Physics May Stonewall, But Reality Doesn't

By Deepak Chopra, MD, Menas Kafatos, PhD, Bernardo Kastrup, PhD

In a recent blog posting, physicist Lawrence Krauss defended the notion that the physical universe is objectively real. To think otherwise, he says, is nonsensical. "Deepak Chopra, for example, keeps implying that quantum mechanics means that objective reality doesn't exist apart from conscious experience."

Krauss seems to suggest that the notion of a mental universe is naively entertained only by non-physicists. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Over the past couple of decades, experimental evidence in favor of a mental universe has been mounting, as argued by Prof. Richard Conn Henry in none other than Nature magazine (Vol. 436, 7 July 2005, p. 29), in an essay suitably titled "The Mental Universe." After a particularly significant experiment published in 2007, Physics World went as far as to say that "quantum physics says goodbye to reality;" that is, to an objective reality outside mind. Krauss, as a physicist, should presumably be aware of these seminal developments in his own field. Yet he curiously chose to use his authority to paint a very different scenario: "The truth ... is that consciousness is irrelevant to the act of measurement," he says confidently.

This is an old story, of trying to stonewall on behalf of a current belief system that allegedly is so obviously true, only an ignoramus or naïve thinker would disagree. The flat Earth was such an idea long ago. Krauss' version of the flat Earth comes down to solid objects that exist "out there" beyond the tip of our noses. He labels as "nonsensical" the contrary idea, that reality is possibly entirely mental.

The problem with the flat Earth was that empirical science came along to contradict what the eyes see. Much the same is true with Krauss, who is joined by the vast majority of scientists that consider themselves physicalists, a solidly entrenched camp that believes in "matter first." For them, there was the Big Bang, which gave rise to all the matter and energy in the cosmos, and billions of years later, the human mind evolved as an astonishingly complex product of the brain, which itself is a product of the most intricate molecule in creation, DNA.

The average person would be baffled that anyone could possibly disagree. But far from being nonsense, there is a second camp of thinkers, which includes some of the greatest quantum physicists, whose belief lies in "mind first." This camp isn't united behind one credo, however. Some hold that the universe is conscious, others that the human mind shapes what we perceive "out there." But the common thread is that we live in a participatory universe--without our participation, physical reality is a featureless unknown.

The term "participatory universe" was coined by John Archibald Wheeler, a major figure in modern physics. An entire scheme of quantum mechanics that insists on reality having a psychological or mental component was proposed by John von Neumann, a towering thinker in mathematical physics. But we can also go back to the origins story of the quantum era. Here is Werner Heisenberg, of the famous Uncertainty Principle, giving his thumbs down to the "matter first" camp decades ago: "The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts."

Instead of accusing Krauss of ignoring the very tradition that gave him his job, we recognize that when physics--or one major branch that happens to be popular, but does not jibe with what modern quantum physics itself has discovered--starts to stonewall, a real difficulty lies in the background.

In this case, there are a host of difficulties. Some plague the whole field of modern physics, such as trying to build a bridge from the quantum domain, which is very well understood, to the classical domain, which is also very well understood. The problem is that the two domains don't fit together, which is quite baffling. The quantum domain obeys very peculiar laws--Krauss' posting deals with entanglement, which is a feature of quantum mechanics that Einstein labeled "spooky action at a distance." When two elementary particles are entangled, they can respond to each other instantaneously, even if they are located billions of light years apart, thus defying the notion that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

In the classical world--meaning everyday reality--physical objects aren't spooky; they are dis-entangled. Cause and effect is straightforward. Heisenberg's notion that atoms and electrons have no innate properties doesn't hold. So how can a bicycle tootle around the streets perfectly normally while the subatomic particles it is made of have such a shadowy existence, defying not just normal cause and effect but mysteriously emerging from a void (known as the quantum vacuum)?

That question raises a set of difficulties peculiar to physicalists, and it's these intractable knots that Krauss and his camp vigorously try to stonewall. They insist that everything must come out of physical properties, and yet physical properties completely fail to explain the single most overwhelming and undeniable fact of reality: conscious experience itself. As if this weren't enough, consider these facts: the quantum vacuum has none of the attributes one would normally associate with physicality. The instant before the Big Bang has no physicality. Scads of subatomic particles visit the physical world for only a few tiny fraction of a nanosecond before disappearing again.

Even without the disturbing discovery of dark matter and energy--which supposedly make up a staggering 96% of the universe--the familiar cosmos of stars and galaxies has always been dark. The stars that spangle the heavens emit photons of light, which are entirely invisible. Only after these photons enter human experience--traveling from the retina to the visual cortex via the optic nerve--does light become bright. Before this processing takes place, there is no brightness, period. Nor is their color, sound, taste, texture, or smell, for the same reason. Physicalists try to shrug off these undeniable facts by retreating to the physical nature of the brain, yet the brain has no pictures in it--in fact, no light at all--being totally dark inside. In the same way the brain doesn't contain a rainbow of colors or a world of sounds--it is a totally silent place without colors. So no matter how hard physicalists may stonewall, the brain offers no support for their position. Like the physical world "out there," the brain, being just another physical object, also can't exist outside conscious experience.

While the physicalists stonewall, and gather popular opinion on their side, a growing cadre of physicists, including Nobel laureates like Brian Josephson and neuroscientist Sir John Eccles, grappled with the profound issue of mind and matter without prejudice. It may be true that neither the "mind first" camp nor the "matter first" camp have grasped what reality is actually trying to tell us. Instead of saying that molecules somehow learned to think, which is the basic claim physicalists make in order to explain the mind--a claim with zero basis in fact--it may be that matter exists because mind exists. By the same token, the "mind first" camp, which explains physical objects by saying that they are created by the mind--a position with surprisingly strong evidence behind it--it may be necessary to redefine the mind so that creation can simultaneously be conscious and physical.

In the next post we'll discuss these issues in more detail. But our aim isn't to get into the weeds, where non-scientists quickly lose the trail and their enthusiasm at the same time. "What is real?" isn't a question that only scientists should be asking. It's a universal question, and settling the question of the participatory universe makes a huge difference in what it means to be human.

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 80 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. Super Genes co-authored with Rudi Tanzi, PhD will be available on November 10, 2015 www.deepakchopra.com

Bernardo Kastrup has a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering and has worked as a scientist in some of the world's foremost research laboratories, including the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the "Casimir Effect" of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). He has authored many scientific papers and four philosophy books: Rationalist Spirituality, Dreamed up Reality, Meaning in Absurdity, and Why Materialism Is Baloney. This latter book is a grand synthesis of his metaphysical views. Bernardo has also been an entrepreneur and founder of two high-tech businesses. Today, he holds a managerial position in the high-tech industry. In parallel, he maintains a philosophy blog, an audio/video podcast, and continues to develop his ideas about the nature of reality. Bernardo has lived and worked in four different countries across continents. He currently resides in the Netherlands.

Menas C. Kafatos is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of Computational Physics at Chapman University. He is a quantum physicist, cosmologist, climate change researcher, and works and writes extensively on consciousness and the above fields. His doctoral thesis advisor was noted M.I.T. professor Philip Morrison who studied under J. Robert Oppenheimer. He is co-author with Deepak Chopra of the forthcoming book, Who Made God and Other Cosmic Riddles. (Harmony)