THE QUANTUM WORLD
THERE IS a new concept of the world emerging in the contemporary sciences, above all in the quantum disciplines. This concept is more aligned with classical wisdom teachings than with the currently dominant mechanistic-materialist view, and it is not alien to experiences of spontaneous connection with the world. This is important: it could change our thinking about who we are, and what the world is.
We need to give due consideration to the idea that we are deeply and spontaneousy connected to each other and to the world. We should have a good look at what the quantum sciences are telling us about the world, and our connection to the world.
On first sight, what the quantum sciences are telling us seems fabulous, and even fantastic. But it is not fantasy. It can be best apprehended by considering how the quantum concept of the world differs from the concept we have been accepting as the correct description of the world. The difference is fundamental. According to the quantum view, the world is not an arena for the motion of solid, indivisible particles in passive space and indifferently flowing time. This is not a world of separate and separable parts, where things occupy single positions in space and time. The world is not a mechanical, materialistic structure: it is a hologram. As we know, in a hologram all the information that constitutes the image is present at all points. That which is here is also there; what is here today was also here yesterday. All the information that codes the system is present in each of its parts. If the universe is a hologram, that means that the information that makes the universe what it is is present in every particle and every atom. It is present in you and in me. The universe is an all-encompassing quantum hologram.
What constitutes the reality of this hologram? It is not what we thought it was: it is not “matter.” Physicists have not found anything in space and time that would correspond to the concept of matter. There is nothing in four-dimensional space-time that would satisfy the time-honored idea of matter. What research on the physical universe discloses is information and energy. The entities of the real world are configurations and clusters of informed energy.
The world “runs” on information, in the active form quantum physicist David Bohm called “in-formation.” In-formation accounts for the coherent, nonrandom behavior of the particles that make up the basic entities of space and time. It accounts for the myriad ensembles of atoms and molecules that constitute the observable furnishings of the universe. The world is an in-formed quantum system.
With the quantum concept of reality, many of the problems that have plagued our understanding of the nature of the world are overcome. It is no longer a question of whether the world is material or spiritual. Which was first: matter particles or consciousness? There is only one reality, and that reality is both material and mental. The world is an in-formed quantum system constituted of clusters of in-formed energy. The clusters and configurations are coherent—coherent enough so we could define and classify their characteristics. In the most basic and general sense, the in-formed energies that make up the observable world are in-phase patterns of vibration: relatively stable and enduring standing and propagating waves.
The system of standing and propagating waves that constitutes the manifest universe brings to us the perception of real-world entities as solid “things” against a more diffuse background. We interpret these things as material entities. But this, as Einstein pointed out, is an illusion. Max Planck said it clearly: in the final count, there is no such thing as matter in the universe.
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The Reality of Mind. If there is no such thing as matter in the world, what about mind? Is mind a real phenomenon? The question makes sense, because the quantum hologram we call the universe displays aspects that suggest the presence of mind.
More than a hundred years ago, cosmologist James Jeans remarked that the universe resembles a great thought more than it does a great mechanism. It appears that the physical aspect of the universe is not its only aspect. This is not a puzzle. We know that the universe is largely intangible, constituted not of material things, but of matter-like clusters of energy and information. The clusters of in-formed energy that constitute the universe are not random: they display remarkable coherence. This is not explained by the received theory that the things that emerge in the universe are the result of random interactions. The nonrandom interactions that produce matter-like phenomena also produce mind-like phenomena. The quantum universe has a mind-like aspect.
The universe is neither material nor psychical; it only displays matter-like and mind-like aspects. Its matter-like aspects appear when viewed by a hypothetical external observer; and its mind-like aspects come to the fore when it is viewed “from the inside,” by an observer that is part of it. In one perspective the universe is a system of in-formed energy, and in another it is a cosmic mind.
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THE Universe and OUR Universe. Is the universe we observe and inhabit the entirety of observable and knowable reality? Is it the whole world? The answer is that it is not. This is a surprising and seemingly unfounded answer. For the mainstream of modern science, the idea that there is reality beyond the universe is an unacceptable proposition. For the past several hundred years, it was believed that everything that exists is part of the universe. Now it appears that there is more to the world than the universe. The observed universe is only our universe. There are millions and billions of other universes.
The current understanding is that the world did not come into being when our universe did: there was a pre-space in the world before this universe was born. The universe we inhabit was born in the cosmic explosion known as the big bang 13.8 billion years ago, and it will vanish when the processes that make up its matter-like elements have run their course. Stars and galaxies will either become part of an eternally expanding “dead” universe, remain balanced on the razor’s edge between expansion and contraction, or become part of a universe that collapsed to quantum dimensions.
Regardless of the ultimate destiny of our universe, it is clear that it is not all of the world. It emerged in the embrace of a wider, deeper reality. The Greeks called the deeper, perhaps eternal sphere Kosmos. Our universe appears to be a local space-time domain of the Kosmos.
Our universe is a remarkably coherent domain. This calls for explanation, and now we have an explanation. The explanation is that our universe is “in-formed” by the wider and deeper dimension: the Kosmos.
That the Kosmos would be an “in-forming” domain beyond space and time is a long-standing insight; it is present in Plato’s philosophy. According to Plato, the world of forms and ideas is the higher (or deeper) reality, the reality of the Kosmos; the physical/material furnishings of the world are but its reflections.
The quantum theory of David Bohm lends fresh relevance to this ancient insight. In Bohm’s concept the ultimate reality is the “implicate” (enfolded) order; the perceived world, the “explicate” (unfolded) order, is its manifestation. The implicate order, recalling the Greek concept of Kosmos, “in-forms” (shapes and structures) the explicate order.
The “in-formation” of the explicate order, the perceivable universe, creates the clusters and configurations of standing and propagating waves that we observe and ourselves exemplify. We human beings, the same as all things in space and time, are entities created by the in-formation of the manifest explicate order by the nonmanifest but fundamentally real implicate order. This suggests an answer to the perennial question: in the final count, who are we? We are in-formed configurations of waveform vibration in the universe, a domain of coherence in the Kosmos.
THE COHERENCE OF THE EXPLICATE ORDER
LET US now descend from the august heights of metaphysics (the speculative physics of ultimate reality) to the more concrete domain of observation-based physics. The new physics exemplifies and explains the basic tenets of a perennial metaphysics. According to the current formulation of the latter, the universe is a domain of coherence in the Kosmos. There is ample evidence for this claim in the ever more precise and wide-ranging investigations of contemporary physics.
Already in the middle of the twentieth century, physicists Arthur Eddington and Paul Dirac observed curious coincidences among the physical constants of the universe. The ratio of the electric force to the gravitational force, which is approximately 1040, is matched by the ratio of the size of the universe to the dimension of elementary particles—also approximately 1040. It is not evident how these ratios could have been produced, and then maintained, by random processes. The ratio of the electric force to the gravitational force should be unchanging (as these forces are constant), whereas the ratio of the size of the universe to the size of elementary particles should be changing (since the universe is expanding). In his “large numbers hypothesis,” Dirac speculated that the agreement between these ratios, one variable and the other not, is more than coincidence. Either the universe is not expanding or the force of gravitation varies with its expansion.
Contemporary cosmology unearthed an entire array of similarly mind-boggling “coincidences.” The mass of elementary particles, the number of particles, and the forces between them display harmonic ratios. Many of the ratios among basic parameters can be interpreted on the one hand in reference to the relationship between the mass of elementary particles and the number of nucleons (particles of the atomic nucleus) in the universe, and on the other in reference to the relationship between the gravitational constant (the factor of gravitation in the evolution of the universe), the charge of the electron, Planck’s constant (a unit of measurement used to calculate the smallest measurable time interval and physical distance), and the speed of light.
The coherence of the basic parameters of the universe is necessary for the evolution of stars and galaxies, living organisms, and entire biospheres in space and time. Complex systems can only arise in a universe of which the physical constants are precisely and enduringly correlated. Variation of the order of one-billionth of the value of some of these constants (such as the mass of elementary particles, the speed of light, the rate of the expansion of galaxies, and two dozen others) would have resulted in a sterile, lifeless universe. Even a minute variation would prevent the creation of stable atoms and stable relations among them, and would thus have precluded the evolution of systems that manifest the phenomena of life.
The evolution of complex systems is not merely a happy coincidence of elements and conditions in particular regions of the universe: the complex systems we call living are found in more and more places, under more and more diverse conditions. The universe is a universal template for the evolution of systems that range from atoms and molecules to cells and organisms, and societies and ecologies of organisms. It is astronomically improbable that these systems would have come about through a random mixing of their components: they are staggeringly coherent. The statistical analysis of even relatively simple systems reveals that to produce them by a random mixing of their elements would have taken longer than the age of the universe. To use a simile suggested by mathematical physicist Fred Hoyle, the probability that a complex system such as a living organism would come about by a random mixing of its components is similar to the probability that a hurricane blowing through a scrapyard would produce a working airplane.
When it comes to living systems, the probability that they would have been produced by random processes is further diminished. The complexity of the DNA-mRNA-tRNA-rRNA transcription and translation system nearly precludes that such systems would have been produced by random processes. We know, of course, that in an extended process almost anything that could happen will happen, but the time required for the evolution of biological systems by random interactions exceeds all reasonable expectations. Thirteen point eight billion years for the evolution of particles and atoms and other physical entities, and four billion years for the appearance of living systems on this planet are not sufficient to account for either the presence of stars and galaxies, or the web of life on this planet. Yet these entities and networks were produced by natural processes.
If random processes are not sufficient to produce the phenomena we observe, we need to ask, what has produced these phenomena? The idea that evolution is not governed by random interactions raises the specter of teleology—of evolution directed by an extraneous will or motivation. This notion suggests the divinity tenets of classical theology and is unacceptable to mainstream science. According to the accepted concept, evolution is fully accounted for as an undirected succession of states. in which each state, or combination of states, produces the conditions for the next. The succession of states is governed only by chance. The order and complexity that arise in the course of evolution are a consequence of a felicitous march of the universe from one state to the next. Even highly complex and coherent systems are the products of the fortuitous play of ungoverned interactions.
This theory, though still maintained in the mainstream of contemporary physics, does not explain the facts; it is not likely to be correct. We need to contemplate the possibility that the evolution of complex and coherent systems is not fortuitous. Of course, we need not apply to outside agencies and a higher will to explain this proposition. The explanation lies in the nature of the “in-formation” of the universe. This in-formation is such that interactions tend to produce “systems”—coherent ensembles of elements—rather than random heaps and aggregates.
Evolution is directed and not blind, but it is not directed by an extraneous will or power, but by the in-formation of the universe. The explicate order, the observable universe, is in-formed in a way that favors the evolution of complex and coherent systems. It is not by chance, but by a universal law-like process that the complex and coherent systems we observe, and ourselves exemplify, have come into existence in our universe.
Copyright © 2020 by Ervin Laszlo
Foreword copyright © 2020 by Deepak Chopra
