Physics and Spirituality: the Next Grand Unification?
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Phys Educ 22 119871 Prlnted In t h c UK Physics and spirituality: the next grand unification? current framework) seem to lie outside the scope of Brian Josephson science in its present form. At the present time we can see the emergence of something which, while not being exactly a consensus of opinion, at any rate I n what light should a scientist regard the assertions forms a collection of mutually consistent ideas as to of a religion, or of religions in general? One extreme the general form of a possible new understanding of position is the atheistic one of regarding the asser- nature,a nd of what might constitutea ppropriate tions of religion as falsehoods. Such a position can means of investigating nature. that goes beyond and bes u stained only by regardingt h e xperiences is more flexible than is thec urrentc onventional which individualsc onsidera sv alidatingt heir reli- framework. These ideas are not well represented in gious beliefs as being explicable in other ways and, the standard literature-probably, in the last analy- in the absence of an adequate research programme sis, because they represent the same kind of threat tos upporti t, must be consideredm orea s falling to current scientific dogmas as scientific discoveries withint he field of opiniont hana s within that of havep resentedt or eligiousd ogmas in thep ast. science. (There has even been a suggestion, in the editorial Thea lternativet ot hisa theisticp osition is that pages of a prestigious scientific journal, that a par- there exists an aspect of reality-that we may for ticular book should be burnt because it propagated convenience caltl r anscendental-which embraces dangerous ideas.) the subject mattero f religion (or as somem ay prefer It will be my task in what follows to explain the to term i t , the spiritual aspect of life) and which is ways in which current scientific orthodoxiesa re not at present encompassed by science. The ques- beingc hallengeda ndt oc onveys omei dea of the tion then arises whether some future science mabey alternativesp resentlye merging.A n umber of im- able to cope with this aspect of reality, or whether it portantt hemesh erei ncludet heq uestions of the will remain forever beyond the scopeo f science. The validity of reductionisma ndt h e universality of general aim of scienceb eingt og ain as full and quantum mechanics, as well as that of the relevance accurate a picture of reality as possible, one would of mystical experience. My own thoughts in this area expect logically that scientists in general would take have been much influenced by the writings of David a keen interest in such questions. just as they do in Bohm (1980) andF ritjoCf apra (1975). I have topics such as those of the fundamental constitution of matter, or of the mechanisms of life. In practice. ~~ ~ however, such questions have been almost entirely Brian D Josephson FRS, FlnstP is a Professor of split off from scientific consciousness. in some cases Physics, University of Cambridge. His MA and as a result of an atheistic point of view and in others PhD were from the same universiHtye. shared because present science seems to be so far removed the 1973 Nobel Prize in physicsfor his froma nythings piritualt hatt hes uggestion of the theoretical prediction of the phenomena now possibility of a merging of the two seems improbable known as the Josephsone ffects. His visiting or even absurd. professorships have included the Indian While it may have been the case that such ques- Institute ofScience, Bangalore (1984) and the tions have been split off from scientific conscious- Computer Science Department, WayneS tate ness in general, there has been asi gnificant minority University, Detroit (1983)He. is joint editor of the of scientists who have tried to apply the methods of conference proceedingsC onsciousness and the thought and analysis of the scientist to those aspects Physical World(0xford: Pergamon) and his of realityt hat( unlesso nea doptsa sa na rticle of research interests concern the phenomenono f faith the idea that all these aspects will in due course intelligence and attemptsa t unifying the either be explained or 'explained away' within the scientific and mystical views of nature. 0031-9120/87/010015+05$02,50~1987 IOP Publlshlng Ltd 15 benefiteda lsof rom discussions with an umber of mechanics. If we try too vercome our ignorance scientific colleagues, including in particular Michael regarding the internal nature and constitutiono f the Conrad,D ipankarH ome,H R N agendra.S teven biosystem undes rtu dy by performinsg u itable Rosen and Richard Thompson, as well as with the observations, then we must at some point come up members of twos pirituaml ovementst h aht ave with ap roblem like thatp reviouslye ncountered. attempted to elaborate suitable concepts in the area namely that observing as ystem disturbs it slightly at beindg i scusse(d t hTe ranscendentaMl editation the quantum level. Biosystems are examples of sys- movement and the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual tems where, just as in the case considered above. we University). do not have the degree of control over the internal structure of the system under investigation that we do in general have in physics and chemistry. In the The validity of reductionism example previously given.a c olleagued etermined One of the points of tension between orthodoxy and the state of the system in a way not accessible to us then ewt hinking is theq uestion of thee xtent to in detail; in thec ase of biosystemsn atured oes which the approach of reductionism (i.e. studying a precisely the same thing. complexs ystem in terms of its componentp arts) Biosystems illustrate again the way successful ap- remains a valid one in quantum mechanics. Suppor- plications of a particular principle are emphasised ters of reductionism quote various examples from while thse i tuationws herpe r oblemos c cuar r e physics (e.g. phenomena of the solid state) and from ignored or overlookeCd .o nventiontah li nking chemistry (e.g. explaining the properties of a mole- works adequately at the molecular level, where the cule) as prooft hatt her eductionista pproach still change of the structure through observation is not applies despite the conceptual changes wrought by an overwhelminpg r oblem. I t woulbd e come a quantum mechanics. In other situations, however, problem,h owever, if we weret o try to explain the reductionistic approach (withi ts implication that biosystems in detail at the level of the wave func- the properties of a system canbe satisfactorily deter- tion. The successes of molecular biology in no way mined by observation of that system alone) breaks detractf romt hef orce of Bohr’s argument, which down. Consider, for example. the following situa- applies in a regime different from that with which tion. A colleague B sends us a beam of polarised biology is currently concerned. particles which are individually polarised according to a rule that he alone knows. We cannot find out exactly how each particle in the beam is polarised The universality or otherwise of quantum mechanics becausea no bservation of onec omponent of the The question of the universality of quantum theory spin wilil n generala ltert hev alues of theo ther has been discussed in detail by David Bohm (1980). components.A ndy et we cannot say (as is often He considers as an illustrative example the way in permissible in quantumm echanics)t hatt hei ndi- which insurance companies use statistical tables to viduasl pinsa reu ndefined, since in this casea predict the probability that agiven person will die of perfectly definite spin has been given to each parti- a specified disease within a specified timep eriod. cle by our colleague B. This example shows in the Thee xistence of theses tatistical laws in no way simplest possible way how in the quantum domain it excludes the possibility of other laws existing which is possible that information outside a system may be would determine the precise conditionosf death of a needed before a full description of that system can given individual policy holder (e.g. death caused by be given, thus contradicting the reductionist poinotf an accident,t hed etails of which are in principle view. describable by the laws of mechanics).S imilarly. The example just given displays a common fea- Brownianm otionc anb ed escribede ithers tatisti- ture of many of the arguments that support ortho- cally or in terms of them otions of thei ndividual doxy, namely that the successful applications of a atoms in an individual instance of an experiment. particular principle are emphasised, while the situa- Analogously, one can argue that no contradiction tionsw heret hep rinciplec annotb e successfully is involved in supposing that under suitable condi- applied or where there are some difficulties with the tions alternative descriptionso f systems to the quan- standard view are ignored or overlooked, creating tumm echanicaol nes may bep ossiblea, ndt h at thus a distorted account of the true situation. possession of these descriptions might permit par- A very similar situation to that just described, but ticulapr redictionts ob em adet h awt erem ore one which is of considerablym ore practical rele- definite than those which quantum mechanics pro- vance, was given by Niels Bohr (1958) who observed videsB. ohmn otest hat manyp hysicists retaina that the uncertainty principle would ultimately limit belief that such ideas are not to be taken seriously thed egreet o which onec ouldu nderstand bio- because of thea rgumentsa gainstt hemt hath ave systems in terms of thme ethods of quantum been made in the past.