Quantum Mechanics and Psi (Part I)

Recently I happened across this Washington Post column reviewing two books that examined the intersecting domains of quantum mechanics and philosophy.  The books, “The Quantum Moment” and “The Island of Knowledge,” were reviewed by James Trefil, a professor of physics at George Mason University.  Quantum mechanics is a fascinating, perhaps even mind bending, subject, so it never hurts to find insightful, articulate books on it.  And in my opinion it’s also a plus if they spare us the abstract, technical jargon.

According to Trefil, both of these books succeed doing this pretty well.  Trefil describes how each book begins with a “lengthy introduction to the development of science, starting with the Greeks and running through to the quantum weirdness of modern times.”  “The Quantum Moment,” by Robert P. Crease and Alfred Scharff Goldhaber, is primarily about how scientists and philosophers have dealt with the strangeness of the quantum world and how this strangeness has seeped into modern culture.  “The Island of Knowledge” uses quantum mechanics to explore the problem of limitations of knowledge in a general way.  He also goes beyond quantum mechanics into compelling discussions of cosmology and multiple universes.

In the last paragraph of his column, however, Trefil takes an unhappy and unnecessary turn.  There, he expresses his relief that these authors avoided any “fruitloopery” in their discussions of quantum mechanics.  That is, they avoided “the unfortunate tendency to enlist the mysterious nature of quantum mechanics to try to explain New Age hypothesis such as extrasensory perception or reincarnation.”

First, this lumping together of ESP, of which a considerable amount of refereed, published laboratory research exists, with reincarnation (or whatever 'New Age' buzzword pops into his head) is rather lazy.  Unfortunately, this rather casual dismissal of ESP or any possibility that consciousness plays a role in the mysterious nature of quantum physics is common, especially in discussions found in popular media like mainstream newspapers or science magazines.  I’ll give a few reasons why this sort of off the cuff dismissal, devoid of any real argument whatsoever, is unwarranted.

First, as Trefil and the authors of the books he reviews make clear, quantum mechanics, despite its successes, remains mysterious.  Despite a century of work by the best of minds, there is no consensus interpretation.  The best known explanation is known as the Copenhagen interpretation, which seems to suggest the world is in a state of probability flux until a measurement is made.  That is, as Schrodinger argued, the theory implies that a suitably positioned cat can be simultaneously in a half live –half dead state.  The next popular alternative is the Many Worlds explanation  (which Trefil appears to find compelling) that argues that the universe is continually branching into multiple parallel universes.  There are others that try to manage a more objective collapse (that is, without requiring measurement) of the waveform.  Given that we still have fallen short despite these rather astonishing attempts, one might expect more open-mindedness. 

Perhaps more key – consciousness itself remains if anything even more mysterious. Currently, there is nothing in the equations throughout classical physics that even remotely suggests how vast agglomerations of non-conscious particles (quarks, strings, whatever) become conscious.  The only thing in physics so far that even hints at some link between consciousness and matter are those interpretations that suggest consciousness is somehow involved in the collapse of the quantum waveform.  Given the complete dearth explanations that have some hope of grounding consciousness in the laws of physics as we understand them, how can such possibilities by dismissed with a wave of the hand in the name of sober, rigorous science?

Then there’s the fact that abundant evidence implies ESP does exist, as well as other forms of psi, such as telekinesis (see the above link).  This evidence strongly suggests that consciousness cannot be reduced down to something that emerges from matter.  And the possibility that consciousness in some sense can affect the probabilities underlying the quantum waveform should be seriously explored, not dismissed out of hand.  The evidence on this in the form of telekinesis and other psi phenomenon is considerably more substantial than, say, a process of bifurcating universes.  (The maxim “extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence” would be bad news indeed for the Many Worlds hypothesis if it were applied there with the same degree as it is with psi.)

It’s a rather fascinating spectacle to watch figures representing the voice of seriousness and scientific rigor wave away items that actually have evidence (such as ESP) while they wax on with admiration for (perhaps even more radical) theories that don’t.

This isn't to say that resolving the puzzles of quantum mechanics will necessarily involve psi.  But at this stage we're in a weak position to not even consider the possibility.  I believe that the link between consciousness and quantum mechanics should be explored more deeply, and the psi data gives us a lot of interesting evidence to do that.  In another column soon, I’ll get more into this.