The job of a physicist is to describe Nature. General features, hypotheses and theories help to describe physics phenomena at a more abstract, fundamental level, and are sometimes tacitly assigned some sort of real existence; doing so appears to be of little harm in most of classical physics. However, missing any tangible connection to everyday experience, one better always bears in mind the descriptive nature of any efforts to grasp the quantum. And elementary particles interact in the quantum world, of course. When communicating the world of elementary particles to the general public, the Bayesian approach of an ever ongoing updating of the depiction of reality turns out to be virtually indispensable. The human experience of providing a series of increasingly better descriptions generates plenty of personal pleasures, for researchers as well as for amateurs. A suggestive analogy for improving our understanding of the world, even the seemingly paradoxical quantum world, may be found in recent insight into how congenitally blind children and young adults learn to see, after having received successful eye surgery.
The job of a physicist is to describe Nature. General features, hypotheses and theories help to describe physics phenomena at a more abstract, fundamental level, and are sometimes tacitly assigned some sort of real existence; doing so appears to be of little harm in most of classical physics. However, missing any tangible connection to everyday experience, one better always bears in mind the descriptive nature of any efforts to grasp the quantum. And elementary particles interact in the quantum world, of course. When communicating the world of elementary particles to the general public, the Bayesian approach of an ever ongoing updating of the depiction of reality turns out to be virtually indispensable. The human experience of providing a series of increasingly better descriptions generates plenty of personal pleasures, for researchers as well as for amateurs. A suggestive analogy for improving our understanding of the world, even the seemingly paradoxical quantum world, may be found in recent insight into how congenitally blind children and young adults learn to see, after having received successful eye surgery.
Applications of quantum mechanics have led to many successful predictions and explanations of puzzling phenomena, and we now apply quantum mechanics to gain, process, and communicate information in novel ways. We can understand quantum mechanics by understanding how we have applied it. We should not seek agreement on the nature of the world it represents, because this theory does not itself represent the physical world (though its applications do help us to represent it better). When applied to a quantum state, quantum mechanics yields probabilities for physical events: both state and probability are objective—not because they represent elements of physical reality, but because each exerts normative authority over the beliefs of anyone who accepts quantum mechanics and applies it relative to a physical situation they may (but need not) occupy. These events may be described by statements (about values of magnitudes) that are meaningful in an appropriate environmental context, and quantum mechanics can help one to say when that is. Measurement creates an appropriate context, so here the Born rule indirectly yields probabilities of measurement outcomes. The quantum state of a system does not “collapse” on measurement: a new state must be assigned relative to a physical situation in which information about the outcome is accessible. Understood this way, there is no measurement problem, and violation of Bell inequalities does not demonstrate “spooky” non-local action. Quantum field theories have no physical ontology of their own: a quantum field is a mathematical object in a model whose application helps to improve and extend our descriptions of the world in other terms. We cannot realise the scenario of Wigner’s friend and its recent extensions: but the data that provide overwhelming evidence for quantum mechanics are objective in the same sense as the relative measurement outcomes described in those scenarios.
Applications of quantum mechanics have led to many successful predictions and explanations of puzzling phenomena, and we now apply quantum mechanics to gain, process, and communicate information in novel ways. We can understand quantum mechanics by understanding how we have applied it. We should not seek agreement on the nature of the world it represents, because this theory does not itself represent the physical world (though its applications do help us to represent it better). When applied to a quantum state, quantum mechanics yields probabiities for physical events: both state and probability are objective--not because they represent elements of phyiscal reality, but because each exerts norrmative authority over the beliefs of anyone who accepts quantum mechanics and applies it relative to a physical situation they may (but need not) occupy. These events may be described by statements that are meaningful in an appropriate environmental context, and quantum mechanics can help one to say when that is. Measurement creates an appropriate context, so here the Born rule indirectly yields probabilities of measurement outcomes. The quantum state of a system does not "collapse" on measurement: a new state must be assigned relative to a physical situation in which information about the outcome is accessible. Understood this way, there is no measurement problem, and violations of Bell inequalities does not demonstrate "spooky" non-local action. Quantum field theories have no physical ontology of their own: a quantum field is a mathematical object in a model whose application helps us to improve and extend our descriptions of the world in other terms. We cannot realise the scenario of Wigner's friend and its recent extensions: but the data that provide overwhelming evidence for quantum mechanics are objective in the same sense as the relative measurement outcomes described in those scenarios.
While physicists pursue the search for the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) and the expedition to find the Higgs that ought to solidify the Standard Model, philosophers keep inquiring as to what the nature of matter and mind might be and propose various theories. At first sight, the high energy physicist or the philosopher, both human, and the elementary particle seem to have nothing in common, however we contend and argue in this paper that we are looking at different scales of what constitutes universal behaviour and use Herman Dooyeweerd's theory of Modal Aspects to bridge the particle to the mind. To other than a physicist the dual nature of the atom or the so-called elementary particles may be difficult to comprehend and certainly appears unfathomable to intuit. This is due to the fact that the dual nature of matter finds its anchoring within the theoretical and mathematical frameworks provided by quantum mechanics, the latter tends to not be easily accessible to most individual's intuition. What would the consequences be if human nature itself had a dual character? We all know that human nature is both egoistic and altruistic, however it is not often that one considers the fact that egoism is an individual behaviour, while altruism is a collective behaviour. Likewise a particle is an individual manifestation of what we call matter, while wave nature can be considered characteristic of collective behaviour of the same matter.
Recent advances in experimental physics—the queen of reductionist science—aimed at solving the mysteries of the quantum world has led to a deepening of the mystery rather than easing it, dispelling the EPR paradox and pointing out a conceptional error in this now famous gedanken experiment, while lending some authority and validation to quantum mechanics. The strange features of the quantum world are founded on what Bohr dubbed complementarity, or the way a sub-particle entity can behave either as a wave or as a particle; and on Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which says that a quantum entity such as an electron does not avail itself to a deterministic exact measurement of both position and momentum simultaneously. Such postulates seem to contradict deeply held assumptions by the deterministic and materialistically oriented world of experimental physics where everything, including the atom, can be reduced to a single aspect. There are mounting calls for newer ways of understanding reality that are capable of handling these apparently strange incomprehensible phenomena revealed through the classical observation of the microscopic quantum world. There is also fundamental progress made in bouncing cosmology theories that bridge general relativity to quantum mechanics and provide some insight into the nature of the universe and its transition and pre-history through the big bang.
The thrust of this paper evolves around two pillars. One, is that that the apparent logical fissure emergent in reductionist thought, coming from orthodox science and the application of the scientific method that is manifest in what we know and do not understand in quantum mechanics, can be liaised to our intellectual understanding through the perspective offered by Herman Dooyeweerd's theory of Modal Aspects. The other, is the central and special role humans have in relation to the universe. Through this approach, we will argue that the dual nature of the atom or elementary particles is, rather than being a strange phenomenon, in fact an essential characteristic of what constitutes its nature
Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the whole framework is built. In quantum physics, first in non-relativistic mechanics and later in quantum field theories, even familiar concepts of position, momentum, wave or particle, are derived constructs from the classical limit in which we live but not intrinsic to the underlying physics. Most crucially, the very idea of the individual, whether an object or an event, distinguished only in a mere label of identity from others identical to it in all the physics, exists only as an approximation, not an element of underlying reality. Failure to recognize this and seeking alternative explanations in many worlds or multiverses leads only to incoherent logic and incorrect physics. As an example, in a physical system such as an atom in a particular state, physics deals with the universal system of all such atoms but makes no meaningful prediction of the position of an electron or the time of decay of any specific atom. Those are incidental, entirely random among all possible positions and times, even while physics makes very precise predictions for the distribution of the outcomes in measurements on atoms in that state. Physics deals with the universal, not the individual.
Those defile the purity of mathematical and philosophical truthy who confound real quantities with their relations and sensible measures. —ISAAC NEWTON, Principia Before we say anything about quantum mechanics, let us take a quick look at the Newtonian (or ‘classical’) view of the physical universe. According to that view, nature consists of an enormous number of particles. When Newtonian physics is combined with the theory of the electromagnetic field, it becomes convenient to think of these particles as dimensionless (even if there is a kind of conceptual strain involved in trying to think of something as having a mass but not any size ), and as possessing electrical properties – negative charge, or positive charge, or neutrality. This leads to the well-known ‘solar system’ view of the atom – with the electrons whirling around the nucleons (neutrons and protons) just as the planets whirl around the sun. Out of atoms are built molecules; out of molecules, macroscopic objects, scaling from dust motes to whole planets and stars. These latter also fall into larger groupings – solar systems and galaxies – but these larger structures differ from the ones previously mentioned in being held together exclusively by gravitational forces. At every level, however, one has trajectories (ultimately that means the possibility of continuously tracing the movements of the elementary particles) and one has causality (ultimately that means the possibility of extrapolating from the history of the universe up to a given time to its whole sequence of future states).
Most interpretations of quantum theory fail to provide a fundamental, complete, self-consistent account of nature describing physical reality itself, as opposed to merely yielding predictions about results of experiments and observations. A paradigm providing a self-consistent foundation for quantum theory and a description of the reality it refers to, generalized to a worldview, is a Quantum Paradigm, where ‘paradigm' is defined as structure of experiential reality. We assert that the fundamental obstruction in the quest for a quantum paradigm is the assumption of objectivity. The subject-object distinction, drawn within experience, has within the natural sciences degenerated into a dichotomy-an absolute split into separate realms-with scientists adopting the classical paradigm where the object pole of experience ("objective reality") can be studied independently from the subject pole ("the experiencer"), with a presupposition that this procedure yields a fundamental description of nature. In fact, the subjective is often eliminated altogether as a fundamental category, and reduced to an epiphenomenon of objective processes. We claim this objectivity assumption precludes a full comprehension and a paradox-free formulation of quantum theory. By challenging this presupposition, i.e. leaving the question open, a coherent understanding of quantum nature falls naturally into place, providing appropriate foundation for quantum theory and an associated world-view. The resulting Quantum Paradigm is "realist" in the sense that it provides a description of what is actually happening: namely the arena of all happening is Mind or Consciousness-from which mind and matter, subject and object, individual and collective, and time and space co-dependently arise. The subject matter of quantum theory then becomes the fundamental mind-function of distinction ("measurement"), resulting in information and its statistical correlations. The message of quantum mechanics is surprising: the basic components of objects-the particles, electrons, quarks, etc.-cannot be thought of as ‘self-existent'. The reality that they, and hence all objects, are components of is ‘empirical reality', of experience."The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine."-James Jeans Anomalous phenomena such as ESP and psychokinesis, collective consciousness, and synchronicity that are considered impossible in the context of the classical paradigm, fit naturally in, and can in turn provide evidence for the Quantum Paradigm. Spirituality and science are shown to be complementary approaches referring to the same reality, Mind, while each discipline retains its integrity. The Quantum Paradigm can be intellectually comprehended, as well as embodied: one can live in quantum reality. A good metaphor for this is "life as a dream": with no "real" objects as distinguished from experienced objects. Experience is "empty" of self-nature in the Buddhist sense, with everything interconnected and co-dependently arising. Experiencing the world by "embodying the Quantum Paradigm" is transformative, healing, and an antidote to alienation resulting from embodying the classical paradigm. Embodying the Quantum Paradigm and living in the Oneness of all creation can help humanity-increasingly lost in the materialism and individualism reinforced by our embodiment of the classical paradigm-and restore intimate connection and harmony with Spirit, Nature and fellow humans; we need such a transformation to survive and thrive in our technological society.