Before writing anything else,
let me congratulate Family of The Heart for conducting another successful event.
I am so fortunate to have run into you guys. I already knew
Pervaiz
and
Rasheed
Nadeem but thru
FOTH, I met
Nuzhat Siddiqui,
Farzana Hassan, Dr. Munir Nazir and
Dr. Tahir Qazi. I had the honor of communicating directly with
Ziauddin Ahmad,
Zeeshan Mir,
Dr. Khalid Sohail and
Akber Chaudhry. I am proud to call all of
them my friends and its all because of
FOTH. I hope that this communication will
bring me a new friend in shape of
Mr. Abdul Mutaal whose writings I have enjoyed
for a long time thru FOTH website and whose prolific writing skills and
intellectual depth I'm quite envious of.
Science, as opined by a physicist, is the
mightiest enterprise ever undertaken by human race. What other human discipline
or institution has the power to eliminate all life on earth
many times over? At the same time, science is responsible for saving
hundreds of thousands of lives everyday. I should probably say billions because
according to some estimates, the available natural food resources in the world
can only feed 4 billion people. Most of the other two billion are being fed with
the help of genetically altered crops.
This awesome might of science, every bit of which
is earned, brings it a certain amount of respectability,
envy and, sometimes, even resentment. Other human disciplines seize every
opportunity to validate themselves using the body of science to share some of
that respectability. Quantum Mechanics (QM), a branch of physics sometimes
called "Quantum Physics", presents such an opportunity to a range of
interest groups. From spoon benders to religious scholars and from psychics to
New Age mystics, everyone is hitching a ride on QM these days. None of them
has concrete evidence that there is a connection so all of them stand at the
same logical (or should I say illogical?) ground. Mr.
Abdul Mutaal has also used QM to validate mystical experience and I would like
to comment on his presentation.
About the only thing common that I can see
between QM and mysticism is that they are both mysterious. That is the same
commonality psychics, mind channelers, out-of-body experimenters, remote viewers
and tarot card readers have with QM. Apart from that, I don't see any evidence
of any other connection. All I see are misperceived and
misrepresented quantum notions seen as validation of the entire Halloween
costume party. Let me start by looking at the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
as presented by Mr. Abdul Mutaal.
Note: In the rest of my
response, I am going to enclose excessively detailed or somewhat irrelevant
observations in boxes. You can skip the boxes if you want although I would
prefer that you don't.
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (HUP)
Mr. Abdul Mutaal writes,
"The quantum
theory postulated a wave function, which describes quantum facts in terms of
probability of existence called uncertainty principle of Heisenberg. This has
proved to be the only theory of physics that successfully describes the behavior
of sub-atomic particles. At the same time it postulates that nothing is sure in
this world - only probabilities exist and those probabilities depend upon how
they are looked at."
Mr. Abdul Mutaal claims that, using HUP, QM
maintains that nothing is sure in this world. Whenever I am presented
with this notion, I usually ask the presenter, "how sure are you about
this?". Let me try to explain Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, because
that's the key here, and by the time I am done explaining, I hope you will be
able to see that there is nothing mystical about it. I am not providing any
references because the following is available in every QM textbook.
Every physical object in the universe has physical
properties. A tennis ball has mass, weight, color etc. When I throw the ball
in some direction, it acquires a couple of more properties due to its motion,
for instance its varying position, velocity, spin and momentum (Momentum =
Mass x Velocity or p = mv). An electron, similarly, has properties. Some of
these properties are called non-complimentary properties and HUP does not
postulate that you cannot be certain about these properties. You can be
certain about the charge of a subatomic particle, its rest mass, its magnetic
moment etc. That means that HUP or QM do not say that nothing is
sure in this world. The uncertainty in HUP is about complimentary
properties of a subatomic particle. HUP states that position and momentum, for
example, cannot be simultaneously measured with any certainty, hence
position (usually denoted as x) and momentum (p) are complimentary properties.
You can measure only one of them with any certainty. As you can see, even in
the case of complimentary properties, HUP doesn't say that nothing is sure. It
says that one of the two complimentary properties is sure and the other is
not. And why is that?
To measure something, you have to interact with
it. To detect the position of an electron, you have to shine a light on it.
Light contains particles called photons that have energy relative to the
frequency. So when you shine a light on an electron, you are bombarding it
with energy. If you shine a light with a large wavelength (visible light), you
won't get the position with any precision. For precision, you need shorter
wavelength light (ultraviolet) and here the problem lies. Shorter wavelength
means higher frequency and higher frequency means more energetic photons. This
photon, when it hits the electron to measure its position, gives it a jolt.
Its velocity (hence momentum) goes haywire because of our measuring it. So you
cannot be certain about its momentum anymore. Keep shortening the
wavelength, you will get results with more precision but the resulting jolt to
the electron will be bigger too which will increase the uncertainty of its
velocity.
Let me stop here and admit that the above is
one of the two interpretations of HUP, although its favored
by leading physicists like Stephen Hawking. The other interpretation
says that the uncertainty is inherent independent of measurement. I don't buy
that but that does not
mean that that can't be right. More on that later. The following though is
true whatever interpretation you agree with.
The simplified mathematical notation of HUP is
∆p∆x
≥ h
where ∆p is uncertainty of momentum,
∆x is uncertainty of position and h is Planck's constant. In words,
uncertainty of momentum times uncertainty of position cannot be less than
Planck's constant. The value of Planck's constant is 6.626068 × 10-34
m2 kg / s.
The reason I introduced the above equation and
Planck's constant is to show my next point. Saying that due to HUP, we can't
be certain of anything is misleading. If you look again at the value of
Planck's constant, you will see that it is an extremely small number. However,
it is large enough for an electron or a photon.
When you bring HUP out of the subatomic world and into the macroscopic world,
the number becomes highly ignorable. The same
equation can be applied to a moving tennis ball. I have quickly done a
calculation and the uncertainty of the position of a tennis ball moving at 60
miles / hour and the answer I have is 5 x 10-27 m. That is
way smaller than the diameter of a helium atom. (I'm not quoting the math for
the sake of brevity but if you want to see it, please write to me. I'd be
happy to oblige). You won't see any tennis player complaining that he/she
couldn't return the shot because of HUP.
Summary:
HUP doesn't say that nothing is certain. The non-complimentary quantities
are certain and even among complimentary quantities,
one of them is certain. On a macroscopic level, the uncertainty become so
insignificantly small that we can pretty much ignore it and
it has insignificant physical implications.
Mr. Abdul Mutaal's statement's
last part is also partly true. Yes, there are certain properties that would give
you the answer according to how you look at them. For instance, an electron has
a spin and it has been observed that the spin will always be on the axis you are
measuring it at without any fractional spin on the other axes. But not all
properties behave this way. The electric charge or rest mass don't. Again, on
the macroscopic level, this problem disappears. You can measure the fractional
spin of a moving soccer ball. If the macroscopic world worked on the principle
of "you'll get what you are looking for", everyone who's ever gone for
an HIV test would turn out positive.
Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics
That brings me to the main tenet of QM mysticism
connection. Certain properties of a particle cannot be determined without
actually measuring them. This goes contrary to what deterministic classical
physics held. QM is not deterministic in this sense, its probabilistic. It says
that only probabilities can be calculated for certain
properties prior to the actual measurement. In the new world of QM, the
particles are not thought of in reference to their position and momentum, as
determinist physics did, but in their quantum state which is a
combination of their position and momentum. QM changed the perception of the
world from deterministic to the one that is mainly governed by chance. Mr.
Abdul Mutaal very rightly points out that its the only theory that accurately
describes sub-atomic world.
A new concept of "wavefunction"
was introduced to calculate the probability of certain properties of a particle
e.g. its position. The concept says that before measurement, you can define the
probability of position of a particle thru wavefunction but once you determine
the actual position, the wavefunction "collapses" to the probability
of one. Some, including major scientific names like Niels Bohr and von Neumann,
as pointed out by Mr. Abdul Mutaal, linked the collapse of wavefunction with
human consciousness. They said that the interference of consciousness is what
collapses the wavefunction. This is where the New Age mystics and philosophers
attach themselves with QM. Claims were made to the extent that its the
consciousness that gives the property to the particle as if prior to the
observation, the property didn't exist. From that point on, this speculation is
somehow taken to heights where if no one is looking at moon, it doesn't exist.
I'm sure the earth was revolving around the sun already and it wasn't Galileo
who put it in motion.
Einstein was outraged at the suggestion that the
properties such as position are meaningless unless measured so somehow this
position is a creation of human observation.[1] When pointed out by
Heisenberg that Einstein had written something similar earlier about relativity,
Einstein replied, "Perhaps I used this sort of philosophy; but it is
nevertheless nonsense...only the theory decides what one can observe." [2]
And he had good reason to say that
(after all, if its true that its the human consciousness that creates the
physical realities, Einstein is responsible for major reengineering of the
universe). Usually it’s assumed that the indeterminism of QM is added
as an assumption to the theory. That's truly not the case. Please pardon my
mathematics but I do want to dispel the spooky part
of indeterminism. Lets suppose a time sequence in discrete steps where the
first step is t = 0 the next t = 1, the next t = 2 so on. Next, lets suppose a
particle of mass m moving from position x at the first time step to position y
at next time step. We can now calculate the velocity of the particle as (y -
x) / t and the momentum would be p = m (y - x) / t where t = 1. Since we need
the particle's position at two different time steps to measure the momentum,
the position, naturally becomes uncertain. Where is the spookiness? The
uncertainty in such a situation is as physical a principle of this universe as
gravity.
Anyway, the consciousness connection is neither
evidence based nor the only speculation. For most
of the practicing physicists, the problem of uncertainty remains a problem of
quantum measurement. Despite that fact, New Age gurus usually describe the
consciousness explanation of QM only. There are many other explanations rarely
considered by them (except the one with multiple universes; anything spooky will
do). Roger Penrose believes that quantum gravity causes the wavefunction
collapse.[3] Robert Griffiths and his colleagues have taken a
different approach of quantum "histories" otherwise known as
"Decoherence".[4] This last explanation is what has caught
fire in recent years. Still no conclusive evidence but this explanation has
stood the tests, so far, that it was subjected to[5]
. Please note that the concept that human
consciousness collapses the wavefunction has never
undergone any testing, experimental or otherwise.
Decoherence has nothing spooky about it so its not
popular with paranormal crowd. Decoherence actually states that the properties
of particles are a result of interaction of the particle's inherent properties
with its environment. But still the jury is out on which one of these
explanations is actually true.
In the meantime, pseudo-scientists are exploiting
the consciousness connection to its limits. It’s made out as it’s the only
conclusion QM can draw and it’s purely scientific. In a classic sleight of
hand, the burden of disproof has been shifted to people who deny the
connection. New Age shamans will tell you that the great scientists like
Heisenberg and Schroedinger concluded that there was a definite connection
between QM and the world of mysticism. Did they really? Ken Wilber compiled the
writings of physicists (Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Einstein, De Broglie, Jeans,
Planck, Pauli and Eddington) on the subject and, in a rare moment of
clarity, wrote in the preface
"these theorists are virtually unanimous in
declaring that modern physics offers no positive support whatsoever for
mysticism or transcendentalism of any variety" [6]
But didn't Bohr and Heisenberg made apparently
mystical statements? They did, but they never said that they had evidence for
that. We need to be able to distinguish a scientist's philosophical views from
his/her scientific observations. Part of the problem also arises from how
physicists say things. If a physicists say, "An electron doesn't have any
position before its measured", what this physicists is doing is basically
giving words to a mathematical equation. For the physicist, the concept is
mathematically unambiguous but for the listening audience, it may not be that
clear. A person in the audience may interpret it as; the electron has no
position, which means that it doesn't exist physically and it's my measurement
that has actually created it. This kind of misinterpretation gives rise to ideas
like
"[quantum mechanics has demonstrated that]
the physical world, including our bodies, is a response to the observer. We
create our bodies as we create the experience of our world" [7]
It may sound like I'm trying to say that QM has
no unanswered questions left. That is not my intention. QM poses mind boggling
questions to us. What causes the wavefunction to collapse is probably the
biggest. What causes one particle to mimic another miles away (and, according to
some hypotheses, even in future)? What causes an electron to adopt the spin on
the axis that is measured on? These are all mysteries so far but all the
scientific facts today were mysteries to begin with. What I am trying to
demonstrate is that all these questions are awaiting answers. A speculation,
however intelligently articulated is still a speculation and doesn't qualify as
an answer. You can maintain that its consciousness that collapses the
wavefunction but while maintaining that, you should also qualify it with the
fact that its just a speculation among many other speculations.
I have, at the risk of
losing your attention, used mathematics to clarify a couple of points. I have
done that because, first, I don't know of any other method of explaining
mathematical ideas without using mathematics, and second, I am of firm belief
that that's the only way how it should be done. That's
the only way of keeping things as unambiguous as possible.
In the conclusion I would like to comment on my
learned friend Mr. Abdul Mutaal's following remark
"We are infinitely
humbled, both by the limits of science to know the nature of ultimate reality,
and by the mystics’ great leap right into the heart of reality. The
underlying message coming from the realm of scientific enquiry is a reflection
back from reality itself, a kind of slap on our clever faces."
Science, or QM in current context, which
according to Mr. Abdul Mutaal's interpretation falls short of reality and hence
occupies a lower rung than mysticism, has revolutionized the life of human race.
The computer, that I am using right now, owes its existence to QM. This single
application of QM has changed the way we live our lives. The contributions
of QM to medical diagnostic and treatment disciplines are so many that I would
need a lot of space just to cover the major items. On the other hand, may I ask
what the people who "leapt right into the heart of reality" and thus
occupy a higher rung have given us? May I ask what is
"reality" in a world where "nothing is sure"? Is this
"reality" a quantifiable, measurable, objective reality or just
another name of blissful illusion? If this is the "reality"
that is objective and a "reality" that constitutes the knowledge and
reason, without being disrespectful, can I request these great men
and women to hold off the supply of love from the heart of reality for some time
and instead send us the cure for cancer? Not the
"quantum healing" variety but the real cure.
Because in this world of uncertainty, I am pretty certain that people suffering
from cancer die very painfully.
Regards,
Rafi Aamer
PS: I have avoided discussing
Copenhagen Interpretation and David Bohm's opposition to it, EPR Paradox,
Schrodinger's equation, nonlocality, qunatum gravity, and the concept of
hidden variables among other things. Those are important things to consider for
any serious study of QM. Anyone interested in understanding QM would do him/her
good by studying these concepts.
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References:
1- Einstein, A.; Podolsky, B. and Rosen, N. Can
Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?
1935.
2- Heisenberg, W. Physics and Philosophy
1958.
3- Penrose, R. The Emperor's New Mind
1989.
4- Griffiths, R. Consistent Quantum Theory
2003.
5- Hay, T. and Patrcik, W. The New Quantum
Universe 2003.
6- Wilber, K. Quantum Questions : Mystical
Writings of the World's Great Physicists 2001.
7- Chopra, D. Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The
Quantum Alternative To Growing Old 1993
