In this 2018 video, quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger explains the essence of quantum physics for a general audience:
The skinny, courtesy Philip Cunningham:
40 sec: Every object has to be in a definite place is not true anymore…
The thought that a particle can be at two places at the same time is (also) not good language.
The good language it that there are situations where it is completely undefined where the particle is. (and it is not just us (we ourselves) that don’t know where the particle is, the particle itself does not know where it is). This “nonexistence” is an objective feature of reality…
5:10 min:… superposition is not limited to small systems…
7:35 min:… I have given lectures on quantum physics to children, 6 and 7 years old, and they understand the basic concepts of quantum physics if you tell them the right way…
9:00 min:… the main issue (with quantum mechanics) is interpretation. What does it mean for our view of the world… “emotional” fights happen over what it means…
15:45 min:… the fact that some of the brightest minds in physics have been working on this issue, (i.e. The unification of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics), for 80 years now at least, and have not found a solution means that the solution will be extremely deep. It will be extremely significant if somebody found it, and it will probably be in a direction where nobody expected it…
16:55:… Dark matter and Dark energy smell a little bit like the (fictitious) ether in the old electrodynamic theory…
17:30:… In quantum mechanics we have the measurement paradox (i.e. measurement problem)… I think it (the measurement paradox) tells us something about the role of observation in the world. And the role of information.,, Maybe there are situations where we have to reconsider the “Cartesian cut”*
* The Cartesian cut is a metaphorical notion alluding to Decartes’ distinction of res cogitans (thinking substance) and res extensa (extended substance). It plays a crucial role in the long history of the problem of the relationship between mind and matter and is constitutive for the natural sciences of today. While the elements of res cogitans are mental (non-material) entities like ideas, models, or concepts, the elements of res extensa are material facts, events, or data. The conventional referents of all natural sciences belong to the latter regime.
Hat tip: Philip Cunningham
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See also: Quantum mechanics: Pushing the “free-will loophole” back to 7.8 billion years ago (concerns Anton Zeilinger’s work)
and
Twisted light can carry arbitrarily large amounts of information – a find friendly to theism?
An interesting talk.
To me, it emphasizes that quantum mechanics is a powerful theory which describes and tries to explain the nature of the material world at the sub-atomic level.
Zeilinger also points to the fact that, good as they are in their separate domains, both relativity and quantum theory are incomplete because there seems to be no way to reconcile them at this time. This suggests that there is some deeper theory underlying it all which will embrace them both but which we have yet to construct.
It also reinforces my view that any more comprehensive explanation of natural phenomena must be multi-level. For example, we can describe a human being as a vast assemblage or sub-atomic “wavicles” or even strings or as a bag of water and chemicals or as a bipedal hominid or as a human personality. All are true within their limits but all are incomplete as a full description of a human being which will have to combine them all plus anything we don’t yet know into a comprehensive account which may be the nearest approach we can make to the whole truth.
As the following article states, “The first attempt at unifying relativity and quantum mechanics took place when special relativity was merged with electromagnetism. This created the theory of quantum electrodynamics, or QED. It is an example of what has come to be known as relativistic quantum field theory, or just quantum field theory. QED is considered by most physicists to be the most precise theory of natural phenomena ever developed.”
Interestingly, “Although quantum field theory is fully compatible with the special theory of relativity, a relativistic treatment of quantum measurement has yet to be formulated.”
Richard Feynman (and others) were only able to unify special relativity and quantum mechanics into Quantum Electrodynamics by quote unquote “brushing infinity under the rug” with a technique called Renormalization.
This “brushing infinity under the rug” with QED never set right with Feynman.
In the following video, Richard Feynman expresses his unease with “brushing infinity under the rug” in Quantum-Electrodynamics:
I don’t know about Richard Feynman, but as for myself, being a Christian Theist, I find it rather comforting to know that it takes an ‘infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do’:
The reason why I find it rather comforting is because of John 1:1, which says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” ‘The Word’ in John 1:1 is translated from ‘Logos’ in Greek. Logos also happens to be the root word from which we derive our modern word logic.
So that it would take an infinite amount of logic to know what tiny bit of spacetime is going to do is pretty much exactly what one should expect to see under Christian presuppositions.
In fact, as a Christian Theist, I find both the double slit and quantum electrodynamics to be extremely comforting for Christian concerns.
And whereas special relativity, by ‘brushing infinity under the rug’, has been successfully unified with quantum theory to produce Quantum Electrodynamics, no such mathematical ‘sleight of hand’ exists for unifying general relativity with quantum mechanics.
General relativity, as the following articles show, simply refuses to be mathematically unified with quantum mechanics in any acceptable way. In technical terms, Gravity has yet to be successfully included into a theory of everything since the infinities that crop up in that attempt are not renormalizable as they were in Quantum-Electrodynamics.
The irreconcilable infinity problem between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, and how it relates to Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, is dealt with in more detail in the following video.
And as was also touched upon in the preceding video, I believe that the reconciliation of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ was accomplished in Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
But before we get into the specifics of that, it is first important to realize that a person would be well justified in asking just how it is even possible in this universe for a human being, on a supposedly insignificant planet, to unify our best scientific descriptions of the universe, Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, into the quote unquote ‘theory of everything’.,,,, Even if that human being happens to be Jesus Christ himself, the question of scientific plausibility of the endeavor would still persist in the minds of many people, especially if that person happened to be a non-Christian.,,, As Einstein once said, “I want to know how God created this world.”
And in answering this question of the plausibility of the endeavor, there are two important issues that first need to be addressed. Those two important issues are the issue of the Copernican principle and also the issue of Agent Causality vs. Mechanical Causality.
Firstly, contrary to the popularly held belief that the Copernican principle has rendered any belief in the special status of the earth in this universe, and for humanity in particular, null and void,,,
,,contrary to that popular belief, the fact of the matter is that both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have themselves now overturned the Copernican principle and/or the principle of mediocrity as being a valid principle in science.
Particularly, In the 4 dimensional spacetime of Einstein’s General Relativity, we find that each 3-Dimensional point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe,,,
,,, and since any 3-Dimensional point can be considered central in the 4-Dimensional space time of General Relativity, then, as the following articles make clear, it is now left completely open to whomever is making a model of the universe to decide for themselves what is to be considered central in the universe,,,
Einstein himself stated, The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS [coordinate systems].”
Fred Hoyle and George Ellis add their considerable weight here in these following two quotes:
As Einstein himself noted, there simply is no test that can be performed that can prove the earth is not the center of the universe:
Here are a few more references that drives this point home:
Even Stephen Hawking himself, who once claimed that we are just chemical scum on an insignificant planet, stated that it is not true that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong,,, the real advantage of the Copernican system is simply that the equations of motion are much simpler in the frame of reference in which the sun is at rest.”
In fact, when taking into consideration anomalies in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation which line up with the earth and solar system, then the earth should once again, contrary to the Copernican principle, be considered ‘special’, even central, in the universe once again:
Here is an excellent clip from “The Principle” documentary that explains these ‘anomalies’ in the CMBR that line up with the earth and solar system in an easy to understand manner.
Moreover besides the earth and solar system lining up with the anomalies in the Cosmic Background Radiation, Radio Astronomy now reveals a surprising rotational coincidence for Earth in relation to the quasar and radio galaxy distributions in the universe:
Even individual people, as the following article makes clear, can be considered to be central in the universe according to the four-dimensional space-time of General Relativity,,,
,,, In fact, when Einstein first formulated both Special and General relativity, he gave a hypothetical observer a privileged frame of reference in which to make measurements in the universe.
Whereas, on the other hand, in Quantum Mechanics it is the measurement itself that gives each observer a privileged frame of reference in the universe. As the following article states, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”,,,
Because of many such experiments as this, Richard Conn Henry, who is Professor of Physics at John Hopkins University, states “It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe.”
Thus, contrary to popular belief, humans, and the earth beneath their feet, are not nearly as insignificant in this universe as many brilliant people, including many Christians, have been falsely led to believe by the Copernican principle and/or the principle of mediocrity.
The second important issue that needs to be touched upon in clarifying the plausibility of Jesus Christ unifying Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into the quote unquote ‘theory of everything’ is the issue of Agent Causality vs. Mechanical Causality,,,
First off, Atheists employ what is termed Methodological Naturalism to try to rule agent causality out of bounds before any scientific investigation has even begun, As Paul Nelson states in the following article, “Epistemology — how we know — and ontology — what exists — are both affected by methodological naturalism (MN). If we say, “We cannot know that a mind caused x,” laying down an epistemological boundary defined by MN, then our ontology comprising real causes for x won’t include minds.”
Yet this denial of agent causality, as imposed by the artificial imposition of Methodological Naturalism onto science, is completely unwarranted.
For prime example, it is important to note the catastrophic failure in epistemology that is inherent in the Atheist’s denial of Agent Causality.
Specifically, In the atheist’s denial of their own free will they forsake any right to the claim they are making a logically coherent argument in the first place.
As Martin Cothran states in the following article, “By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order.”
Moreover, besides the sanity of science itself demanding the reality of free will be let into the picture, quantum mechanics itself now demands that agent causality be let ‘back’ into physics.
Specifically, advances in quantum mechanics, with Contexuality and/or the Kochen-Speckter Theorem, now confirm the reality of free will within quantum mechanics.
In Kochen-Speckter Theorem we find, as leading experimental physicist Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
And with contextuality we find, “In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation” and “Measurement outcomes depend on all the other measurements that are performed – the full context of the experiment. Contextuality means that quantum measurements can not be thought of as simply revealing some pre-existing properties of the system under study. ”
Moreover, the final ‘free will’ loophole in quantum mechanics has now been closed. As the following article states, the “creepy” and “far-fetched” possibility that the “physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector’s setting” and that “a particle detector’s settings may “conspire” with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure”,,,
,,, that “creepy” and “far-fetched” possibility, (which is exactly the “creepy” and “far-fetched” possibility that atheists hold to be true), has now been, for all practical purposes, closed.
Anton Zeilinger and company have now pushed the “free-will loophole” back to 7.8 billion years ago using quasars to determine measurement settings.
Moreover, here is another recent interesting experiment by Anton Zeilinger, (and about 70 other researchers), that insured the complete independence of measurement settings in a Bell test from the free will choices of 100,000 human participants instead of having a physical randomizer determine measurement settings.
Moreover, besides free will being experimentally validated in quantum mechanics, “the experience of the now”, which is a defining property of the mind, is now also found to be a integral part of quantum mechanics:
And now most importantly, by allowing agent causality back into the picture of modern physics, as quantum physics itself now demands, and as the Christian founders of modern physics originally envisioned, (Sir Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, and Max Planck, to name a few), then a empirically backed reconciliation, (via the Shroud of Turin), between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, i.e. the ‘Theory of Everything’, readily pops out for us in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
Besides the reality of ‘free will’ and/or Agent causality within quantum theory bringing that rather startling solution to the much sought after ‘theory of everything’, there is also another fairly drastic implication for individual people being “brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” as well.
Although free will is often thought of as allowing someone to choose between a veritable infinity of options, in a theistic view of reality that veritable infinity of options all boils down to just two options. Eternal life, (infinity if you will), with God, or Eternal life, (infinity again if you will), without God. C.S. Lewis states the situation as such:
And exactly as would be a priori expected on the Christian view of reality, we find two very different eternities in reality. An ‘infinitely destructive’ eternity associated with General Relativity and a extremely orderly eternity associated with Special Relativity:
Again, the implications for individual humans are fairly drastic, i.e. eternal life with God or eternal death/hell apart from God
Verse:
Because of such dire consequences for our eternal souls, I can only plead once again for atheists to reconsider their choice to reject God, and to now choose life, even eternal life with God, instead of death.
BA77, a few of the links in your preceding comments are dead.
The nature of the “what” is coming into focus as time goes by, although the cause is not. (Super duper quantum computer generating a virtual reality? All the arrows point that way.) At this point, I’m more interested in the “why”, and nobody knows the ultimate answer to that.
Ed George, thanks. I found some live links, here they are.
There seems to be an assumption – understandable in the case of Seversky – that the solution will be found by means of physics ; but surely the time cannot be far off when QM will taper off into the spiritual realm. It seems like to have happened in some measure already, e.g. via ‘non-locality’.
Seversky reminds me of the saying : to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To him, every unsolved question pertaining to physics must have physical solution.
bornagain77 @ 4
Article Six of the US Constitution forbids the application of any religious test to candidates for public office. I would argue there should be a similar prohibition against applying a any religious or political test to science. I seriously doubt that there will ever be such a thing but if you want to see the consequences of the absence of any such restraint then you have only too read many of BA77’s posts where he has clearly applied a religious test to the science he reports in that he clearly admits only that which he construes as being consonant with his personal religious beliefs. I would urge readers to look up the various papers he cites and see for themselves whether or not the authors actually make the religious claims BA77 alleges their work supports and whether or not it is reasonable to infer they support such claims at all
Axel @ 9
That may be a problem but only if you can offer a better way of deciding whether or not something like the “spiritual realm” actually exists as more than a figment of its proponents imagination.
Seversky you state:
Well, since the video in OP is an interview with Anton Zeilinger, one of the leading quantum experimentalist in the world, let’s look at some of his claims.
Or perhaps, since you falsely believe Theological beliefs have absolutely no place in science, we can look a bit closer to your own home, i.e. Darwinian evolution. And look at the (bad liberal) Theology (instead of evidence) that is infused throughout the foundation of your Darwinian thought:
In fact Seversky, as hard as it may be for you, a dogmatic atheist, to believe, science is simply impossible with basic Theological, even Christian, presuppositions,,,
,,, and since science is impossible without Theological, even Christian, presuppositions then it should not be surprising, (except for dogmatic atheists such as yourself), that modern science was born in medieval Christian cultures and no other cultures,,
In fact Seversky, as hard as it may be for you, a dogmatic atheist, to believe, it would be hard to fathom a more unscientific worldview than your very own atheistic materialistic worldview has turned out to be,,,
Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist, (in this case Seversky), firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
Seversky:
You don’t even know what science is.
Seversky @ 11
Can you make a cogent rebuttal of the assertions made in this article (and in every encyclopaedia, one day, I suspect) by William J Murray of this parish ?
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/experience-rational-debate-science-depend-on-the-supernatural/
bornagain77 @ 12
As far as the influence of religion is concerned, Zeilinger’s only claim is “This reminds me of the beginning the bible of St. John which starts with “In the Beginning was the Word”. That is hardly evidence of any religious entailments of quantum theory.
We have considered Dilley’s claims before. The first answer is that Darwin’s theological references are included because he was writing for a religiose readership and he was trying to anticipate and forestall criticism based on those beliefs. The second and more cogent point is that you could strip all the theological references out of Origins and his theory would not be affected in the slightest.
To which I would simply paraphrase Laplace and say that, thus far, science has had no need of such assumptions. Regardless of the personal beliefs of individual scientists, there is nothing in our current understanding of the natural world that compels or requires us to invoke the existence of a deity.
No one is denying that modern science was fostered in Christian Europe but you should also take a broader look at the history of science and its precursors around the world. It has flourished to varying degrees in China, India, ancient Egypt and Greece and even under Islam, for example, all without the alleged blessings of Christianity.
Reductionism can be a useful methodological approach to the investigation of complex phenomena by breaking them down into more manageable parts but, as I argued before, the parts are not the whole. A complete understanding requires the reintegration of all the carefully dissected parts back into the original functional whole.
God may be essential to your worldview but, whether you like it or not, He is not required by science. As evidence, we can point to the fact that science is done equally well by believers and non-believers, by Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, agnostics and atheists. We can also point to the fact that none of what are currently the most successful theories in science – relativity, quantum and evolution – depend in any way on the existence of a deity.
Axel @ 14
In a comment on the thread following the Reverend Murray’s OP I quoted the following excerpt from the entry on Naturalism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
I would agree in principle that “reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit”” If, for example, ghosts exist as something other than mental concepts then they would be part of the natural world. They might be elusive and mysterious but they could, in principle, be investigated and explained. By this understanding of ‘naturalism’ the ‘supernatural’ at most refers to what is currently unknown.
Seversky in full denial mode states:
So quoting the very first verse of John “is hardly evidence of any religious entailments of quantum theory” in your book?
LOL, If directly quoting John 1:1 in regards to the information theoretic foundation of nature does not constitute a “religious entailment” in your view of things then there is absolutely nothing that would ever constitute one for you.
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
Seversky in full denial mode then states
First off, who is this “we” that Seversky refers to?
Secondly, Darwin’s college degree was in theology. In fact Darwin said that he found math to be repugnant. The reason Darwin wrote using bad liberal theology as his basis instead of math, i.e. the language of science, is because he was trained in bad liberal theology.
Moreover, if you stripped the bad liberal theology out of Darwin’s book, his arguments, since they had no empirical support, would collapse in on themselves.
Seversky in full denial mode then states
It might interest you to know that your Laplace paraphrase is in all likelihood based on folklore not on fact,
In fact, Laplace cites with approval Leibniz’s criticism of Newton’s invocation of divine intervention to restore order to the Solar System: “This is to have very narrow ideas about the wisdom and the power of God.”, to them, it would count as evidence against intelligent design if God had to intervene to prevent the solar system from collapsing. So intelligent design could just as easily be a motivation to prove the stability of the solar system.
As to not having to “remedy the defects of His creation”, I hold that Newton, Leibniz, and even Laplace, (if they could see the results now) would be very pleased by what modern science has now revealed about the wisdom and power of God:
Seversky in full denial mode then states
As the following article states, (which you apparently did not bother to read), we are not talking about “an occasional flash of insight here and there,” but instead are talking about “a systematic, programmatic, ongoing way of studying and controlling the world”. That culture, “arose only once in history, and only in one place: medieval Europe, once known as “Christendom,” where that Biblical worldview reigned supreme.”
In other words, for modern science to take root and flourish across a society, instead of suffering stillbirths, it was necessary for that entire culture of that society to be dominated by the Christian worldview:
Seversky then states:
The failure of reductive materialism to be able to put back together the pieces into a whole, much like Humpty Dumpty, is precisely the primary, and fatal, flaw within the reductive materialism that undergirds Darwinian thought.
Seversky then claims that,
As was mentioned previously, the more one disbelieves in God, the more insane his science becomes:
Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist, (in this case Seversky), firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
Seversky:
But what Laplace said was a bald assertion. And it can be dismissed as such.
Maybe not a deity but the evidence definitely points to an Intelligent Designer. Laplace had NOTHING to explain how the earth got to be the way it is.
Not one scientists can explain life from a naturalistic, ie non-telic, perspective. Not one scientist can explain the earth from a naturalistic, ie non-telic, perspective.
That is your opinion but science cannot explain what we observe from a naturalistic perspective.
Is it? What is your metric and how did you make that determination?
Except evolution is not a successful theory. It doesn’t even qualify as a scientific theory. That is because it makes untestable claims.