality results described in the Aspect experiment and elsewhere, universal consciousness has to be non-local, but capable of interacting with the consciousness of the observer. To permit the observer to interact with both non-local universal consciousness and at the same time to be a part of the world we think of as real, some believe that there are components of the brain that are like the measuring instruments of an experiment and a second lot of components that act like highly coherent quantum systems. A coherent quantum system is the kind seen with superconductivity, superfluidity, and laser systems.
Physicist-mathematician Roger Penrose suggests that it is not the neurones of the nervous system that have this coherent quantum system property but it may be that the cytoskeletal microtubular system present in most types of animal cells including brain cells, is where a “quantum brain” is likely to be located. Evidence gathered by another physicist, Herbert Frohlich, indicated that large scale quantum coherent systems of the type referred to as Bose-Einstein condensates are present in biological cells and probably the microtubules have this property. That some such system may be involved with consciousness is indicated by studies on general anesthetics that may have their effect through on-off switching of the dipolar molecules of tuberlin, columns of which form the hollow tubes of the microtubules.
Many of those interested in this field (which is becoming intensely active) consider that “universal consciousness” is primary, and contains both the consciousness of the observer and material matter, the latter being considered as secondary.
This is in stark contrast to the materialist philosophy that matter is primary, that it is all there is, and that consciousness is illusory.
¶ Convergence
The Urantia Book has much to say that is convergent with and also expands the thinking of many quantum physicists about the role that consciousness plays in what we see as “reality.”
“God knows all things.” The divine mind is conscious of, and conversant with, the thought of all creation. His knowledge of events is universal and perfect. The divine entities going out from him are a part of him; he who “balances the clouds” is also “perfect in knowledge.” “The eyes of the Lord are in every place.” Said your great teacher of the insignificant sparrow, “One of them shall not fall to the ground without my Father’s knowledge,” and also, “The very hairs of your head are numbered.” “He tells the number of the stars; he calls them all by their names.” (UB 3:3.1)
The further science has extended our knowledge of what matter really is, so the reality of that matter has tended to disappear. At the level of the proton we still have three quarks that might represent something solid and “real,” but 50% of the momentum of the proton belongs to particles that pop in and out of existence by borrowing energy from what is named the vacuum.
¶ What will be left?
It is doubtful that the quarks will retain their “solid” status for much longer. Even now, scientists at the HERA accelerator at Hamburg are colliding anti-electrons and protons and have evidence for something new.
The Urantia Book tells us all matter is energy but what is energy other than movement and the power to move? So is it all in the mind of God?
¶ External links
- Article in Innerface International: https://urantia-book.org/archive/newsletters/innerface/vol4_4/page3.html