Re: [asa] Quantum quackery

Thanks George. I knew I had seen some negative press on that movie and I think that was it.

Brent

---- George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:

=============
A few comments on this.

In his Sci. Am. column Michael Shermer had a pretty devastating critique of the movie "What the #$*! Do We Know!?" when it came out - the January 2005 issue. It was showing at a theater across from the seminary while I was teaching my theology-science course then & my students asked my opinion of it. After seeing it I characterized it as a New Age infomercial. It does have a little real QM & neuroscience but a lot of gratuitous pop psych & speculation about consciousness & spirituality.

Whitehead, & process thought in general, do tend to have the idea of consciousness at all levels. It doesn't come from QM, however - unless some process theologians have tried to make connections with that later. To the extent that Whitehead has any connections with QM it would be with the old quantum theory - i.e., classical motion with jerky quantum jumps.

With all due respect to Penrose & Smolin, I'm dubious of any claims that consciousness can be derived from QM. However, a case can be made for the idea that the reduction of the wave packet (i.e., a definite result of a measurement) occurs when consciousness comes into the picture. (E.g., the cat lives or dies when a conscious observer opens the box & looks.) Note that that there consciousness is assumed in order to interpret QM (& not that it is derived from QM).

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brent Foster" <bdffoster@charter.net>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>; "Carol or John Burgeson" <burgytwo@juno.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 4:34 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] Quantum quackery

---- Carol or John Burgeson <burgytwo@juno.com> wrote:

=============
>>Anyway one of the regular posters is in the habit of infusing
discussions with New Age b.s. The latest is that, because of the
Copenhagen interpretation of QM, all matter is concious. I don't even
know where to start. After a little net research I figure she may have
picked up that belief from some popular books or movies. I am not getting
involved with the discussion; I would be fighting against a deeply
entrenched world view. But it has opend up a whole new fascinating realm
of intellectual garbage that I didn't know was out there. Anybody on the
list have any dealings with QM - Quantum Mysticism that is.>>

That sounds a bit like Whitehead's philosophy. He lectured and wrote
about 60 years ago and is still respected today -- had much to do with
process theology. It may well be wrong, but it is hardly "intellectual
garbage," although your correspondent may have skewed it pretty far.

The concept that all matter has a form of consciousness (obviously a
rock is VERY low level) is explored by Whitehead, among other things. I
found his writings fascinating, exceedingly difficult to understand.
Process theology (panentheism) sort of flows from it. Process theology
answers a lot of the "hard" questions, but not satisfying to me.

A decent introduction to these ideas is by David Ray Griffin. See my
review of his books at

www.burgy.50megs.com/griffin.htm

and

www.burgy.50megs.com/truth/htm

The first was a text we used in seminary in a religion/science course.

Burgy

Actually I think her ideas were influenced by the movie "What the #$*! Do We Know!?" as well as books like The 4 agreements by Miguel Ángel Ruiz who makes some obscure claim of ancient Toltec wisdom. I don't think she knows the first thing about real quantum theory. I doubt if she's heard of Whitehead, although there may be an indirect influence from his philosophy.

Moorad, I would ask her about that but I don't want to get involved with it. Specificly, she thinks there is consciousness in what she calls a tropospheric plasma orb, or Unified Field Plasmoids which you can read all about at:
http://orbstudy.com/BIZyCart.ASP?ACTION=Home&CLIENT=OrbStudy&ACCOUNT=6107

BTW I haven't studied this site in detail so I can't really make a fair judgement as to its legitimacy. But the old B.S. meter is pegged on this one!

Brent

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Received on Wed Sep 19 18:16:57 2007