(electronic music)
- About 400 years ago, a movement started
that is called modern science.
It was started by a
clergyman called Copernicus,
and helped by Galileo,
Newton, Kepler, Descartes,
all great luminaries
of this modern science.
This modern science gave us much
of what we enjoy today as technology.
It also gave us a huge
number of prejudices.
That is the flip side of this new science.
Quantum physics has been around
for more than a hundred years,
in one form or another,
although the mathematics,
the formal, what you call quantum physics,
was discovered in 1925, '26
by two great scientists,
Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger.
Now the ideas have been around since 1900,
when Max Planck used the word quantum
for the first time.
The word has a Latin origin.
It means quantity, but
the way Planck used it
was very specific.
Planck used it to denote
a discrete quantity
of energy, a bundle of energy.
Now this is already a break from one
of the huge prejudices
of Newtonian physics.
That prejudice is called continuity.
Continuity of all quantities in physics,
specifically continuity of energy.
Planck says energy is not continuous.
At the base level,
energy comes in bundles.
That he called a quantum.
Five years later, Einstein proposed,
and it was verified,
that indeed light comes
in such bundle of energy,
although, paradoxically,
light also behaves
like waves in some experiments.
So it became clear after Einstein's work
that not only prejudices open up
in terms of being
challenged, like continuity,
but that also paradoxes arise
from quantum physics.
In Newtonian physics,
there is never no such thing
as some object being particles
in some experiments and same objects
being waves in some other experiments.
It just doesn't happen
in Newtonian physics.
Waves are waves,
particles are particles, forever.
But in quantum physics,
it's like topsy turvy.
The same object, light,
can both be particles and waves,
and a few years later, Louis de Broglie,
in 1923, he suggested, theorized,
that maybe matter itself, all matter,
is like that, like light,
wave and particle both.
And that too was verified in 1926.
So no question that paradoxes arise
in the new physics.
Neils Bohr made a huge contribution
by clarifying the amount of discreteness
there is in the quantum world.
He proposed a theory of the atom
to which electrons not only move
in continuous ways, in orbits
around the atomic nucleus,
but when an electron jumps
from one orbit to another,
it actually does not go through,
according to Bohr, does not go through
the intervening space.
Nobody has ever seen any jump like this
or conceived any jump like this
in Newtonian physics.
Electrons going from one orbit to another
without going through
the intervening space.
Where does the electron go in between?
So this question began to haunt us,
real discontinuity, quantum leap,
as Bohr called it, and
then finally in 1925, '26,
as I mentioned already,
Heisenberg and Schrodinger,
in quick succession,
discovered the equations
of the new physics,
and quantum physics formally began.
Quantum physics suggested principles,
and those principles are verified.
As well they challenged
many of the prejudices
of classical physics.
So one by one, we'll talk about
first some of the prejudices
that were challenged,
and then we'll talk about
some of the paradoxes that arose,
one by one.
Prejudices, continuity.
This is a fundamental prejudice
of Newtonian physics.
It was challenged as I already have said
by Max Planck, with his concept
of a quantum, and then specifically
by Neils Bohr with the
idea of quantum leap.
And it hasn't quit quantum physics yet.
Discontinuity is part and parcel
of quantum physics.
A second great challenge came
to the principle of locality.
In Newtonian physics, it is assumed
that all signals
propagate through space and time.
And for any interaction, you need a signal
connecting the two objects
that are interacting.
Communication, interaction
require signals.
In quantum physics, Einstein,
Podolsky, and Rosen,
three great physicists,
in 1935 wrote a paper
that startled the entire world of physics.
In fact, one of the authors,
Einstein, had great
problems with accepting
his one calculation,
and the idea was that
if two objects interact,
they become correlated in such a way
that even when they move
away from each other,
and not interacting, even then
they would be able to communicate
instantly, without exchanging any signal.
There is no local signal required.
This is called quantum nonlocality.
So if this is verified,
that means that locality,
that very confident prejudice
of Newtonian physics has
to be given up as well.
And more, you ask the question
where is nonlocality located?
Where is this connection,
this connection that does
not require any signal?
Where is that located,
because according to
the theory of relativity
that Einstein coveted,
and this is why Einstein
had such a hard time
believing nonlocality,
according to Einstein's
theory of relativity,
any space-time connection has that limit,
speed of light.
You cannot have a communication
faster than the speed of light,
if you confine yourself to space and time.
So where is this connection taking place,
signal-less communication?
We have to say that it's taking place
outside of space and time.
This concept of outside of space and time
is introduced immediately,
as you accept the idea of nonlocality.
So it's not really, reality is not really
just one reality, space and time
and matter moving in space and time.
This idea that even today,
most scientists, even today believe it.
This is a prejudice that continues.
In fact, not only
continues among scientists.
The newspapers, media
just buy this concept
lock, stock, and barrel.
If you suggest there's something
that is outside of space and time,
it's called supernature.
Nature, to media and to most scientists,
means only one thing,
matter moving in space and time.
Quantum physics is
squarely contradicting this
with the idea of nonlocality.
And guess what?
In 1982, three physicists in France,
led by Alan Aspect, verified that indeed
there is nonlocality.
There is nonlocality, experimental.
It's not just theoretical fancy.
So in this way, the idea of discontinuity
and nonlocality were introduced,
in quantum physics pretty early on.
Their experimental
verification, of course,
had to wait, as I said.
The discontinuity was immediate,
but the verification of nonlocality
had to wait until 1982.
Perhaps that played a huge role
in how the history has turned out,
why Newtonian prejudices
are so adamantly held, even today.
That huge time gap that occurred
between 1935 and 1982
has not been very healthy
for science.
Let me go back to the
paradoxes that occur.
I've already mentioned
wave-particle paradox.
How could the same object
be wave and particle both?
When the equation of quantum physics
was discovered, it became clear
that the waves that we are talking about
are waves of possibility.
They are not really regular waves
as we see moving in space and time.
They are waves all right.
They have the character of propagation.
They have other characters of waves,
but they are waves of possibility
residing outside of space and time.
Again that concept that
nonlocality confirmed,
outside of space and time.
Heisenberg called this potentia.
So they are waves residing in potentia,
outside of space and time,
waves of possibility,
and then when you observe these waves,
of course we find objects
that we call particles.
So somehow the waves
collapse into particles.
And this is the meaning of the duality.
Duality means that there
are both simultaneously
waves, but waves reside in potentia,
outside of space and time.
When you observe,
the waves convert into particles,
collapse into particles.
But we are left with
a two-world dichotomy.
There is a world beyond space and time,
where possibilities reside,
and then when you observe,
that world gives us the manifest world.
The world of actuality is produced.
This two-level reality,
but it's not dualism,
because the world of possibility
is becoming the world of actuality.
How they have to be posited,
they have to be conceptualized,
Neils Bohr again rose to the occasion,
suggested that the word
complementarity be used.
This idea of complementarity
reminds of many people of
very ancient tradition,
for example in Chinese medicine,
in Chinese philosophy,
in Taoist philosophy,
there is the concept
that the whole is dao,
totality, wholeness,
but it always comes to us in the form
of yin and yang.
Yang is the transcendent,
that becomes yin, the imminent.
This is called complementarity.
Reality comes to us with the help
of complementary objects,
wave and particle, transcendent and human,
that is also another spiritual language,
and yin and yang.
There's the Chinese, Taoist language.
So a hope grew already.
This is 1920s and 1930s, that maybe
quantum physics had something to say about
integration of very ancient traditions,
spiritual traditions, mystical traditions,
with the tradition of physics,
tradition of science.
This too was a first,
but this is just barest of hint.
This paradox of, there was a paradox here
that still remains to be discussed,
not just the wave-particle paradox,
because waves, when observed,
gives us particles,
and crucial point here is observed.
So there are two things here.
What is making the waves
into the particles?
And how is our observation doing it?
And does our observation
make the crucial change,
crucial point?
Gives the cause?
These are questions that arose.
This question became very serious question
when one realizes, as von Neumann did,
the great mathematician John von Neumann,
that if you have submicroscopic objects,
like electron, proton, neutrons,
as possibility waves, and you make
macro matter out of
these possibility waves,
then the macro matter should also be
in principle, waves of possibility,
although approximately, they may behave
like Newtonian objects.
How they behave like Newtonian objects?
It's part of quantum mathematics.
People understood those
things very clearly.
But nevertheless, the
question can be asked,
that how does observation,
how does this collapse happen at all?
Because what we observe with,
be it a Geiger counter for electrons,
ultimately the human observer,
either way, what we are
observing with is also,
according to the Newtonian
principles of physics,
that now we call scientific materialism,
consists of matter, material objects only.
And here is then the catch.
If all material objects, micro and macro,
are waves of possibility,
then any measurement ultimately
is just possibility
looking at possibility.
Possibility interacting with possibility.
How can that ever give you
actual events of experience?
How can that collapse
the possibility objects
into actual objects?
How can that collapse that potentia,
what was possibility,
into what is actual in manifestation?
And what is the point of an observer?
In fact, observer, as I said,
like the Geiger counter,
if you believe completely
in scientific materialism,
them observer just,
itself, himself, herself,
made up of possibility waves,
and is a possibility wave,
and therefore possibility
coupled to possibility.
It cannot do anything but produce
bigger and bigger possibilities.
So where is this collapse?
The paradox thickened when von Neumann
proved a mathematical theorem
that material interactions can never
change waves of
possibility into actuality.
Material interactions can change
only possibility waves
into other possibility waves.
This then became a big,
big, big, big paradox
called the quantum measurement paradox.
Some people call it observer effect,
because it is a fact
that in the presence of observer,
collapse happens anyway.
Nobody has observed anything
that can be called possibility.
We always see only actuality.
A concrete event in consciousness.
Observer effect, quantum
measurement paradox.
These are paramount
paradoxes of quantum physics.
How do you reconcile these paradoxes?
Because paradox suggests only one thing.
Paradox suggests that there is something
grossly illogical about the current way
of thinking about science,
thinking about space and time,
thinking about matter,
thinking about the
constituents of reality.
Something fundamentally wrong,
so on one hand, quantum
physics is breaking down
the paradoxes of the principles
that classical physics,
Newtonian physics is suggesting.
On the other hand, quantum physics
is also pointing out
grave logical paradoxes
that are very difficult to reconcile also
with Newtonian physics,
and this has been going on
for almost a hundred years, as I said.
We have to really
understand why the worldview
has not changed in such a long time.
I could go into other details.
For example, pretty early on,
the way Heisenberg discovered his equation
suggested to him
another very important principle,
which is called uncertainty principle.
This principle says that
you can never determine
the trajectory of an object.
If you cannot determine the trajectory
of an object accurately,
you can only calculate
approximate trajectory,
that means one and only one thing.
You can never have
a completely deterministic world,
as Newton suggested.
The whole point of classical physics,
the reason that classical physics
has been such a, in many ways,
such a challenge to people who think
in terms of free will,
is this principle of determinism,
that Newtonian physics
suggested so strongly.
This is why the Romantic poets
were so much against Newton.
This is why William Blake
wrote that famous line.
"Single vision and Newton's sleep."
Quantum physics says we are not stuck
with Newton's sleep anymore.
Time to wake up.
Time to wake up from that sleep
where we thought everything
is deterministic.
It's non-deterministic.
We might very well have free will.
We might very well have freedom.
Freedom can be talked about once again.
Tremendous, and as I have said,
von Neumann theorem already challenges
the dogma of materialism,
that everything is matter,
because if everything is matter,
everything would always
be only possibilities.
Possibilities could never
become actual events.
So in this way,
all the very fundamental principles
of Newtonian physics has been challenged.
Then the question is only
what does all this imply?
What does all this mean?
Is there any way of getting
out of the paradoxes,
any consistent way
of getting out of the paradoxes?
This is what we have been struggling with,
and for the last two decades,
solutions have been proposed,
suggestions are there.
People still struggle, of course.
There are three kinds of struggle here.
One kind of struggle is to hold on
to older beliefs,
older than even Newtonian physics.
This is called dualism.
People who could never reconcile
the Newtonian principle of determinism,
they hold on to the old idea
that there is also God.
There is God's will,
and that God's will compete with
the determinism of material objects.
So that view, dualism.
There is the dual world of God
and then the world of matter.
The world of matter belongs to science,
but the world of God belongs to theology.
This is the compromise that we had used
for almost 400 years,
until very recently, in the 1950s,
materialists gained grounds,
and more and more of
the scientists at least
got converted into scientific materialism.
Dualism and scientific materialism
both are prejudices, both are dogmas.
Dualism is a dogma why?
Because scientists point out
that if there is a God outside of matter,
if there is a non-material God,
then this God could not
interact with matter,
because anything that
interacts with matter
requires to exchange a signal.
Signals have energy.
But energy of the material world itself
is always a constant.
Energy never goes out
from the material world
into some other world that
we can call God world.
Or heaven.
It just doesn't do that.
So if you think dualistically,
you have to defy science.
You cannot do it within science.
But scientific materialism,
the idea that everything is matter,
also squarely contradicts
the principles of quantum physics itself,
which we discovered,
which is the physics of today.
Quantum physics has been verified
to such an extent that there is no way
that we can ever imagine
that there would be some other physics
which will restore determinism,
restore Newtonian physics,
restore locality, restore continuity,
any of these things.
So what do we do with two dogmas
which need to be integrated badly?
Because both dogmas are
obviously incomplete.
Dualism doesn't work,
although quantum physics
strongly is saying
that yes, there are two worlds,
but they are not dualistic.
They are not dual worlds.
Quantum physics is saying that, though.
There are two worlds.
If we compare with our own experiences
it's very easy to see
that there are two worlds.
Everybody goes to sleep,
but we wake up again.
Isn't that like a dual world?
Where do we go when we are asleep?
Psychologists have a name for this world.
They call the world unconscious.
We go to the unconscious.
We become unconscious.
But are we still on, in the unconscious?
Of course we are on.
Otherwise how do we make it come back?
We wake up again.
So this unconscious-conscious.
In spiritual traditions, the concept
is transcendent-imminent.
Already have mentioned that.
This continues, but it is obvious
that they are not a dualism,
because dualism would not be scientific.
Quantum physics is saying explicitly
that no, it's not dualism.
Why?
Because of this concept of nonlocality.
Nonlocality connects it.
How do the two objects interact?
They interact through no energy exchange.
They interact by the
very interconnectivity
of the nonlocal world.
That nonlocal world is one and only one.
Obviously our ability to know
has something to do with all this.
Our ability to know has something
to do with all this.
Because as Heisenberg said,
the change of possibility into actuality
is ultimately a change in the knowledge
of the observer of what is taking place.
What does that mean?
What is knowledge?
How do we gain knowledge?
We have one facility,
and only one facility
which enables us knowledge,
and that facility
we call consciousness, consciousness.
It came from the Latin words
scire and com, which is with.
Scire is to know.
Consciousness, a facility that we have
with which we know with, to know with.
And it is consciousness
that must be fundamentally connected.
It has interconnectivity
that we automatically
get to think in terms of quantum physics
is nothing but our consciousness.
In this way, consciousness enters physics,
and consciousness becomes
the big, big, big new word, new concept,
well new, old concept.
That becomes the basis
of solving all the paradoxes,
understanding all the anomalous data,
understanding the new principles
of discontinuity and nonlocality.
In other words, understanding a new world
for which a new worldview,
and it turns out this also in the concept
which integrates these two dogmas.
Is the world material?
Yes and no.
Is the world two worlds?
Yes and no.
Yes because yes there is
an appearance of that,
but no because it is
more subtle than that.
So we now have such an
integrative science,
based on the primacy of consciousness.
We have a solution to this dichotomy,
and this course is about
how these solutions arise.
Is there any alternative solutions?
This is the kind of
thing that we'll discuss
in the next four lectures.
