Riffing off his interest in an eccentric 16th-century scientist and astrologer, a science writer reflects,
But despite Jerome’s life story being relatively unfamiliar today, his experiences of what happens when people reject orthodoxy are not. The spirit of the Inquisition has never been fully extinguished; wherever the powerful are threatened by progress, they will suppress debate. Science has not escaped this phenomenon. Even something as fundamental as quantum mechanics, built on the twin pillars of probability and imaginary numbers that Jerome erected, has been stunted by censure. There are a number of examples even within this small area of physics, but perhaps none is more resonant of Jerome’s experience than the story of David Bohm.
Michael Brooks, “he Spirit of the Inquisition Lives in Science” at Nautilus
Actually, Bohm’s biggest problem was that he was not a materialist.
The second problem is that Bohm’s pilot wave is odd—in a way that physicists call “nonlocal.” This means that the properties and future state of our photon are not determined solely by the conditions and actions in its immediate vicinity. The photon’s pilot wave and the photon’s wave function are linked to the wave function of the much, much larger system in which they sit—the wave function of the whole universe, effectively. So our photon can be instantaneously affected by something that happens half a universe away.
Michael Brooks, “he Spirit of the Inquisition Lives in Science” at Nautilus
Just about everything except non-materialism is forgiven, despite the history.
More on Bohm later.
See also: What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness
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I don’t see anything in this article that says that Bohm’s biggest problem was that he wasn’t a materialist. (Actually his first big problem was that he was communist and Marxist at the start of his career.)
Like many QM theorists at the time, he was interested in the metaphysical implication of QM, and possible connections to the mind. Also, like most (all?) QM theorists, things like the wave-particle duality and non-locality showed that the material world was not at all as it had been envisioned in the past.
A while back I had an interesting discussion about Bohm here, and quoet his from Wikipedia:
These ideas are somewhat like metaphysical ideas I have offered here, so I am interested in learning more about Bohm
There are a number of reasons why his theories didn’t become the dominant QM interpretation, but the fact that he wasn’t a materialist was not one of them.
The author lets the cat out of the bag towards the end of his article:
Thus, he apparently did not have the courage of his convictions for Bohm’s ideas when he brought in ‘other interpretations’ as a possible solution to the experimental results of quantum theory. Here are some of the ‘killer blows’ to Bohm’s pilot wave theory that the author failed to mention in his romanticized characterization of Bohm’s ideas:
For one, ‘ pilot-wave theory requires that “hidden variables” exist,’. Yet, “multiple mathematical theorems have all but proven that hidden variables cannot explain away all of the bizarre behaviors seen in quantum mechanics”.
Besides that, it has now also been experimentally confirmed that “entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do.” And “results demonstrate that a causal influence from one measurement outcome to the other, which may be subluminal, superluminal, or even instantaneous, cannot explain the observed correlations.”
Moreover, Bohmian mechanics, to put it mildly, simply doesn’t mesh with Quantum Electrodynamics, which is regarded as one of our most precisely tested theories ever in the history of science.
A few more insurmountable problems with Bohm’s pilot wave theory are clearly elucidated in the following video:
Thus, despite the author’s romanticized characterization of Bohm’s ideas the fact of the matter is that the ‘killer blows’ he mentioned are indeed fatally lethal. The author’s claim that “Bohm’s ideas are also still alive” is simply a false claim on his part as far as the empirical science itself is concerned. To the extent Bohm’s pilot wave theory lives, it lives only as a scientific zombie that refuses to die. i.e. It only lives in the imagination of ‘true believers’, such as the author himself, who refuses to let it die the normal death of a failed scientific hypothesis.
As to the author’s appeal to “other options” besides Bohm’s pilot wave theory, (and although atheists will often appeal to multiple interpretations in quantum theory to avoid the obvious Theistic implications of quantum theory), when it comes to quantum theory itself there are, in reality, only two possible approaches to ‘interpreting’ quantum theory. The “realist” and “instrumentalist” approaches: As Steven Weinberg himself, (who is an atheist himself), stated,
As you can see, Weinberg, again an atheist, rejects the ‘realist’ approach because of the insanity inherent in Everett’s MWI, and also because it does not successfully deal with the Born rule. This is not a minor problem. The irresolvable problem of deriving the “Born rule” within the MWI is clearly elucidated at the 4:30 minute mark of the following video
And although Weinberg rightly rejected the realist approach in quantum theory, it is interesting to look again at exactly why he rejected the ‘instrumentalist’ approach in quantum mechanics. Again Weinberg stated,,,
Weinberg rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave.
For instance, this recent 2019 experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established that “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
Moreover, although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:
And now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.
Moreover, here is another recent interesting experiment by Anton Zeilinger, (and about 70 other researchers), that closed a technical loop-hole and insured the complete independence of the measurement settings in a Bell test by using the free will choices of 100,000 human participants instead of having a super fast randomizer determine the measurement settings (as is usually done in these quantum experiments).
Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.”
On top of that, here is fairly recent video that lays out many lines of evidence from quantum mechanics that, IMHO, overwhelmingly prove that foundational, even defining, attributes of consciousness, and the experimental results we are getting from quantum mechanics, are irrevocably correlated at the deepest level:
Moreover allowing free will and/or Agent causality into the laws of physics at their most fundamental level has some fairly profound implications for us personally.
First and foremost, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”.
To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Verse and Video:
Thus in conclusion, despite how badly atheists might want to find a solution to quantum theory that does not involve God, the fact of the matter is that all their proposed ‘realist’ solutions have utterly failed and the Christian Theist is, once again, scientifically vindicated in his belief that God upholds this universe in its continual existence and, more importantly for us mortal humans, that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides the correct solution for the ‘theory of everything’. i.e. The correct solution for ‘why’ the universe exists in the first place.
In case you’d like to know if anything ba wrote here (almost all repeats of things he has posted many times before) has anything to do with the OP, I’ll point out that he seems to agree with me that News’ comment that “Bohm’s biggest problem was that he wasn’t a materialist” isn’t true.
As I made clear at the beginning of my post, I commented on what the author wrote at the end of his article, not on the OP itself. As I also made clear, my beef is with his scientifically indefensible defense of Bohm’s pilot wave theory. And since you never really concern yourself so much with the details of the science at hand, but with pushing your bizarre metaphysical presuppositions (regardless of empirical inconsistencies), I really could care less what you are saying. In fact, for the most part, I ignored your post since it was irrelevant to the main point at hand. Namely, despite the author’s contention to the contrary, Bohmian mechanics is false!
Well, then, we had different purposes in posting: you think the article is wrong and I think News is wrong.
So at least we agree that something about the OP is wrong! 🙂
Hazel
But that doesn’t mean that QM is not part of the material world. But I guess that depends on your definition of “material world”. Things like magnetism and gravity are thought to be non-material by some. But most would now accept them as part of the material world. To the best of our knowledge, excluding WJM’s belief that there is not material world 🙂 , neither magnetism nor gravity can exist without the physical. I am definitely no expert in the field, but don’t QM effects fall in the same category?
hazel:
OK. Can a person give a personal opinion of someone in their post? Clearly, they can. And how do you know that said opinion is wrong? Do tell…
Sure she can. But I think her opinion is wrong if she based it on the article, which I read. Have you read the article? Can you point to anything in the article that says Bohm’s main problem was that he was not a materialist?
So a person has to base their opinion on another person from one article?
No, but given that she posted that line right after posting the quotes she did, it’s reasonable to infer that her remark was meant to follow from the quotes.
Also, FWIW, I also posted quotes from Wikipedia (and there is more there) about Bohm and his philosophy: I don’t think one could say he was a materialist.
Maybe someone can find some evidence that I am wrong, but I think News was wrong in her comment.
hazel:
News say that the problem was that he was NOT a materialist. So I don’t think one could say that he was a materialist.
You’re right. I was confused about what I said.
With that out of the way, yes, you would think that any comments after a quoted piece would pertain to or be deduced from said piece. However, the safe assumption is if you cannot find such a connection either it is cryptic or derived from something else. So the best thing to do is ask. For example:
“Excuse me, but I couldn’t find anything in the article to support your claim of
Am I missing something or did you get that from some other source? I find that intriguing and would like to know more.”
Then we could both(hopefully) learn something as opposed having this little chat.