The End of Quantum Reality

Above the entrance to the Platonic Academy of Athens, we are told,

...was an inscription, which read:

..."that no one ignorant of Geometry enter here."

The plain of this ancient Geometry was conceived of as a void,

...as something which had the potential to receive existence,

...only by the act of generation.

It begins, then, with the signal point.

Only two instruments exist for the constructions of the Euclidian Geometry:

The first is the straight edge.

...which allows the line to come into existence.

The second is the compass,

...which brings the circle into existence:

...by the act of rotation,

...enjoins the source to the perimeter.

We will refer to this simple construction as the "cosmic icon".

This icon represents the cosmos,

...as proceeding from God, as the source and center of creation.

Expanding across an intermediate domain to the corporeal world in which we live our lives.

Beyond that, lies the chaos of outer darkness.

Where then that the particles and fields of Physics enter the picture?

Where do these entities fit into the cosmic icon?

And how in the end to we get from these particles and fields,

...to the world...

...in which we live,

...and move,

and have our being?

"The builds keep on building...

...the tearers down keep tearing down...

Killers keep on killing...

...and the dead keep coming around...

In the world of Albert Einstein,

...there is no solid ground... to build on.

But the builders keep on building...

...looking down, down down down...

One way up!

One way up!

I want to tell you...

...how I met Wolfgang Smith.

...and how he's changed my life.

I hold him in very high esteem...

And if I can bound your opinion,

...I think he's a man who combines the knowledge of modern science to this level.

As well as a traditional Physics,

...and such duality and after that, specific Catholic theology...

...and early Catholic Philosophy,

...is very rare. Probably there's no one more like him.

When they say this, sometimes I hear this,

"No, maybe science has its limitations."

They don't know what they're talking about, because Science is limitation.

Without limitations, there's no Science.

And they say: "Ah, you think this is a table, but in fact this is a... bunch of particles."

Anywhere, we can invert this.

"See, this bunch of particles...

...you think it's a bunch of particles, but in fact it's a table."

It's not just in Physics, it's in everything. Everything is conspiring to what the Physicist would call it singularity.

When things just break down and they can't go on the way they have been going on.

We all knew it was coming.

Every pillar was whupping at once.

Political,

...financial,

...religious,

...military.

And of course...

...scientific.

We are approaching...

...a very singular moment in History. That doesn't happen often.

Looking back,

It is as if we were hypnotized.

And we were.

No one understands quantum theory.

In 1985, in a book entitled "Quantum Reality",

The Physicist of the name Nick Herbert reviewed a startling fact...

"One of the best kept secrets of science is that physicists have lost grip on reality." Nick Herbert

On denouncing to the general public that has been for the past century an ongoing quest...

...among top ranking physicists...

...to determine what precisely the findings of quantum theory entail regarding the nature of the physical universe.

A multitude of competing theories have been advanced,

...which strikes the uninitiated as ranging from the more or less weird...

...to the patently absurd.

The classic notion that the universe is made of atomic particles...

...which calls back all the way to Democritus...

Has proved to be untenable.

Which is to say,

Physicists really have lost their grip in reality.

"The Quantum Reality Problem"

The great arc of human history of the past four centuries...

...has been characterized by a stupendous project:

...to reduce the world to quantity.

Quantum Physics or foundational science will reduce the world to quantum particles.

Evolutionary Biology will reduce living organisms to aggregates or such particles,

...resulting from random, stochastic and deterministic processes.

Post-post-Einsteinian cosmology...

...would reduce the cosmos itself to...

...random fluctuations...

...in the quantum vacuum.

The reign of quantity is reaching its full measure.

Which turns out also to be its "reductio ad absurdum".

It's time to take stock of what's been following us.

Time to break the spell.

Wolfgang Smith was born in 1930, in Vienna.

Graduating from Cornell University with majors in Physics, Mathematics and Philosophy,

...at age 18,

...he obtained his Masters degree in Theoretical Physics at Purdue University,

...before moving on to help lay the foundations...

...for the reentry prom,

...during his work as an aerodynamicist,

...at Bell Aircraft Corporation.

After obtaining his PhD in Mathematics,

...from Columbia University,

...Smith held faculty positions at MIT, UCLA,

...and Oregon State University.

He's well-known in traditional circles through his books...

...including "Cosmos and Transcendence",

..."Teilhardism and the New Religion",

...and "The Quantum Enigma".

His unique background as Mathematician,

...Physicist and Philosopher,

...and, crucially, he's outside of status, without bond to any establishment of our time,

...provide the vantage point from which Wolfgang Smith...

...is able to identify...

...what turns out to be the Achilles' heel...

...of the present scientistic worldview.

Mathematical Physics received its first definitive formulation...

...in 1687,

...with the publication of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia .

And from the outset,

...it was tacitly assumed...

...that material objects...

...were made of minute undecomposable entities thorough atoms.

It was moreover understood...

...that these were too small by far,

...to be detected by means then at the disposal of experimentalists,

...yet the expectation was right,

...that in time the discovery would be made.

In 1897,

...the anticipated breakthrough was in fact achieved by Physicist J. J. Thomson.

In his discovery of the electron,

...the catch, however,

...is that it turns out not to be a Newtonian atom.

That is to say, an authentic particle,

...but a so-called quantum particle.

Which is in truth,

...not a particle at all.

One source of so-called "quantum paradox",

...was a so-called "superposition principle",

The fact namely...

...that states of a physical system...

...could be added...

...which means for example...

...that the single particle could in essence multi-locates.

...could be in any number of regions at once.

Inasmuch as observed that the actual particle obviously...

...does not multi-locate.

A radical discrepancy between the observed and unobserved physically universe came into view.

The senior quantum theorist, Niels Bohr,

...responded to the impasse by affirming, soberly,

..."there is no quantum reality",

..."there is only a quantum description."

What, however, rendered this position most unsatisfying...

...is the fact that it had by now become clear...

...that there is no classical reality as well.

The timeworn notion of atoms...

...as undecomposable bits of matter,

...had by now proved to be chimerical.

What then is the quantum enigma?

It resides in the fact that there are no actual particles in the quantum world.

That actual particles come into existence...

...abruptly...

...in the act of observation or measurement.

So,

...what is there before measurement?

Not a thing.

"The concept of substance has disappeared from fundamental physics."

It thus became a pattern that the act of observation or measurement...

...is a profound and inherently unpredictable impact...

...upon the physical system itself.

An undeniable fact...

...which physicists could not explain...

...and which moreover gave rise...

...to unending speculations...

...on the part of the philosophically interested minority...

...which however includes some of the most illustrious names...

...beginning with the famous Bohr-Einstein debates...

...in 1927.

It's hardly surprising that some quantum theorists proposed that ordinary logic does not apply in the quantum domain.

What is needed, they say, is a "quantum logic".

Another strategy to read the world of quantum paradox...

...proposed by a cadre of intrepid theorists...

...is to stipulate that every measurement...

...of quantum particles...

...splits a universe into as many copies of itself...

...as there are possible outcomes.

A notion that marks the birth...

...of the so-called "multiverse theory".

Ah, there is that word again.

Multiverse.

While it is true that the means by which the multiverse of the cosmologists generated...

...is entirely different than the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics...

...first proposed by Hugh Everett,

...often associated with his thesis supervisor John Wheeler,