Sunday, March 25, 2007

Observing the Observer

Observing, naming, creating stories gives reality to our perceptions of the universe, which is creating itself for us. Observing the world causes it to shape itself into a reality for us.

In the current issue of The American Scholar, Robert Lanza, a proponent of Biocentrism, which builds on quantum physics, writes, "the laws of the world were somehow created to produce the observer....the observer in a significant sense creates reality and not the other way around."

Hmnnn.


If subatomic particles are "watched" traveling through a barrier (in the famous experiment, a box with two holes), they behave like tiny particles, and go through one hole or the other.

If they're "not watched" they pass through both holes, like waves.

But no-one sees this.


Quantum waves are never observed, only inferred from the behaviour of unobserved particles.

Quantum waves are waves of probability, statistical predictions, not material waves, hence nothing but a likely outcome. Outside of an idea, the wave is not there, it's nothing.

Since it's not observed, can't ever be observed, it's not "real."


Nor does the particle have any definite existence, until we observe it.

It gets worse. Quantum waves merely define the potential location a particle can occupy.

But it's all probability!

It isn't an event or a phenomenon, but a description of a likely event.


Dear reader, my golden muse, I shalln't take this anywhere at the moment. Only let me ask, rather than 'how are you?' and 'what's going on?', what's in your quantum fields these days? ::grins:: Tell me about your entanglements over virtual tea!

3 comments:

  1. As if all this weren't enough, quantum theory and relativity theory may have to be rethought because the universe may turn out to be a fractal. (New Scientist, March 10-16, 2007, pp. 30-33). Which doesn't make it sound as if the place we live is going to become less strange.

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  2. Richard, yes, but that article is for subscribers only. If you have it can you email it to me? Much appreciated. xo

    The Lanza article here: A New Theory of the Universe.

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  3. My little post in no way a precis of Lanza's article, which I highly recommend reading.

    Here's another ditty, again, pay-per-article, or subscribe, from the February 16, 2007 issue of Science, on Wave-particle duality,which Lanza, who is a stem cell researcher, draws on in his spectacular theory of biocentrism.

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