Why Quantum Theory Intrigues Me

For decades, I have believed, like Einstein, that there must be one overarching law of Nature with all the other laws “nested” within.  I don’t know how much it has to do with my long-held (and apparently naiive) belief that life should be fair. That’s for my subconscious to know and for me to perhaps never find out.  Yet, somehow the two are tied together in my mind.  Unify the laws under one principle then everyone will see we are connected and fairness may prevail.

I have also long entertained the thought that reality is not what I and everyone else perceives it to be.  While walking with a friend many, many years ago, bits and pieces of my yearning to understand my world suddenly crystallized into an unusual thought.  I wondered aloud if the world I was walking in and through was created by me somehow -- that everyone in my world was a player in my complex drama.  Then I mused that everyone else must be doing the same thing and an image of thousands of  “bubble worlds” floating in space instantly came to mind.  I imagined an innumerable number of these worlds inhabited by individuals creating and living out their life stories.

It was years later that I came across the film, “What the Bleep Do I Know?”  I was actually taken aback but equally excited upon viewing it.  It spoke to what I was sensing.  Scientists had given it a name:  quantum theory.  This theory held the promise of revealing something important to me; to give substance to thoughts I couldn’t articulate.  

Quantum theory has upended science just as my spoken-aloud supposition had unnerved my friend.  Quantum mechanics is essentially a rejection of the way we are taught to think:  that nature can be understood in terms of elementary space-time realities.  That is huge!  Talk about a quantum shift.  This IS the original quantum shift! 

Our minds speak only a few languages, math being the only one that can translate the world without the use of images or concepts.  QM cannot be discovered through images conjured in our mind.  That is because there are only states of probabilities.  How can one truly envision a probability?  OK, maybe a person can have a hazy idea but it can’t be sharply defined as individuals mix with the aggregate.  Statistics and probabilities are about groups and behaviors of groups, not individuals.

In a way we think in probabilities when we make blanket judgments about a class of people, a political party, or reptiles. (Can’t for the life of me figure out why I thought of reptiles after I thought of “political party.”) Judgments come from earlier experiences but aren’t 100% accurate.  There will be individuals who deviate greatly in some way from the group and the rest imperceptibly so. 

QM is said to be irrational.  Is it?  It seems man’s version of Truth is only limited to what one has experienced/repeatedly observed without noted deviations.  If information appears to be nonsensical, fantastical, absurd and, yes, irrational, whose fault is that?  Isn’t that only because we, as humans, are limited?  We don’t like to think we have limits. Man believes everything is ultimately discoverable, given enough time, brainpower, and resources.  Einstein said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”  That is not a statement typically heard from one who believes in a God, which Einstein did.  It is universally believed that God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal.  Trying to picture THAT is impossible.  The very nature of God is thought to be incomprehensible yet believers don’t view their beliefs as irrational.

Life is certainly more than what we can see.  Every school child knows that.  We have never even seen an electron let alone quarks and leptons.  What else aren’t we seeing?  Our minds can’t get around the idea of infinity, of the true size of an electron, or even the millions of suns’ mass of a blue giant.   We can’t grasp a universe filled with billions upon billions of galaxies each containing billions and billions of stars, many of which are the center of their own solar systems.

The discovery of quantum mechanics, whose laws only apply to a world we cannot see*, is really the tip of the iceberg.  It is a glimpse into the amazing strangeness, astonishing depth and breadth of Nature’s creativity and its processes.  I have to call it Nature because my mind is too limited to think bigger than that.

Is there one unifying principle for it all?  I continue to believe that but I am beginning to see, based on the utter strangeness of subatomic laws, that man will never come to know it because it will be beyond man’s capacity to grasp it. 

For me, steeping myself in the world of quantum mechanics helps makes sense of the uncertainty I experience in this world.   There may be an Ultimate Certainty but, of the few things I am certain of, I will never come to know it. 

It all comes down to my propensity to wonder about things, to simply wonder at the seeming miracles I discover in and about nature.  In the process of wondering, I am willing to suspend belief, to entertain the irrational.  The quantum world offers endless worlds of wonder and I thoroughly enjoy going down Alice’s rabbit hole and fully experiencing a “world” that makes no sense. 

*In March 2015, we did see the subatomic world with the first photograph of a particle and a wave.  I have always been told the camera sees more than I do.  I often wonder what it is seeing when I point it in a direction.  What amazing things elude me. 

Why Look Up?

I am certainly not alone in my fascination with the cosmos.  I am just one of millions who are drawn to looking up.  I study the stars, but not to retain it for further recitation.  I do it for the sense of perspective I get about life.  Thinking about Regulus, let’s say, wildly spinning with its coronal blue jets of flame, takes me out of this world of sorrow. This world is filled with such sorrow, most of it fueled by testosterone as evidenced by war, the power hungry, and the brutality seen in many sports or in rape or domestic abuse.  The desire to escape a testosterone-free world draws me to other worlds.  

There is an incredible irony to this, however, because space is an even more hostile and annihilating world.  Yet looking up from a safe space connects me to the enlightened “eyes” of the past: the Greeks, Thales, Hypatia, et al,  as well as ground-breaking European astronomers like Galileo, Brahe, and the Herschels.  I marvel at what they saw, discovered, surmized, and made “real” for us.  Gazing turns to introspection in that much of the light we see was extinguished millions of years ago.  It is fascinating how a thought -- often born from the senses -- becomes a reality and that reality is nothing more than an illusion.  The afterglow of a long-dead star is a powerful metaphor for this.  Star gazing is just another way to help me make sense of the senselessness of this world.  

WANT AD: Religious Equality for Women

My daughter-in-law, Tara, sent me a link to a CNN piece from an Islamic woman explaining "Why I'm Proud to Wear a Burqa." (http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/02/04/france.burqa.ban/index.html.) Tara did so because I had rejoiced at the recent decision by the French government to no longer tolerate the wearing of burqas in their country.

I read it with interest, hoping to find the REASON for the burqa in the first place. If there was a logical explanation, I was more than ready to re-examine my position. If there is a reason for the implementation of this practice, the writer didn't mention it. She only explained why she chose to wear it, i.e., she dons it for religious reasons, to make her feel more spiritual. She explained she was following the laws of God, not man.

I will say that Mohammed, when he founded the religion, did several things to help liberate women. The ancient tribal customs that existed at the time were particularly harsh towards women. Admittedly, he did make some improvements in the lot of women's lives. (Interestingly, he did marry a much older woman who was a wealthy businesswoman and they had an equal partnership until she died.)

As a result, today's Islamic law does provide for inheritance by women and allows a type of pre-marriage contract that can protect them from the husband's polygamy. It gives them the right of divorce and establishes that their education will be allowed to continue. But one suspects that these privileges are available only to the wealthy as a practical matter.

There are many religious customs that have become a part of Islam that were not the original founder's intentions. This is true for other religions as well. Any religion that literally relies on an ancient Sacred Text, including Christianity, will inevitably fail to respect individual liberty and equality. Just look at Asheville Christian Academy which does not allow women to serve on its board because "women are incapable of making tough decisions."

Islamic women are kept subordinate through education or, should I say, a lack thereof. (It wasn't until the mid-1800s that even America considered giving its women more than a rudimentary education.) The number of women in schools across the Islamic world is unacceptably low. Their education typically comes to an end once they are wed, which often happens at an early age. The schooling they do get is focused on the study of Islam. Even more disturbing is the increasing control fundamentalists exert over educational institutions and academic freedom is non-existent.

Anyway, here is what I understand to be the reason for the burqa. It is so a man will not lust after a woman. It is interesting to me that the burden of keeping a man from acting on his urges is placed on the woman. What is it about the Arab men that they are so easily excited by even the sight of a wrist or ankle that they require a woman to be covered from head to toe? Why does the woman have to bear the responsibility for HIS urges? THe men imprison their women in layers of fabric to keep them from being distracted in the practice of their faith. I believe there is an underlying mysogyny here. Islamic jurists have even characterized a woman's reproductive organ as the "ever-devouring vagina", making it appear that men could not possibly overcome the lure of it. Makes it sound more like some sort of sinister sucking drain. Seriously now!

It is time for fundmentalist Islamic men to muster some self-discipline and stop forcing others to handle what is obviously their problem. It would be akin to me having men castrated so I could uphold a vow of chastity.

This woman is clearly brainwashed into believing the burqa is an integral part of her faith. She has not deeply questioned her faith but rather accepted the arbitariness of it. (This is true for many, no matter what religion is followed.) If she really stopped for a moment, she would realize that it is not clothing that develops a relationship with God/Allah/Yahweh, but actions.

Freedom from Received Opinion

How much of what we believe in, react to, is merely received opinion? I suspect it is alot. We often marry ourselves to cultural, political and religious ideas that we were born into. I find it enslaving, constraining so...

I imagined my mind floating above a world, shaped not of land, but of "continents" of thought -- theological, philosophical, sociological -- hovering over them, detached. My whole life I have traveled to, and spent time on, several of those “continents.” I have made them my home, embracing them and defending them, jingo-istically so to speak. Today I increasingly resist those culturally-born boundaries. My mind flies above them relishing the freedom of no thought, of all thought combined. Where is the place where a truth pertaining to all can be found/absorbed/known?

Yet each of us is a prisoner of her or his thoughts. What’s more, we want, if not demand, others to see our truths as we see them. Many join a “club” of belief systems. Entire cultures subscribe to general concepts/thoughts and, even then the individual members never interpret the concepts/ideas/beliefs in exactly the same way.

Thoughts are as varied as the number of humans creating them. The influences and forces that we react to every second of every day is different for each and every one of us. And therein lies a sort of freedom. The freedom is in deciding that what you think/feel/believe can be truth for you because no one really knows for sure…at least not until we find a some sort of unified field theory. An ultimate truth that pertains to every aspect of the universe exists but I will never know it with my limited mind. Only until we achieve total acceptance of and adherence to universal truths will we ever be free.

(first contemplated in February 2007)

Bible Manipulated Once Again by the Self-Serving

The Taliban must be smiling over Asheville Christian Academy’s recent decision (ll/17/09) to exclude women from serving on its board. The Taliban might even be rethinking its strategy. Rather than seek to destroy our way of life, they may choose to nurture this spore of their ideology which is thriving in western North Carolina. This is not a stretch. The Board has manipulated a sacred text to claim dominance over women just as the clerics have done with the Koran. There are two versions of the Creation story in the Bible. Men and women were created equally at the same instant in one version but it is apparent the one studied by these insecure men is the “rib version.” They argue that women’s temperaments are not suited to making tough decisions. Tell that to Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor as well as Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin. Those bylaws weren't written in 1972 but rather 972.

To read the entirety of the article printed in the Asheville Citizen Times, follow this link: http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009911170322

The Lioness on the Cheese Grater

I was recently checking out a synopsis of Lysistrata, the Greek comedy written by Aristophanes around 411 BCE. The women of Greece, sick of the wars on the Peloponnesis (431-404 BCE), took the dramatic step of denying men sex until they ceased the insanity. They also took over the acropolis which held the state treasury to hamper funding of the war. In a long, detailed oath the women abjure all their sexual pleasures, including the ever-popular ancient Greek position called "The Lioness on the Cheese Grater."

Well, I just had to know what this was. My research did not yield the answer, nor a picture, but I did come across an excellent blog on the more serious side of this topic. If you have time, check out the link below. It is about the steps that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president of Liberia, is taking to heal the wounds of civil war brought on by the men. "Her leadership is helping to inspire her countrywomen to seize control of their nation’s destiny, pulling it from the whirlpool of civil war onto the solid ground of a functioning democracy," he writes.

She is not doing it by denying sex to bring about change but she is modeling what female leadership looks like. Our priorities are different and with more in power, it is entirely possible the world would be a gentler place.

http://wordinedgewise.org/?p=57

Empowering Our Teen Girls

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.