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.
