From Towards a Science of Consciousness 3         Section 7: Physical Reality and Consciousness       CogNet Proceedings


What Does Quantum Mechanics Imply about the Nature of the Universe?

Shimon Malin


The Present Paradigm Shift in Historical Perspective


The Copernican revolution destroyed the Medieval paradigm about reality, the paradigm that was so beautifully encapsulated in Dante's Divine Comedy. It did not provide Western civilization, however, with an alternative world view. The new paradigm it provided was limited to astronomy. Following Copernicus, for over 100 years Western civilization was devoid of a comprehensive paradigm. The new comprehensive paradigm emerged as a result of advances in physics. It was the Newtonian "clockwork universe."

Our situation at present is similar to the situation that prevailed between Copernicus and Newton in this respect: The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, especially quantum mechanics, destroyed the prevailing world view (the Newtonian "clockwork universe") without providing us with an alternative comprehensive paradigm. The search for the new paradigm is, in fact, an important aspect of what consciousness studies is about. Will physics come once again to the rescue and provide us with the paradigm we are seeking?

The Field of Inquiry


Let us narrow down the field of inquiry to a more precise question. Although we do not have a comprehensive paradigm, some of its characteristics begin to emerge. These include a movement away from fragmentation and toward holism, away from a mechanical universe and toward an alive one. Let us concentrate, then, on the following question: Does quantum mechanics support the idea that the universe and its constituents, including the so-called inanimate matter, are alive?

The Principle of Objectivation


The obvious answer to this question is "No. Quantum mechanics does not support the idea that the universe is alive." The reason for this is the following: Quantum mechanics, like the rest of our science, is based on what Erwin Schrödinger called the Principle of Objectivation. And here it is, in Schrödinger's own words:
By this [i.e., by the principle of objectivation] I mean the thing that is also frequently called the "hypothesis of the real world" around us. I maintain that it amounts to a certain simplification which we adopt in order to master the infinitely intricate problem of nature. Without being aware of it and without being rigorously systematic about it, we exclude the Subject of Cognizance from the domain of nature that we endeavor to understand. We step with our own person back into the part of an onlooker who does not belong to the world, which by this very procedure becomes an objective world.1
Since quantum mechanics, like the other branches of physics, obeys the principle of objectivation, it is set up to treat the subjects of its inquiry as lifeless objects. If they are, in fact, alive, their aliveness will not show up under scientific scrutiny, because the alive, or subjective, or experiential aspect was excluded from the inquiry right from the start.

Whitehead's "Process Philosophy"


The negative answer to the question, "Does quantum mechanics support the idea that the universe and its constituents are alive?" is not, however, the whole story. There is a sense in which the answer to this question is positive. To establish this sense we need to make a detour into Alfred North Whitehead's "process philosophy."

Whitehead developed his philosophical system at the same time that Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Co. discovered quantum mechanics. Significantly, Whitehead was unaware of this discovery.

It is, of course, out of the question to present Whitehead's philosophy is a few minutes. If you are interested, read his books (Science in the Modern World 2 is an accessible introduction, Process and Reality 3 is a much less accessible full statement). Here I wish to present just one of Whitehead's key ideas. According to Whitehead, the fundamental building blocks of the universe, the "atoms of reality," are not enduring objects, but "throbs of experience," which he also calls "actual entities."

Here are some of the characteristics of these "throbs of experience":

1. They are neither purely subjects, nor purely objects; they have both subjective and objective characteristics.

2. They endure only a short time; they flash in and out of existence in spacetime. The apparent existence of enduring objects is due to many collections of actual entities coming one after another in quick succession, like frames in a movie.

3. Each actual entity is a nexus of relationship with all the other actual entities.

4. An actual entity is a process of its own self creation.

5. This self-creation involves accommodating and integrating within itself (comprehending or "prehending" in Whitehead's terminology) all the previous actual entities as "settled facts" that cannot be changed, and all future actual entities as potentialities. This process of self-creation involves a sequence of phases, which are delineated and analyzed in detail in Process and Reality.

An example: Listening to an orchestra playing a symphony involves, at each moment, accommodating the sounds produced by the orchestra. This accommodation depends, in turn, on many collections of past actual entities, such as previous knowledge and training in music, associations with the symphony, etc. Notice that at each instant there is one experience.

6. The end product of the process is one new "throb of experience." The fundamental building blocks of the universe are, then elementary experiences. We do not live in "a universe of objects," but in "a universe of experience."

7. Subjectively, that is, for itself, an actual entity is a throb of experience. The end of the process of self-creation is called "the satisfaction of the actual entity." Its subjective existence is momentary. Objectively, that is, for other, future actual entities, it is a "settled fact": The fact that it did happen cannot be erased. As the Whitehead scholar V. Lowe put it, "The end of . . . [its] private life-its "perishing"-is the beginning of its public career." 4

The "Atoms of Reality" according to Quantum Mechanics


According to Heisenberg's mainstream interpretation of quantum mechanics, a quantum system, such as an electron, when isolated, does not exist as an actual "thing." It exists as a "field of potentialities." Potentialities for what? For having certain characteristics, such as certain values of position and/or velocity, if measured. Only a process of measurement, however, brings it into actual (as opposed to potential) existence. When measured, it appears in spacetime as an "elementary quantum event." Its actual existence as an "elementary quantum event" is of short duration. Once the measurement is over, it resorts once again to having only potential existence. According to quantum mechanics, these "elementary quantum events" are the "atoms of reality."

So, Does Quantum Mechanics Support the Idea That the Universe Is Alive?

Do "elementary quantum events" seem similar to Whitehead's "actual entities"? They do indeed. A detailed analysis of these two concepts reveals an amazing correspondence. 5 There is, however, this major difference: Actual entities are "throbs of experience," that is, units of life; elementary quantum events, however, are objective events, devoid of life.

But this is to be expected. As we said before, if there is an alive aspect to entities, there is no way for it to show up in the context of physics, because physics is subject to the principle of objectivation. In view of this fact, it is highly significant that the "atoms of reality" according to physics come as close as lifeless entities can come to Whitehead's "atoms of reality," which are elements of life. In this sense the answer to the question, "Does quantum mechanics support the idea that the universe is alive?" is "Yes."

Conclusion


Putting the "yes" and the "no" together, we can formulate the following response to our question: Since quantum mechanics is subject to the principle of objectivation, it treats its subject-matter as inanimate. However, the fact that its "atoms of reality" get as close as objective events can get to Whitehead's "throbs of experience" can be taken as a broad hint that once Western science finds a way to transcend the principle of objectivation, it will discover an alive universe.

Notes


1. Schrödinger, E. 1992. What Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches, Cambridge University Press, p. 118.

2. Whitehead, A. N. 1953. Science and the Modern World, The Free Press, New York.

3. Whitehead, A. N. 1978. Process and Reality, corrected edition, ed. D. R. Griffin and D. W. Sherburne, The Free Press, New York.

4. Lowe, V. 1951. Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead, in Classic American Philosophers, Ed. M. H. Fisch, Appelton-Century-Croft, New York, p. 404.

5. Burgers, J. M. (Reviews of Modern Physics,35:145, 1963) was the first to point out that Whitehead's "process philosophy" is uniquely suited to accommodate the ontological and epistemological implications of quantum mechanics. The relationship between Whitehead's philosophy and quantum mechanics was later investigated by A. Shimony (see his paper in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science,vol. 2, edited by S. Cohen and M. W. Wartofsky, Humanities Press, New York, 1968) H. Stapp (Foundations of Physics, 9:1 (1979) and 12:363 (1982) and others, including myself. See my paper in Foundations of Physics, 18:1035 (1988) for more references.