UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Quantum Consciousness and the Search for a New Paradigm: How Science Can be Spiritual Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8r31q9ht Author Cochran, Christopher L. Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE SEARCH FOR A NEW PARADIGM: HOW SCIENCE CAN BE SPIRITUAL A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in ANTHROPOLOGY by Christopher Cochran June 2017 The Dissertation of Christopher Cochran is approved: Professor Susan Harding, Chair Professor Danilyn Rutherford Professor Mario Biagioli _____________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Table of Contents Abstract iv Acknowledgements vi Preface 1 Chapter 1: Introduction to Quantum Consciousness 15 Chapter 2: Demarcation: When Physics Encounters Consciousness 66 Chapter 3: Proliferation: Counter-induction and Realism 118 in Anticipation of the New Paradigm Chapter 4: Spirituality: Certainty and Doubt in the Quantum Imagination 176 Chapter 5: Conclusion 228 Bibliography 239 iii Abstract Christopher Cochran QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE SEARCH FOR A NEW PARADIGM: HOW SCIENCE CAN BE SPIRITUAL This dissertation examines how a network of “quantum consciousness” scientists have sought to change the epistemological and ethical boundaries of scientific research in hopes of creating knowledge that can adequately address contemporary problems in both science and society more generally. Quantum consciousness (QC) is defined as both scientific research and spiritual practice that seeks to understand consciousness in light of foundational questions that emerge from quantum physics. QC scientists believe neuroscience alone cannot provide a scientific explanation of consciousness because neuroscience is premised on “materialism” of Newtonian physics. QC scientists draw on the authority of physics to argue the correct scientific account of the mind-matter relationship will have to incorporate quantum physics, understood as the correct theory of matter since the quantum revolution of the 1920’s. Insofar as the physical delimits and shapes the mental, QC makes good on the potential quantum physics holds for redefining what mind is and can be. By examining the practices and discourses of QC scientists, I demonstrate that conceptual transference between science, philosophy and New Age spirituality is part of the formation of scientific disciplines and the bounds of scientific debate. QC’s iv cultural contestations with mainstream science show how the demarcation problem in science becomes intertwined with the mind-matter problem of philosophy. My ethnography follows QC scientists’ movements between conferences, research settings, classrooms, and dinner parties to show how technical philosophical disagreements in quantum foundations, such as the measurement problem and the theory of decoherence, are the fulcrum of a cultural, de facto demarcation between QC scientists and mainstream scientists. Max Weber postulated “disenchantment” as the result of a world rendered knowable in principle, yet the doctrine of intrinsic probability in quantum mechanics denies the possibility of such a world, and thereby troubles the assumption of a necessarily disenchanted science. I show how QC science is motivated by an expectation of a future “spiritual” discovery, called the New Paradigm, that redeems QC’s hypothesis that “universal consciousness is the ground of physics.” This expectation encourages QC scientists to incorporate and proliferate non-science within science, in ways that make hybrids, rather than clear boundaries. My dissertation shows how QC’s expectation of a “New Paradigm” guides what may be called a spiritual revivalism to redefine the secular norms of science. v Acknowledgements This dissertation was made possible by the encouragement, support, and guidance of many people. Thank you first to the many individuals who shared their personal stories, hopes, anxieties, and theories with me. Many scientists took time out of their busy schedules to help me succeed. Fred Kuttner, Bruce Rosenblum, and Tom Banks started me on my quest to understand physics culture and I could not have succeeded without each of them. Stanley Klein has been an invaluable guide to the world of quantum consciousness and quantum interpretation. Henry Stapp, Wolfgang Baer, and “Monica” were especially generous with their time and input. Klee Irwin and Quantum Gravity Research provided invaluable support in the early phase of my ethnographic research. I would also like to express my gratitude to teachers and friends who gave comments and direction in the development of my ethnographic research project and fieldwork. The help of Karen Barad was essential to the conceptualization of my project. Don Brenneis, Donna Haraway, Dan Linger, and Anna Tsing gave critical feedback at essential points in my early writing process. Thanks also to Celina Callahan-Kapoor, Stefanie Graeter, Micha Rahder, and Craig Scheutze for the tireless hours reading drafts of each others’ work. Patricia Kubala and Stefania Pandolfo continually encouraged me to remain faithful to my desire in writing and research. Finally, Milad Odabaei has been my intellectual companion and confidant since before I knew anything about physics or anthropology for that matter. vi My dissertation committee members had the wisdom and patience to guide me through a very difficult intellectual project that in very many ways in not yet complete. Susan Harding, Danilyn Rutherford, and Mario Biagioli each saw my project in a different, and differently insightful, light. I am indebted to each of them and I hope each can see aspects of their inspiration in my own work. Bruce Rosenblum died in 2014. A few weeks before his death, he gave me a book. “I’ll want that back someday!” he said. I will do my best, Bruce. Finally, I thank James Higgins for providing light in the darkest of hours. vii Preface This dissertation is an ethnographic study of some inter-related conceptual problems within science: the problem of induction, the mind-matter problem, and the quantum measurement problem. Each of these problems pertains to insides and outsides of human experience: the boundaries between objectivity and subjectivity, mind and body, and possibility and actuality, to name a few. The study is ethnographic in character because my interest is to investigate how these specific conceptual problems give rise to specific behaviors and discourses among a particular group of scientists, actions and discourses that in turn, take part in shaping the subsequent development of science. My fieldwork was done with quantum consciousness (QC) scientists, who believe that consciousness is not primarily a biological function but a quantum physical one. QC scientists see in this belief the implication that consciousness is not limited to humans and other organisms, but is rather a property of the universe itself. QC scientists come to the idea of a “universal consciousness” by way of a certain interpretation of one of the problems mentioned above, the “quantum measurement problem.” The quantum measurement problem concerns why the world of everyday experience does not resemble the world that quantum mechanics seems to describe. Later, we will see how QC scientists give an answer to this problem, in a way that pertains also to the mind-matter problem, by arguing that the boundary between the “quantum” world and the world of experience is mediated by a form of consciousness that is not personal, but rather, universal and perhaps even “physical.” 1 What makes QC science especially unique, however, is not so much their hypothesis about consciousness, but the expectations they invest in this hypothesis should it gain scientific and socio-political acceptance. QC scientists suppose that were consciousness shown to be a universal and physical phenomenon, there would be a widespread “transformation of consciousness” among scientists, and within “Western” culture in general. Although QC scientists would never say it this way, it is almost as though QC scientists expect that verification of the quantum physical basis of consciousness would produce a direct personal spiritual revelation for every person who comes to know this (as yet unverified) “scientific fact.” Such a revelation is in turn expected to produce the sort of harmonious social conditions that would be necessary to solve major world problems like climate change and economic disparity, and also more personal problems such as depression and social alienation. My ethnographic work with QC scientists demonstrates how particular lacunae in the logic of scientific thought can become invested with social activities and expectations, that may, at first glance, seem beyond the scope of science. Yet the logic and the forms of sociality that emerge in QC cannot be accounted for without understanding how the problem of induction, the mind matter problem, and the quantum measurement problem are experienced and lived as personal and social problems. These problems have a life that extends beyond the university, intermixing and guiding individuals in their attempts to make sense of their own histories and their own present. For this reason, I introduce and explicate questions relevant to philosophy of science over the course of this dissertation,