The Dancing Wu Li Masters An Overview of the New Physics Gary Zukav A BANTAM NEW AGE BOOK BANTAM BOOKS NEW YORK • TORONTO • LONDON • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND This book is dedicated to you, who are drawn to read it. Acknowledgments My gratitude to the following people cannot be adequately expressed. I discovered, in the course of writing this book, that physicists, from graduate students to Nobel Laureates, are a gracious group of people; accessible, helpful, and engaging. This discovery shattered my long-held stereo- type of the cold, "objective" scientific personality. For this, above all, I am grateful to the people listed here. Jack Sarfatti, Ph.D., Director of the Physics/Consciousness Research Group, is the catalyst without whom the following people and I would not have met. Al Chung-liang Huang, The T'ai Chi Master, provided the perfect metaphor of Wu Li, inspiration, and the beautiful calligraphy. David Finkelstein, Ph.D., Director of the School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, was my first tutor. These men are the godfathers of this book. In addition to Sarfatti and Finkelstein, Brian Josephson, Professor of Physics, Cambridge University, and Max Jammer, Professor of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat- Gan, Israel, read and commented upon the entire manu- script. I am especially indebted to these men (but I do not wish to imply that any one of them, or any other of the individualistic and creative thinkers who helped me with this book, would approve of it, page for page, as it is written, nor that the responsibility for any errors or mis- interpretations belongs to anyone but me). I am also indebted to Henry Stapp, Ph.D., Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, for reading and commenting upon ix x / ACKNOWLEDGMENTS portions of the manuscript, and to Elizabeth Rauscher, Ph.D., founder and sponsor of the Fundamental Physics Group, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, for encouraging non-physicists to partake of weekly conferences which normally would attract only physicists. In addition to Stapp and Sarfatti, this group included John Clauser, Ph.D.; Philippe Eberhard, Ph.D.; George Weissman, Ph.D.; Fred Wolf, Ph.D,; and Fritjof Capra, Ph.D,; among others. I am grateful to Carson Jefferies, Professor of Physics, University of California at Berkeley, for his support and for commenting upon portions of the manuscript; to David Bohm, Professor of Physics, Birkbeck College, University of London, for reading portions of the manuscript; to Saul-Paul Sirag for his frequent assistance; to the physi- cists of the Particle Data Group, Lawrence Berkeley Labo- ratory, for their assistance in compiling the particle table at the back of the book; to Eleanor Criswell, Professor of Psychology, Sonoma State University (California), for her valuable support; to Gin McCollum, Professor of Mathe- matics, Kansas State University, for her assistance and for her patient tutelage; and to Nick Herbert, Ph.D., Director of the C-Life Institute, for providing me with his excellent papers on Bell's theorem and for permission to use his paper title, "More than Both," as a chapter title. All of the illustrations in this book were done by Thomas Linden Robinson. Harvey White, Professor Emeritus, Department of Phys- ics, University of California at Berkeley, and former Di- rector, Lawrence Hall of Science, personally provided photographs of his famous simulations of probability dis- tribution patterns. The electron diffraction photograph was provided by Ronald Gronsky, Ph.D., Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. I learned much about spectroscopy from Sumner Davis, Professor of Physics, University of California at Berkeley. I am deeply grateful to these men who, like all of the physicists that I encountered in writing this book, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / xi gave graciously of their time and knowledge to a stranger who needed help. I also am indebted to Maria Guarnaschelli, my editor, for her sensitivity and erudition. Without the generosity of Michael Murphy and the Board of Directors of the Esalen Institute, which sponsored the 1976 conference on physics and consciousness, none of this probably would have happened. Table of Contents Synoptic Table of Contents xv Cast of Characters xix Foreword by David Finkelstein xxiii Introduction xxvii WU LI? Big Week at Big Sur 3 Einstein Doesn't Like It 18 PATTERNS OF ORGANIC ENERGY Living? 45 What Happens 67 MY WAY The Role of "I" 91 NONSENSE Beginner's Mind 117 Special Nonsense 134 General Nonsense 160 xiii xiv / TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 CLUTCH MY IDEAS The Particle Zoo 191 The Dance 212 ENLIGHTENMENT More Than Both 255 The End of Science 281 Notes 315 Bibliography 323 Index 329 Particle Table 340 Synoptic Table of Contents WU LI? (Introduction) Big Week at Big Sur Physics (3), Esalen (4), Chinese and English (5), Wu Li Masters (7), scientists and technicians (9), the sodium spec- trum (10), Bohr's model of the atom (12). Einstein Doesn't Like It The new physics and the old physics (18), Newton's physics (21), the Great Machine (22), do we create reality? (28), the myth of objectivity (30), subatomic "particles" (31), statistics (33), the kinetic theory of gases (33), probability (35), the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (37), prag- matism (38), split-brain analysis (39), summary of the new physics and the old physics (41). PATTERNS OF ORGANIC ENERGY (Quantum Mechanics) Living? Organic and inorganic (45), Max Planck (48), "discontinuous" (48), black-body radiation (50), Planck's constant (51), Albert Einstein (52), Einstein's theory of the photoelectric effect (53), waves, wavelengths, frequencies, and amplitudes (54), diffrac- tion (58), Young's double-slit experiment (60), the wave-par- ticle duality (64), probability waves (65). What Happens The procedure of quantum mechanics (67), the region of prep- aration (68), the region of measurement (68), the observed system (69), the observing system (69), the Schrodinger wave ' xv xvi / SYNOPTIC TABLE OF CONTENTS equation (70), observables (70), particles as "correlations" (70), wave functions (73), probability functions (73), quantum jumps (75), the Theory of Measurement (76), the metaphysics of quantum mechanics (80), the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (83), Schrodinger's cat (85), Doubting Thomas (88). MY WAY (Quantum Mechanics) The Role of "1" The "in here—out there" illusion (92), complementarity (93), Compton scattering (93), Louis de Broglie (96), matter waves (96), Erwin Schrodinger (99), standing waves (99), the Pauli exclusion principle (103), the Schrodinger wave equation (again) (104), Max Born (105), probability waves (again) (106), the quantum model of the atom (107), Werner Heisenberg (109), the S Matrix (110), the Heisenberg uncertainty prin- ciple (111), the tables are turned (114). NONSENSE (Relativity) Beginner's Mind Nonsense (117), the beginner's mind (118), the special theory of relativity (L20), the Galilean relativity principle (123), iner- tial co-ordinate systems (123), Galilean transformations (125), the constancy of the speed of light (127), the ether (129), the Michelson-Morley experiment (130), FitzGerald contractions (132), Lorentz transformations (133). Special Nonsense The special theory of relativity (134), "proper" and "rela- tive" length and time (139). Terrell's rotation explanation of relativistic contraction (142), relativistic mass increase (144), simultaneity (145), the space-time continuum (149), the space- time interval (150), Hermann Minkowski (154), mass-energy (154), conservation laws (156). General Nonsense Gravity and acceleration (161), inside and outside the eleva- tors (163), gravitational mass and inertial mass (167), the geog- raphy of the spacetime continuum (168), Euclidean geometry SYNOPTIC TABLE OF CONTENTS / xvii (171), the revolving circles (172), non-Euclidean geometry (175), Einstein's ultimate vision (179), Mercury's perihelion (180), starlight deflection (181), gravitational rcdshift (182). Black Holes (184), the illusion of "force" (186), the illusion of "nonsense" (187). I CLUTCH MY IDEAS (Particle Physics) The Particle Zoo The barriers to change (191), the hall of mirrors (192), the new world view (193), particle physics (195), bubble chambers (195), the dance of creation and annihilation (196), what made the tracks? (198), quantum field theory (199), the need to pretend (201), particle masses (202), massless particles (205), charge (206), spin (207), angular momentum (207), quantum numbers (210), anti-particles (210). The Dance Space-time diagrams (212), Fcynman diagrams (214), the dance of creation and annihilation (again) (215), anti-particles (again) (217), the illusion of time (219), entropy (221), virtual photons (222), the electromagnetic force (225), Hideki Yukawa (226), the strong force (226), virtual mesons (228), self-interactions (229), gravity (233), the weak force (234), virtual photons (again) (234), vacuum diagrams (240), conservation laws (241), symmetries (243), quarks (244), the S Matrix (again) (245). ENLIGHTENMENT (Quantum Logic ^Bell's Theorem) More Than Both Physics and enlightenment (255), Bell's theorem and quantum logic (257), John von Neumann (257), the description of a wave function (257), "Projections as Propositions" (,259), Da\ id Finkelstein (261), symbols and experience (261), logos and mythos (261), the distributive law (263), polarization of light (264), the third polarizer paradox (267), superpositions (270), quantum logic (271), "proof" (271), transition tables (273), lattices (275), von Neumann's disproof of the distributive law (277), quantum topology (280).