So you think you can do theoretical physics?

By George Scialabba

To the reader (and writer) of poetry, John Keats recommended "negative capability": the acceptance of "uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." In other words, relax and let your imagination take over. This turns out to be good advice for reading about theoretical physics, too.

Frank Wilczek is a particle physicist, and John Moffat is a cosmologist, and so, in a sense, they work at opposite ends of the universe. But they are both on the track of a Grand Unified Theory of Everything, which will harmonize the four basic forces - gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear - that account for all physical events everywhere.

Isaac Newton's theory of gravity was a particle theory: One material body exerted a force on another through the medium of empty space. This "action at a distance" seemed occult to his successors, so, going back to ancient physics, they postulated an extremely fine-spun "ether" that filled space, through which gravity and electromagnetism propagated. But eventually the ether was shown not to exist. Einstein's relativity theory, which unified gravity and electromagnetism, was a field theory. Fields are self-renewing patterns that fill all of space and, when disturbed, throw off particles.

After Albert Einstein, physicists turned to the interior of the atom. Theory and experiment led to an explosion of new knowledge about the nature and number of subatomic particles. Among the discoveries was that, at a very small scale, precise measurement and predictive certainty are no longer possible, and some events seem to occur spontaneously, without a definite cause. This is the world of quantum mechanics.

The fields that fill space turn out to be quantum fields, which spontaneously, unpredictably fluctuate. These quantum fluctuations are known as virtual particles. Along with virtual particles, space is filled with the residues of invisible interactions among elementary particles such as quarks, bosons, and leptons. The residues, called condensates, are "ethers in something closer to the original spirit of Aristotle and Descartes," Wilczek writes in "The Lightness of Being." These ethers "condense spontaneously out of empty space as the morning dew or an all-enveloping mist might condense out of moist, invisible air." Space is not empty after all; "the cosmos is a multilayered, multicolored superconductor," with weight and density. Its name is "Grid."

In case all that sounds a bit daft, this may be the moment to mention that Wilczek, an MIT professor, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2004.

In "Reinventing Gravity," Moffat, another very distinguished scientist, comes at the Theory of Everything problem by way of astrophysics. As a young man, he corresponded with Einstein about the latter's lifelong effort to generalize his theory of gravity and combine it into a single theory with the other forces. Moffat has been pursuing Einstein's ambition ever since.

The first problem Einstein encountered was internal to his original theory of general relativity. The theory predicted that some stars would develop infinite gravity and density, collapsing inward and becoming "black holes" from which no information could escape. The freakish character of black holes vexed Einstein, who never accepted their existence. The next obstacle was the discovery that many galaxies within galactic clusters are moving at a speed that should lead them to break away from the cluster. But they don't. The only explanation compatible with constant gravitational attraction (which Newton and Einstein assumed) was the presence of a large amount of invisible, undetectable matter: "dark matter." Finally, 10 years ago, several astronomers claimed to have discovered that the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing rather than decreasing. The only explanation seemed to be a vast quantity of invisible, "dark" energy with negative pressure, which would counter the braking force of gravity. Together, dark matter and dark energy supposedly make up 96 percent of the universe. If they exist.

Physicists have reluctantly accepted these anomalies for the sake of preserving Einstein's venerable theory of gravity, with its assumption of constant gravitational attraction. But neither black holes nor dark matter has ever been detected. Moffat cuts the Gordian knot, proposing a Modified Gravity Theory, or MOG. He postulates a new "fifth force," carried by a new particle, the "phion." MOG explains the varying strength of gravitational attraction without any need for black holes or dark stars. It also undermines string theory, most physicists' current candidate for a Theory of Everything. Finally, it suggests that the universe did not begin with a Big Bang but may be "eternal" and "dynamically evolving."

How Quantum Physics Reveils Life's Biggest Mystery

By Thomas Herold

What leads to disappointing experiences in your life? Probably when things didn’t work out the way you wanted them to. Since the sixties we know already that we are our own creators. If we are - why doesn’t all our creations manifest? How come there is still a tremendous amount of suffering in the world? How is it possible that people can’t get rid of illness and diseases. Why would someone create a divorce or a bankruptcy or just being depressed?

Questions most of us have asked more than once…I guess.

Just look in your favorite bookstore and see how many books are written about topics similar to ‘how to get rich quick’, ‘getting things done my way’ and ‘you can do it’. I have even seen a bookstore that covers nothing else than self improvement books!

Can quantum physics shine some light on this precious topic?

Let start with the premise that we have free will. If we have free will then we can manifest whatever we want. It would only be limited by our own thoughts, beliefs, and concepts.

If you would make a broad study on how successful people are with their manifestations, you may find out that people tend to rate their successes by more than 50% and their failures by less than 50%. Now, if you take in consideration that most people are more identified with their successes then with their failures, the reality of the outcome is probably close to 50/50. That seems almost random to me!

On a personal level, we can almost say instantly why some things worked out and others did not. We are pretty good in ‘making up’ reasons for the outcome of our actions.

Now, what if I am telling you that the reasons you made up are just illusions!

If you investigate deep enough you will never know why things work out or not. Reasons lead to your own concepts about the world. If you go far enough backward you end up with blaming the ‘Big Bang’ for the ultimate reason. You think this is exaggerated - try it!

However, we like illusions so much that we believe in them as they satisfy our minds.

What Exactly Happens on a Quantum Level?

Fascinating studies have been conducted by Benjamin Libet. Libet’s experiments reveal a substantial delay – the "mind time" – before any awareness affects how we view our mental activities. The conclusion of his work is that unconscious processes initiate our conscious experiences. Freely voluntary acts are found to be initiated unconsciously before an awareness of wanting to act – a discovery with profound ramifications for our understanding of free will.

You may want to read this last paragraph again…

I like the example of how Fred Alan Wolf explains this study further. Just imagine, you are sitting on top of an elephant. The elephant is your subconscious and you are sitting on top (that’s your ego). Now, you want the elephant to go left? You touch the left ear and the elephant goes left. It would be great if it works like this every time… but it doesn’t. Sometimes, the elephant just goes in the other direction and thats what we call a failure!

Welcome to the World of Illusion!

In reality your subconscious is constantly collapsing wave functions. Waves are simply random possibilities of what can happen. The moment a wave is collapsed, it is no longer a wave, it then becomes a particle. Particles are what we call reality in space & time. This is the famous wave particle problem that gave most scientists grey hairs.

The amount of randomness is determined by your concepts. The concepts are setting the borders of your play field. Are you playing with one dice? Then the number can only be between 1 and 6. Are you playing on a larger scale with two dices then the number can be between 36 possibilities.

Here is a more practical example. You want a new car, it should be red, under $20,000 including a 6 year guarantee. These are the concepts and the possibilities you make up with your mind (ego). However, there are additional concepts in your subconscious. For example, your neighbor drives a new Mercedes and somehow that information sinks deep in your subconscious. Your subconscious has also stored the experience of all the other cars you previously owned. You see that the possibilities of what can manifest in reality is getting more complex.

Back to our example and what happens on a quantum level. The elephant gives you a ‘telepathic’ sign that it wants to go left. Because of that ‘you decide’ that you want to go left and therefore tap the left ear… VWOLA! The elephant goes left.

So where does this all leaves us with our free will?

It is very simple, but also very challenging to put this knowledge into our ‘daily’ lives. Quantum physics and science finally proves what most religious people since hundreds of years have already told us. The ego is an illusion and only through practicing silence can you expand beyond the daily illusions and experience where your true power is and comes from.

Speaking of power - this is unlimited power versus force, which you need constantly to keep the illusion of your ego alive. That’s why a lot of people are constantly in stress and have no energy.

At one point in your life you are faced with an experience over which you have no control. Maybe an accident, a disease or a bankruptcy. You can resist this experience or you can surrender to it. Resisting means denying your own creation. Surrendering means you are finally listening to your true self instead of some beliefs or concepts you have adapted from society or someone else.

At this point, decide if you want to ‘improve’ your ego or if you want to connect with your true power. From my experience this is the only decision you can make and the only instance were you have free will.

Quantum physics is… in its core foundation… so simple that even most scientist cannot grasp its implications yet (myself included).

Ghost Image through Quantum Physics

By Tom Marcinko

Scientists funded by the Air Force have used quantum entanglement — in which pairs of particles continue to interact even after they are spatially separated — to snap this picture of a tin solider without aiming a camera directly at the object. The technique, called “ghost imaging,” has potential military or space applications, such as using aerial drones to survey of battlefields obscured by clouds, or the smoke that follows airstrikes. Yanhua Shih, who has been experimenting with entangled photons since 1995, says:

“…[T]he image is not formed from light that hits the object and bounces back. The camera collects photons from the light sources that did not hit the object, but are paired through a quantum effect with others that did. An image of the toy begins to appear after approximately a thousand pairs of photons are recorded.”

These are exciting times on the frontiers of physics. Researchers in Copenhagen took a step towards producing a quantum bit. And scientists at Arizona State are trying to figure out how electrons interact. Both are necessary steps towards building superfast quantum computers.

Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness:

A Causal Correspondence Theory
Ian J. Thompson
Physics Department, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 5XH, U.K
October, 1990.

We may suspect that quantum mechanics and consciousness are related, but the details are not at all clear. In this paper, I suggest how the mind and brain might fit together intimately while still maintaining distinct identities. The connection is based on the correspondence of similar functions in both the mind and the quantum-mechanical brain.

Accompanying material for a talk at The Second Mind and Brain Symposium
held at the Institute of Psychiatry, Denmark Hill, London on 20th October, 1990. (pdf version)
The Mind-Brain Problem
The problem of the relation between mind and body is well known as a difficult `world knot'. Over the centuries various monistic and dualistic theories have been proposed, and the subject has had renewed interest as we try to assimilate the implications of quantum physics. These implications may make us reexamine our views of brains and bodies, but it is still not clear what consequences they have for our understanding of minds.

Earlier in the interpretation of quantum mechanics, it appeared that the problem of measurement could only be solved by introducing some basic notion of an observer, presumably a conscious observer. Many scientists and philosophers (e.g. Wigner (1962) Eccles and Popper (1977), Faber (1986), Toben (1974), Squires (1990), Donald (1990) among others) have taken this solution to indicate an essential role of consciousness in the physical world. Consciousness, to solve the measurement problem, must initiate the transition from quantum potentialities to definite actualities. It would not have to select which actuality, but merely cause some actuality to be produced. Squires and Donald accept this merely `collapse prompting' role of consciousness, and their position has the advantage of requiring no changes to quantum theory, as consciousness then makes no change to any predicted probability. Squire's conclusion, unfortunately, does not yield any functional role which may be important in mental and/or physiological processes in the brain. Donald (1990) does go on to give circumstances in which `measurement collapses' are important for the function of neural cells, but their effects are simply to reinstate the `classical' on/off nature of the sodium switches even when there are quantum uncertainties.

Since, moreover, it is possible that the `measurement problem' can be solved within physics (see e.g. Maxwell, 1988), the role of consciousness in measurement has little direct bearing on the problem of how the mind and brain function together. In order to say something relevant to the brain sciences, we have to go beyond conventional quantum mechanics (of whatever interpretation), and make new hypotheses with definite empirical content. We have to postulate that `consciousness' (whatever that may turn out to be) influences the actual outcome of neural events, and does not just observe them as if disinterestedly.
Quantum Brains
It is well known that there is a residual indeterminism of quantum mechanics in making predictions of physical processes. Quantum mechanics is also `non-local', as described for example by Bell's inequalities. If either of these two phenomena are displayed in the brain as described by quantum physics, then this may be relevant to the problem of consciousness.
Biased Probabilities:
One proposal (from Walker (1970) and later Eccles (1977)) has been that mental events influence at least some physical outcomes within the range allowed by quantum mechanics. This idea has to supplemented by an account of how these small effects are amplified to affect macroscopic outcomes, and recently possible accounts have been presented, Eccles (1989). Eccles requires that the options of a single vesicle discharging or not discharging both have non-zero quantum probabilities, so that such neural events are genuinely under-determined by quantum mechanics, and the way is open for them to be determined by the mind.
Bose-Einstein Condensates:
Another proposal by Marshall (1989) is that the mental and bodily realms derive directly from a quantum realm, as separate appearances of an underlying structure given by quantum mechanics. Since the unity of mental experience is one of its outstanding features, the proposal is that consciousness arises from a quantum mechanical structure which shows remarkably unity, namely Bose-Einstein condensates. This therefore requires not only that the brain amplifies quantum indeterminism, but also that long-range and long-time correlations of quantum phases are set up in the brain, by means for example of a structure proposed by Fröhlich.

Both these proposals go some way toward connecting the apparently disparate realms of mind and brain. From the physics side, both have quantum mechanics holding virtually unchanged. They furthermore then both require that neuro-physiological processes are in some essential way `quantum processes'. They require then that the peculiarly quantum features of matter become much more spatially spread out in the brain than is usually admitted. In the language of physics, Marshall requires that non-local correlations (of the kind described by Bell's Inequalities) are set up between parts of the brain that are very far apart on the atomic scale, and hence that the brain exhibits some of the characteristics of `quantum computers' as described by Deutsch (1985). There is a difficulty that this implies much larger quantum effects than have ever been observed in materials at room temperature. There is evidence of unusual microwave absorption, but it is not clear whether this really demonstrates quantum correlations as distinct from sets of coupled classical (non-quantum) oscillations.

Eccles' proposal is weaker than Marshall's, as he only requires that for some brief time the non-local correlations extend between the options of a single vesicle discharging or not discharging, so there can exist a coherent superposition of these two states. Eccles does not require that the two options remain coherent for any duration after the event (as Marshall would require to obtain widespread and persisting quantum phase coherences).

Both proposals are made less likely by the fact that Plank's constant, which sets the scale for quantum processes, is so small. It is not impossible that there are genuinely undetermined neural events in the brain, and/or that there are large scale quantum coherent effects, but these are difficult to set up in the noisy room-temperature non-crystalline system of the brain. Psychological ConsiderationsThere are also questions from the psychological point of view. Eccles' proposal tells us very little about the structure of the mind, apart from the fact that it must be able to predict and control the amazingly complicated system of many of the random discharges in the brain. There is little indication from what psychologists know about the mind that it has anything like the required analytical and motor capacities. The mind is best dealing with at most 5 to 8 items, and is completely swamped when it tries to understand massively parallel systems directly. A way of avoiding these difficulties will be discussed below.

Marshall's proposal seems to tell us more about the mind, namely that it arises whenever quantum mechanics gives suitable Bose-Einstein condensates. However, all psychological details of mental structure and operations would then be derived from this quantum structure. That is, he would have to claim that all human life (from mathematics and logic to arts to psychopathology) is implicit in Schrödinger's equation. Personally, I find it extremely implausible that the quantum mechanics of patterns of excitations of Bose-Einstein condensates exactly and mechanically determines the interaction patterns of ideas, images and meanings in the human mind. There are certainly similarities between the two, but these do not imply identity. To talk of similarity without giving evidence for identity leads to another approach, as we see next.
A Different Approach
Despite the apparently smallness of quantum effects in the brain, I still believe that quantum physics is important in our understanding of its function. To show this, I am going to take a different approach. I am going to assume, in a non-reductionist way, as Eccles and others do, that the mind is (in some way) distinct from the brain. But I want to then see how they could be intimately connected again. Psychologists and psychiatrists are aware of the close functional dependence of minds and brains, so that physiological changes very readily affect the mind in many ways, and mental intentions and attitudes affect both the normal and abnormal functioning of the nervous system.

I am going to take a `top-down' to the problem of interaction, and will suggest how it may usefully be organised, from the functional point of view. I am not going to assume that quantum mechanics must be unchanged; I am therefore going to follow the `spirit' if not the `letter' of quantum physics. The aim is to motivate a plausible general view which will make predictions about what goes on. Afterwards I will discuss the origins of this general view.

The guiding principle I use is that the mind and brain are similar in structure and function, and that they need each other to operate. They are not identical, but are similar in the sense of `resonating' or `corresponding' to each other from the functional point of view. In order to see how the mind and brain are similar and fit together in this general way, we do need to remember quantum physics.
Similarity of Minds and (Quantum) Brains
I am here going to draw analogies between mental and quantum phenomena. If you already know something about minds, these may help you understand quantum physics! Some of these have been pointed out by Bohm (1951, § 8.27ff) and more recently by Jahn & Dunne (1986) and Zohar (1990) (although perhaps understood in different ways: see later discussion).

Jahn and Zohar have tended to concentrate on the analogies between mental structures, and the structure of matter entailed by quantum mechanics. They look at analogies between, for example, minds and quantum systems, and then especially analogies between how minds interact and how quantum systems interact. I will be looking rather at analogies between individual mental processes within minds and individual quantum processes. I believe that only when we understand the elementary processes of both the mind and quantum matter, can we more completely understand complex systems of either kind.

In order to make analogies with quantum physics, I am going to assume something like the `propensity interpretation' of Maxwell (1988) and others (Thompson, 1988). I am also going to assume a view of mind that is in part phenomenological (after Bergson especially), and in part influenced by (a few of) the aims of artificial intelligence (AI) and the recognition of the complexity of even apparently elementary mental processes. On this basis, we can draw analogies between the fundamental processes of quantum physics and the fundamental processes of mental activity:

* Quantum objects do not evolve uniformly in time, but as a succession of `states' between intermittently `actualising' to one outcome of a certain range.

Mental entities do not evolve uniformly in time, but in a succession of `specious presents' between intermittent changes of state.
* The state of a quantum object is not a static configuration of elements, but a `state of propensity' for possible virtual proceses, possible interactions and possible actual (observable) outcomes.

The state of a mind is not static, but more a `state of propensity': it is a continual recollection of past events and continual anticipation of future possibilities.
* The state of a quantum object may be described by a wave function distributed is space, but this does not mean that the quantum object is composed of elements so distributed. Rather, it has a basic unity in that it will always act as a whole. These spatial distributions merely describe where it can actualise.

The state of a mind has a similar basic unity. The thoughts in the mind may be diverse, and each may implicitly contain diverse elements (usually the better for doing so), but if they lead to action these diverse elements were merely describing where the mind could have operated.
* The driving impetus of quantum processes are not external, but the very propensities of which quantum objects are forms. These propensities operate according to the (spatiotemporal) circumstantial relations with other objects.

The driving motivation of mental processes are not external, but the very motivational loves which underly all psychic activities. These motivations operate according to the circumstances at each time.
* Behind the apparently continuous evolution of the Schrödinger's equation, there is a progressive multitude of `virtual events' whose operation forms the potential term in Schrödinger's equation.

As a consequence of simulation efforts in AI, we know that the operation of even seemingly simple events such as the perception of solid objects must involve `behind the scenes' a great deal of information processing which is not apparent in the act of perception itself.

In view of these analogies, and also those given later, it unlikely that the mental and physical processes are independent, and merely interact with each other at certain `mental-neural' events (Eccles, 1989). We could hold that they both derive from a `quantum realm', but I hold to a more radical (but simpler) idea that the propensities for physical processes derive from mental processes, which in turn always act according to past physical events. This idea, explained further in the next section, means that the mental and physical realms are far from separable, but are intimately related in a very systematic manner. Thus, although the basic idea may not be exactly fashionable these days, it is an idea with significant predictive power and good empirical content. Nevertheless, as explained later, it has a long and venerable history, and deserves closer consideration.
How Minds and (Quantum) Brains Fit Together
In order for people to have functioning minds, their minds must at least be able to

* implement intended functions using the motor areas,
* establish permanent memories, presumably by means of permanent physiological changes,
* form perceptions using information from the visual & auditory (etc.) cortexes,
* be able to follow `internal' trains of thought/feeling/imagining without necessarily having any external effects.

One way that these requirements can be most simply accomplished is by means of the idea above, formulated in the following three principles:

I.
That the mind predisposes the physical/physiological potentialities (both deterministic or indeterministic according to quantum physics).
II.
That the `predispositional' capacities of the mind are consequentially restricted (and hence conditioned) by their actual effect.
III.
That the pattern of I and II is repeated for individual stages of more complex processes.

These principles together give what can be called `conditional forward causation', or `top-down causation'. Note that we do not have a fourth `bottom-up' principle that neural events directly cause events to occur in the mind. We do not have general matter $\rightarrow$ mind causation, although something resembling this does arise, namely `selection'. This is not causation in the primary sense of `principal causation' as `producing or generating the effect'. It is more in the secondary sense of `instrumental causation' as `providing a necessary prerequisite'.

A strong argument for these three principles is that they are already similar to what is known already to happen in quantum physics, in quantum field theory to be precise. According to that theory, there is a class of events called `virtual events' which select and predispose the ordinary quantum wave function. These virtual events operate deterministically, and describe the operation of the electric, magnetic, nuclear and gravitational forces. They are not the `final' actual events of quantum mechanics (those are the definite outcomes of events like observations). Rather, they are a `prior level' of `implicit events' whose operation is needed in order to produce the potentialities for events like observations. The principle (I) states the analogical result that mental events themselves are a `prior level' of `implicit events' whose operation is needed in order to produce the potentialities for physical events.

The argument for the principle (II) is more general. Whenever any potentiality is exercised to produce a particular outcome, future potentialities must depend on the detailed outcome. Suppose for example that at the moment, I have the potentialities of moving left or right; if I actually move left, say, then this influences (by restriction to a fixed history) of what I can do from now on. This second principle can also be seen as a `law of karma': your future life is restricted and influenced by your past actions (by selection). Physical events are in this way the necessary foundations for permanent mental history and structure.

Principle (III) has an important corollary

IIIb.
That the mind predisposes the brain to carry out those functions which `mirror' or `correspond to' the mind's own functions.

This is because mental functions involve intermediate steps, and these intermediate mental steps predispose suitable intermediate physical steps (by I), and are in turn conditioned or confirmed by them (by II). Thus the sequence of physical steps will follow the sequence of mental steps, and the overall function of the physical process will be analogous (in some sense) to the overall function of the mental process. Examples of this `mirroring' or `corresponding' have already been illustrated by the similarities between minds and brains listed in the previous section. Examples of correspondences of complex processes in the mind with those of physics will be given below.

Let us then see how these principles enable the mind and brain to function together:

* The particular functions selected by the mind to be carried out by the brain will be the establishment of spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity that may then be `decoded' in the motor cortex to lead to the desired activities, by the principle (I). Principle (IIIb) establishes a criterion for the overall functioning of this decoding.
* Permanent physiological changes lead to permanent memories in the mind, by the principle (II). (It is an empirical question, which physiological changes are relevant, but principle (IIIb) will be a guide.)
* Perceptions are formed by the sensory cortex areas deterministically forming particular patterns of neural activity, so that these physiological effects can select the subsequent perceptual content of the mind. The process here is rather subtle. The mind must have a `general disposition' to see/imagine any of its possible percepts; the role of the sensory cortex is to select the particular content, by means of principle (II). Thus we have the general psychological observation that `we see only what we are capable of and disposed to see'.
* To be able to follow `internal' trains of thought/feeling/imagining without necessarily having any external effects, the mind must be able to produce physiological effects which do not have any significant consequences. Presumably, much of the cerebral cortex can function in a `loosely connected' way, in order to provide the foundation for a set of permanent mental structures.

Mind and Brain as `Hand and Glove'
This theory of mind and brain connection establishes in intimate relation between them. It is not a relation of identity, or a relation of aspects or points of view. It is more a relation of inner and outer, or cause and effect: propensities in the brain are the causal product of mental actions. As put in by Bawden (1947), `the role of the psychical in relation to the physical (in the living organism) is essentially the relation of the potential or incipient to kinetic or overt action'.

The mind and brain fit together by approximate analogy with hand and glove, or, better, with tissue and skin. The analogy (by principle IIIb) is most precisely with the functions of tissue & skin, and not so much with their material shape. The mind provides all the directed activity of the brain, just as the tissue of the hand provides all the directed activity of the skin of the hand. When we look at the head, we only see the brain, just as we only see skin when we look at the hand. It appears that the skin of the hand does all the work, but we don't assume that that is all there is. It appears that the skin has life, but we know that all but the simplest life comes from the underlying tissue. The skin (as does the brain) has simple capacities for action and reactions, but it is a mistake to imagine that all capacities for activity and information processing belong to the skin (or the brain).
Psychology
Once we have the basic idea of functional correspondences between physical and mental systems based on their causal interrelations, then we have a fertile source for exploring the detailed structure of one using what we know about the other.
Psychology of Stages
Because there are `prior' and `post' levels of events even within physics, by the correspondence principle IIIb, there must also be prior and post levels of events within the mind. Piaget's theory of stages of development is relevant here. In table 1 the Piagetian stages have been reformulated as the acquisition of capacities for dealing with ideas on the successive layers (supplemented by a `creative stage' of Gowan (1972): see Thompson (1990) for more details). The relations between the ideas of adjacent levels is then analogous to the relation between any pair of prior and post events, according to principles I, II and III above.

Table 1: Relation between Network Layers and Piagetian Stages
During each stage, at the approximate ages shown, the child is learning to relate the concepts listed in the second column. That is, (s)he is constructing relations in a network at the given level.
Net Level Network Relations of Developed in
Piaget/ Gowan Stage during ages
5 meta-theories, paradigms creative 17-
4 plans, models, formalisms formal 12-16
3 classes, series, numbers operational 7-11
2 events, single relations, sentences preoperational (preconceptual & intuitive) 2-6
1 objects sensorimotor 0-1
0 images, motor movements (initial) -0

There appears to be a broad analogy of the `practical' layers (0, 1 and 2) with the `real' events of quantum mechanics, and of the `theoretical' layers (3, 4 and 5) with its `virtual' events. This can be spelt out in more detail, approximately as in table 2. Here, the basic idea (following principle IIIb) is that the mind at a given stage is capable of `thinking about' the corresponding features of quantum mechanics. The set of propensities/quantum systems/actual selections provides the mechanisms for the actual events of ordinary (non-relativistic) quantum mechanics, whereas the set of least-action principles/evolution equations/groups describes the basic principles and virtual events of quantum field theory.

Table 2: Relation of Network Layers to Quantum processes
Net Level Network Relations Quantum Theory
5 meta-theories, paradigms variational principles
4 plans, models, formalisms time evolution equations
3 classes, series, numbers invariance groups
2 events, single relations propensities & forces
1 objects quantum systems
0 images actual selections
Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks
Neural networks have proved to be useful framework for formulating a wide range of information processing problems in cognitive psychology. This has lead some to postulate their sufficiency for a system of artificial intelligence. However, there are three main problems with neural networks. The first is the question of speed, the second the problem of procedures, and the third the problem of levels.

1. In order for neural networks to (approximately) solve global optimisation problems, some search procedure such as simulated annealing is required. This is notoriously slow, and, as still a procedure of `exponential complexity', will be prohibitively slow for problems of realistic complexities.
2. Neural networks have fixed connections only, and in order for them to achieve anything like translation or scale invariances for perception, then all possible translations and scales have to be `hard wired' simultaneously (Hinton et al, 1985). This could be avoided again by some `procedural' or `algorithmic' mechanisms, with `variable bindings', but this can only be implemented in neural networks by `brute force' multiple connections.
3. Neural networks seem to plausibly describe the interactions of related ideas on a given `level' of table 1. They are notoriously poor, indeed AI as a whole is notoriously poor, at modelling the connections between the separate layers (see Thompson, 1990).

It is still possible that the brain uses neural networks so that their various `final states' serve to indicate different image categories and different actions. In the present causal theory of mind-brain interaction, however, it is more likely that the mind can act by predisposing the neural nets to settle to some preferred outcome. That is, the mind determines (from the function it wishes performed) which collective state of the neural system is to be achieved. From the point of view of the brain, the neural net would appear to be the `non-deterministic automaton' of complexity theory, heading more or less quickly for the preferred solution (while thus verifying that it is a solution).

The problems of procedures and levels in neural networks are resolved by having multiple levels of simultaneous mental operation within the mind. The relations between the multiple levels then follows the principles I, II and III. Principle I means that the higher level predisposes the interactions at the lower level. Principle IIIb means that it does so in order to carry out particular functions. Principle II means that configurations at the lower level (e.g. images) select a particular perception (e.g. of an object) which would produce that image. This selection must be able to made very quickly - much more quickly than any detailed analytical algorithm could be elaborated.
New Physics
What is new physics in this proposal, is the first principle I: that the mind predisposes the physiological potentialities (whether deterministic or indeterministic according to quantum physics). This relation between mind and brain is analogous to that between virtual and real quantum events, but postulating the mind/brain relation to be of this kind has new empirical content.

The predisposition of physical propensities is of course not arbitrary. It is conditioned from the physical side by past actual events, from the mental side by the functions which may be accomplished, and from both sides by the requirement of correspondence. These constraints mean we do not have merely a `mind of the gaps' which fills in what is left undetermined by modern science. There are certainly gaps to be filled, but the present scheme will also explain what we already know, not just what we don't know.

If, for example, there is a regular sequence of actual physical events, and the predisposition is not varying, then there will be a constant production of new propensities, and hence a regular sequence of physical effects as if by a universal physical law. Thus our principles can provide a new basis for physical laws which we already know.

When there are intermediate propensities (e.g. of individual minds) then physical events do not follow the previous simple pattern. The new pattern will describe how the brain works in conjunction with the mind. Clues to this behaviour can be found by analogy with psychological processes, as discussed later.

* We saw in table 2 that the images (in the mind) correspond to actual selections (in quantum mechanics). This casts new light on our old problem of the role of consciousness in quantum measurement, and we see that perception of images does cause and correspond to the selection of actual outcomes of measurement in quantum physics. It is similar to Eccles' proposal, but now we have a better idea of the mental side of the picture. The network level 0 is the initial stage of cognitive development, and does not require any sophisticated analytical or predictive capacities: it is more the ability to `see what there is to see'. This means that the selection of outcomes of measurements does not happen at the time of the (random) event, but later, when perceptible differences have emerged, and are perceived.
* The ability of the sensorimotor mind to influence the course of events is, however, quite limited. Its role in everyday life is more to provide a source of perceptions, and implement outcomes that have already been decided. This corresponds in quantum mechanics to the small size of Planck's constant, and the rarity of quantum-random events which do have perceptible differences. Occasionally, however, there is still a need for basic decisions, and (in the mind and in quantum mechanics) it is necessary to decide between one of a small number of options. On these occasions, consciousness does limit itself to a single perception, and this does cause the selection of a particular outcome of a event left random by quantum physics.
* Most of the interesting processes in the mind and in quantum physics take place at levels 3 - 5: the `theoretical' layers as these were described earlier. Processes occur at these layers which generate in the first place the `short list' of options for the sensorimotor mind, and a great deal of detailed knowledge and derivation goes into this preparation.
* The operation of predisposition and correspondence in these `higher' levels must mean that the time-evolution equation of physics, normally taken to be Schrödinger's equation, is not fixed. We should be able to discover circumstances in which even classical systems follow a modified physical law.

`New' Metaphysics
These ideas have the possible disadvantage (or feature) that the operation of ordinary inert physical processes requires further analysis. Basically, since the propensities for physical processes derive from mental processes, all physical dispositions must derive (or have been derived from) some prior psychical level. This may sound like pan-psychism, but I am not saying that all physical processes include their own consciousnesses. There is a simpler solution, if you can accept the new metaphysics that there is some kind of Source, composed of suitable `psychic' propensities, from which everyday material propensities perpetually derive. Since the operation of this Source is always according to past physical events, we saw above that this operation amounts to the constant production of new propensities as if a `physical law' were prevailing. That is the way most scientists prefer to see the world. It is only that sometimes things are not so simple.

There may be some reaction to the apparent `dualism' in these ideas, as I have postulated minds existing separately from brains. However, this separation is only in our theory: in practice they need each other, and function together as a unified whole - as the person.
Origin of these ideas
I have presented these ideas as worth of consideration on their own, but they really have a long history in a variety of contexts. The basic idea that causation only truly works from the mind into the brain (and not vice versa) is not a popular one today, but has to be traced back to `non-standard' insights of people such as Plotinus (b. 205), Boehme (b. 1575), Swedenborg (b. 1688) and some other traditions. Swedenborg was well educated as a physicist and then physiologist, so I find his accounts the most detailed and useful. Of course, he knew nothing of quantum mechanics (only Newtonian mechanics), so I have had to `re-apply' his principles in the light of what we now know about the physical world. He, however, has the clearest presentation of the idea of `conditional forward causation' (he calls it `influx into uses'), and he gives the most complete account of the `correspondences' which exist between mental and bodily things. For a brief summary of his ideas, see Thompson (1989).
Conclusion
In order to understand how the mind and brain function together, it is not enough for there to be gaps in our physical theories. We also need to have a unified picture of both minds and brains. In this paper I have tried to outline such a unified approach. These suggestions require some departure from what is commonly accepted in the physical sciences, but we can still learn a great deal from what has already been discovered both there and in the psychological sciences.

* Bawden, H.H. (1947) `The Psychical as a Biological Directive', Philos. Science, XIV pp. 56 - 67.
* Bohm, D. (1951) `Quantum Theory', Prentice-Hall.
* Bohm, D. (1980) `Wholeness and the Implicate Order', Routledge and Kegan-Paul.
* Deutsch, D. (1985) `Quantum Theory, the Church-Turing principle and the universal quantum computer', Proc. R. Soc. Lond, A 400, pp. 91 - 117.
* Donald, M.J. (1990) `Quantum Theory and the Brain', Proc. R. Soc. Lond, A 427, pp. 43 - 93.
* Eccles, J. and K.R. Popper, (1977) `The Self and Its Brain', Springer.
* Eccles, J. (1989) `Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self', Routledge.
* Faber, R.J. (1986) `Clockwork Garden'.
* Gowan, J.C. (1972) `Development of the Creative Individual', Knapp.
* Hinton, G.E. and K.J. Lang (1985) `Shape Recognition and Illusory Conjunctions', Proceedings of IJCAI-85, pp. 252 - 259.
* Jahn, R.G and B.J. Dunne (1986) `On the Quantum Mechanics of Consciousness, with Application to Anomalous Phenomena', Foundations of Physics, 16 pp. 721 - 772.
* Marshall, I.N. (1989) `Consciousness and Bose-Einstein Condensates', New Ideas in Psychology, 7 pp. 73 - 85.
* Maxwell, N. (1988) `Quantum Propensiton Theory: A testable resolution of the wave-particle dilemma', The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 39, pp. 1 - 50.
* Squires, E.J. (1990) `An Attempt to Understand the Many-worlds Interpretation of Quantum Theory', in Quantum Theory without Reduction, ed. Cini and Levy-Blond, Adam Hilger, pp. 151 - 160.
* Thompson, I.J. (1988) `Real Dispositions in the Physical World', The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 39, pp. 67 - 79 (Html version).
* Thompson, I.J. (1989) `Swedenborg and Modern Science', Scientific and Medical Network Newsletter, 26, pp. 3 - 8 (Html version).
* Thompson, I.J. (1990) `Layers of Semantic Nets and Developmental Psychology', unpublished (Html version).
* Toben, B. (1974) `Space-Time and Beyond', Dutton.
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* Wigner, E. (1962) `Remarks on the Mind-Body Question', pp. 284 - 302 in The Scientist Speculates, I.J. Good, ed: Basic Books, N.Y.
* Zohar, D. (1990) `The Quantum Self', Bloomsbury.

Quantum Entanglement Theory A Reality

Strange events that Einstein himself called "spooky" might happen at least 10,000 times the speed of light, according to the latest attempt to understand them.

Atoms, electrons, and the rest of the infinitesimally tiny building blocks of the universe can behave rather bizarrely, going completely against the way life as we normally experience it. For example, objects can sometimes be said to exist in two or more places at the same time, or spin in opposite directions simultaneously.

One consequence of this murky realm of quantum physics is that objects can get linked together, such that what happens to one instantaneously has an effect on the other, a phenomenon dubbed "quantum entanglement." This holds true no matter how far apart these objects are from each other.

Einstein rebelled against the notion of quantum entanglement, derisively calling it "spooky action at a distance." One could instead argue that an entangled object releases an unknown particle or some other signal at high speeds to influence its partner, giving the illusion of a simultaneous reaction.

In the past, experiments have ruled out any suspects for such hidden signals from the realm of classical physics. Still, one exotic possibility remains — that such x-factors instead travel faster than the speed of light.

To investigate this possibility, scientists at Geneva in Switzerland began with entangled pairs of photons, or packets of light. These pairs were then split up and sent over fiber optic cables provided by Swisscom to stations at two Swiss villages some 11 miles (18 kilometers) apart from each other. The stations confirmed that each pair of photons had remained entangled — by analyzing one, scientists could predict aspects of its partner.

For any hidden signal to travel from one station to the other in just 300 trillionths of a second — the rapidity at which the stations could accurately detect the photons — any such x-factor had to go at least 10,000 times the speed of light.

As much as Einstein might have disliked the notion of quantum entanglement, he also revealed that signals could not get transmitted faster than light. Any faster-than-light "spooky action at a distance" is therefore implausible, said researcher Nicolas Gisin, a physicist at the University of Geneva. Instead, "what's fascinating here is that we see that nature is able to produce events that can manifest themselves at several locations," he said.

In a sense, these instantaneous events "seem to happen from outside space-time, in that it's not a story you can tell within space-time," Gisin told LiveScience. "This is something that an entire community of scientists is already studying very intensively."

Gisin and his colleagues detailed their findings in the August 14 issue of the journal Nature

PHYSICS AND CONSCIOUSNESS

FRED ALAN WOLF, Ph.D.

JEFFREY MISHLOVE, Ph.D.: Hello and welcome. Our topic today is "Quantum Physics and Consciousness," and my guest, Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, is certainly an authority in this area. He's the author of several books, including Taking the Quantum Leap, which is a winner of the National Book Award; Star Wave, a book describing Fred's own theories about quantum physics and consciousness; and also The Body Quantum. Fred, welcome to the program.

FRED ALAN WOLF, Ph.D.: Thank you, Jeffrey. It's really a pleasure to be here and see you again.

MISHLOVE: It's a pleasure to have you here, Fred. Let's talk about consciousness for a moment, because before we can talk about quantum physics and consciousness we need to start with a definition. What is consciousness to you, as a quantum physicist?

WOLF: Well, first let's talk about it in general -- not just as quantum physics, but what does it mean to be conscious? Just in coming to the studio, I happened to be going through a big library, and I was looking at all the books and all the titles on consciousness. I pulled one out and looked to see what he had to say; he didn't get it. I pull another one out; this doesn't get it. There are a thousand people writing books about consciousness, and not one of them really knows exactly what consciousness is. To tell you the truth, I don't know what it is either. So even though I've written several books about it and have been studying it for many, many years, to tell you exactly what consciousness is, is something that's beyond my grasp.

MISHLOVE: It's Goedel's theorem. A system can never understand or explain itself in any case.

WOLF: It's kind of like a mathematical theorem, or if you like, it's so much a part of ourselves that we can't recognize it. We can laugh about it, we can joke about it, but to really find out exactly what it is, is very difficult to do. However, we shouldn't be so discouraged by such a remark as this, because in reality we don't know what anything is. If we ask, "What is this? What is that?" all you really do is try to describe how it behaves, or what it does, or what it looks like, or what it smells like, or what your sensation of it is. You really don't know what something intrinsically is. So it's really a philosophical question as to what consciousness could be, because that's the ultimate mystery. What I'm trying to describe, and what I've learned to describe, is what consciousness does. That may be a different issue, and may be something we could address and talk about.

MISHLOVE: All right. What does consciousness do, Fred?

WOLF: What does consciousness do?

MISHLOVE: It sounds like you were describing it in a way, when you said we try to discriminate, we try to understand what things are. That is what consciousness is about.

WOLF: The best way I can describe it is to speak of it in terms of some kind of huge metaphor, like an ocean of consciousness; or that consciousness is everything, it fills the universe. What it does I think is very interesting. Before quantum physics, people knew that human beings were conscious. We knew that animals were conscious. Some of the ancient traditions, particularly some of the Hindu traditions, or the Vedic traditions of ancient Indian religion, speak in terms of everything being conscious. Rocks are conscious; your thumbnail is conscious; the television cameras that are recording this show are conscious. So they speak about consciousness pervading everything. But with the twentieth century and with quantum physics, we began to see what might be called a new role for consciousness -- something that we know happens, but remained inexplicable until we began to realize that what we were talking about was the action of consciousness. So what I've been doing in my work is talking about something I call fundamental acts of consciousness. I call them FACS -- please forgive the pun. What is a fundamental act of consciousness? It's an action in which something is perceived. Now, in ordinary physics, or in ordinary physiology, or in most of the classical realms of science, perception is something which is taken to be outside the realm of physicality. In other words, if you perceive something, you know that you see something. Light will strike your retina; you'll get an idea, or something will pop off in your brain, or something of that sort. But we never got the notion that somehow the act of seeing something was affecting what you were seeing or what you were looking at. But in quantum physics we've learned that when you're looking at very small objects, subatomic particles for example, the very action of looking at them disturbs them to such an extent that we never really get a complete picture as to what they actually are. Now, this has led me to think that consciousness may be at the core of this problem as to how perception can affect and change reality, and that maybe what we're doing when we're thinking or feeling or sensing or even listening to a conversation is using this action of consciousness, this fundamental act, which sort of what I call pops the qwiff -- that suddenly alters the physical reality of, say, the human body.

MISHLOVE: In other words, in subatomic physics, if I want to look at a particle, I literally have to touch it. I have to bounce a photon or something off of it in order to do that. What you're suggesting is that consciousness acts in this way; it touches the things that it perceives.

WOLF: That's right.

MISHLOVE: It almost becomes one with them, merges with them a little bit, in the process of perceiving.

WOLF: Right. The way I kind of look at it is that consciousness is a huge oceanic wave that washes through everything, and it has ripples and vibrations in it. When there are acts of consciousness, the wave turns into bubbles at that moment, it just turns into froth.

MISHLOVE: It kind of reminds me of those Japanese woodcuts where you see the waves reaching out like fingers.

WOLF: Exactly, exactly. That's a good metaphor. It reaches out like fingers, and it's the action of those fingers that disrupts and alters the patterns of physicality that were previously arranged by the earlier acts of consciousness. In other words, there's a continuation of this movement. Each one is disruptive; each one is a little bit chaotic, so that things are never quite exactly the same as they were. There's like an ever-changing light show going on, a bubbly light show going on. I think this action takes place not only in our minds and our brains, but even at the level of the subatomic particles that make us up. In fact, that may be how the universe got created in the first place.

MISHLOVE: And this is your whole point, that we're composed of this stuff. We're composed of this frothy little ocean. If we could see ourselves under an electronic microscope, it's about all we'd look like, I suppose.

WOLF: Yes, it would be a rather bizarre looking light show, of things popping on and off, vanishing and reappearing, matter created out of nothing and then vanishing. And in that vanishing and creation, an electromagnetic signal is piped from one point to another point. That's really kind of an amazing description.

MISHLOVE: It's almost remarkable, when you talk about it that way, that I'm here looking at you and you look like a humanoid.

WOLF: Right, exactly. In fact there was one guy who tried to make a metaphor of that. He said, "Suppose I were to put you in a room, and put a wall between us, and all I could listen to was your voice, or better yet, no voice. All I could really do was read a computer readout coming through the wall, and I could ask you questions by typing them in to you, and then you'd feed them back to me. Could I ask you enough questions so that I could discern that what was behind the wall was a real human being and not a machine feeding you back data?"

MISHLOVE: Interesting.

WOLF: Interesting question. So the question is, you look at me, I look at you, and we say, "Ah, that must be a human being." But if we really wanted to get very Cartesian, like Descartes did, about everything, we might begin to say, "Well, how can I really know that that's a human being behind there? What kind of questions can I type out, or can I ask it, in order for it to feed me back and say, 'Ah, yes, I'm a human being just like you, Fred.'" But then the question is, "Is Fred a human being who's asking?" Maybe this is the robot talking to you, and you have to ask yourself the same kind of question.

MISHLOVE: You're getting at the nature of paradox here a little bit, aren't you?

WOLF: Yes, we're getting at the very nature of what consciousness is, really, in raising these humorous ways of looking at it. If we try to address it, I think, totally scientifically and totally objectively, I think we run into a real brick wall. Literally; it's that brick wall that's erected that keeps the person behind and you in front. In fact, if you start to address your own body as that kind of a thing, you say, "Ah, this is not a hand; this is a machine. Look, it does this, it does that."

MISHLOVE: A hundred and twenty-four joints.

WOLF: Exactly. We look at the articulation, we watch how the blood flows, we know the pressures in the heart, we know the atrium does this and that does this, and we know how -- mechanically, we can see it perfectly. But yet, something is missing in it all. Even if I try to make it as mechanically clear as possible, we know something's missing, and that thing that's missing is something we call consciousness.

MISHLOVE: Norman Cousins once talked about the body as being made of spiritual tissue. He was kind of getting at that angle.

WOLF: What I'm getting at, is that possibly we can't really address the question of what consciousness is, if we purely look at it in its objective, causal framework.

MISHLOVE: You're a physicist, and a theoretical quantum physicist. And when we get to that level of quantum physics, it seems as though the mechanical notions of the universe break down completely. Everything's fuzzy, it's frothy, it's foamy, it's probability waves. Doesn't that sort of seem to be like consciousness?

WOLF: Well, let me quote from Newton about this, even though we're talking quantum physics. Literally, I feel like a child at a seashore, when it comes to seeing where quantum physics is pointing. I feel like we're on the verge of a gigantic discovery -- maybe the nature of God, maybe the nature of the human spirit. Something of that sort is going to emerge from this, because our normal notions -- in fact the notions upon which we think science makes any sense at all, the notions of space and time and matter -- they just are breaking down, they're just falling apart, like tissue paper before our eyes. Wet tissue paper; it isn't even good tissue paper. It doesn't hold anything up anymore. So we're beginning to see that -- for example, in classical physics the idea that the past influences the presence is pretty normal. Everybody says, "Oh, of course."

MISHLOVE: One-way causality.

WOLF: One-way causality. Everybody says, "Oh yeah, naturally." I mean, that's what Newton said, that's what they all say. OK, but there's another notion. What about the future influencing the present? Is such an idea just an idea that comes about through parapsychology, or through mystical insight? Quantum physics says no, it says that definitely there is a real mathematical basis for saying actions in the future can have an effect on the probability patterns that exist in the present. In other words, what takes places now, what choices are being made right now, may not be as free to you as you think they are. To you it may seem uncertain -- well, I'll do this or I'll do that. But if you realized that what you did in the future is having an effect now, then it wouldn't be as obvious. So it's hard to talk about it because the future's yet to come, right?

MISHLOVE: Well, I was thinking about this today. I just saw a movie, one of these Back to the Future kind of things, Peggy Sue Got Married -- these visions of people traveling through time. And I thought to myself, if I were in touch with who I will be twenty, thirty years from now, if I had the insights today that I will have then, how would I do it? What would I do different today?

WOLF: Well, suppose you found out that you do have those insights, and you actually have them right now, but the problem is that we haven't developed our acuity for believing those insights as strongly as we have our acuity for believing the past. Most of us have made mistakes in the past, right? We're all schlemiels when it comes to the past: "Oh God, if I'd only done that differently in the past." OK, well, this is your opportunity to do it now in the future. And though it's in the future, you can envision something about yourself that's better than it is right now. In fact, I guess that's what positive thinking is really all about, isn't it? And if we can tune to that picture and visualize it, sort of get a clear picture as to what it is, it will propagate back to the present right now, and will affect the choices that you're going to make now, so that a lot of the struggle you have, having to deal with the past, will sort of vanish away.

MISHLOVE: In other words, if I hear you right, you're suggesting that we should kind of be talking and thinking to ourselves who we were twenty years ago, to make sure that we made the right decisions then, so we can be who our best self is right now.

WOLF: That's right, that's right.

MISHLOVE: Isn't that interesting?

WOLF: We need to recreate the past. I mentioned this in an article I wrote about time, saying that the past is not fixed, that there's no absolute past. I'm sure there are events that we would all agree on. For example, we could agree on the Nazi Holocaust. OK, fine, but can we agree on what was going on in the German mind during the Nazi Holocaust? Can we agree on what was going on in our minds when we were ten years old? I mean, can we really come to grips and say, "OK, when I was ten years old I was really this bubbling kid, or I was just --"

MISHLOVE: Do we know what goes on in Reagan's and Gorbachev's minds when they meet?

WOLF: Exactly. It's not so much what's going on in their minds, but do we really have a fix on saying that the events we write down now about what happened in the past were really those events? Obviously we're creating the past; obviously we're making choices now. And there are feelings involved.

MISHLOVE: But now there's a difference between interpreting the past and creating it, and I think as a physicist you're talking about creation here, aren't you?

WOLF: I'm talking about that interpretation is equivalent to creation -- that there really is no fixed, solid past, and that when you go back and look at the past, what you're doing is making an interpretation which will best rationalize the present position you're now holding.

MISHLOVE: When you say there is no fixed, solid past -- talk about that a little more, Fred. I mean, most of us have this notion that the past is -- you know, we woke up, we went to bed, we got in our car, we did distinct things.

WOLF: OK. I'm sure that one of our viewers probably had Chinese food on Tuesday evening, whatever month or day this happens to be. One viewer out there has had Chinese food, and that viewer, I'll talk to him for just a moment. So you had a little egg foo yung. All right. We have both agreed that you had egg foo yung on Tuesday evening. I can understand that. And maybe it wasn't the best egg foo yung for you; maybe it gave you a little heartburn. All right, so what? The fact is you had the egg foo yung, and you say you had the egg foo yung, and I say you had the egg foo yung, and you go to the restaurant, you ask the Chinese waiter, "Did I have egg foo yung?" and he says, "Oh, of course you had egg foo yung. You always order egg foo yung, Mr. Fu." All right, so that can be definitely pinned down and made clear, OK? Now, the question is not so much did I have egg foo yung or not; the question is, what was going on with that egg foo yung? In other words, what processes were taking place? What was I thinking about? How did that food integrate into my system? There are many, many millions of different processes that are going on. Can you actually go down and pinpoint every single one of those processes and say that happened, this happened, that happened? No, of course not. You can't even do that now.

MISHLOVE: Maybe I got a rash; maybe I got indigestion. Maybe I got a great insight while I was --

WOLF: Yes. You can't really do that. So what you can do, is you can create that past so that it serves your purposes now. In other words, that past is not fixed. It's not an absolute past. In physics we have the principle called the principle of uncertainty, or the principle of indeterminism. And that principle says that you can't specify the movement of an object through space and its position in space simultaneously. You can't say both. Now, if you were to try to say -- let's assume that the past exists, absolutely solid. The egg foo yung particles, Mr. Fu in the restaurant, Tuesday at eight o'clock precisely -- let's assume that that's all there. And let's go further. Let's go into Mr. Fu's stomach, and we're watching all the particles as they're jiggling along. Presumably they're all moving and doing weird little things. Electrons are jumping back and forth; particles of egg foo yung are getting down in the digestive system; the stomach is -- all that's going on. The brain is going: oh, I'm enjoying this, or not enjoying it. We have in our mind that somehow everything that's happening to Mr. Fu and his egg foo yung is totally determined, that there's nothing he can do about it. He's just sitting there eating his egg foo yung. It's like every particle has been decided; they're all following the various paths. It's all like some kind of great big machine. But it isn't that way, because according to quantum physics you can't say where every little particle is, at exactly the same time.

MISHLOVE: The billiard-ball vision of the universe breaks down completely.

WOLF: Totally breaks down. Therefore, how can we say exactly what is going on with Mr. Fu? Maybe he didn't have egg foo yung after all. Maybe he only remembers he had egg foo yung. Maybe what he really had was a shrimp pancake. What I'm trying to say is that his vision of what he ate, or what he did that moment ago, is actually a creation of his own mind now.

MISHLOVE: And that's all we have in the now.

WOLF: And that's all we have in the now, is that constant creation of whatever happened in the past. You know, George Orwell realized this was true when he wrote 1984. He was trying to wake us up to the fact that yes, we are controlling the past. Like for example, in 1945, 1944, the Japanese were the bad guys. If you were to ask a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant American, a WASPA, what is a Japanese person, he would say he was a monkey; he would say he had long fingernails; he would say he doesn't speak very well; he would say he was a subhuman. And in that person's mind, that Japanese person was subhuman. Subhuman means not human -- I mean really a despicable character. It's now 1986, 1987, whatever year this is going to be on television, and now the Japanese are surpassing us in the production of automobiles, televisions, everything, right? And they're not subhuman at all.

MISHLOVE: So we would say that we were deluded back then.

WOLF: Exactly. We would wipe out that past: "Oh, we were totally wrong back there," right? That's what I'm trying to say -- that we are creating the past all the time. We're not going to go back now and make the Japanese the bad guys anymore. Who are the bad guys now? Ah, the Russians. Ten years ago the Chinese were the bad guys.

MISHLOVE: Well, are you suggesting at a deeper level that reality changes, or are we just looking at the changes of the mind?

WOLF: Yes. I'm saying that the reality changes. I'm saying that what was real in that past has actually been created by the minds of today, and what's being written down is modifying and changing that. It is 1984. It's very subtle, and it's not so blatantly obvious as the example I gave of Mr. Fu and the egg foo yung.

MISHLOVE: Or George Orwell.

WOLF: Or George Orwell. It isn't as blatant as that. But it's still a reality we have to live with.

MISHLOVE: How does this affect us, Fred?

WOLF: Well, we're in a kind of nuclear stalemate, holocaustic kind of reasoning right now. It's affecting us right now. We are creating a kind of glorified beauty-of-death vision about the nature of reality right now. There's some kind of feeling going on that it's going to be OK to blow ourselves up. It must be OK to blow ourselves up, because why are we heading in that direction so clearly, so absolutely clearly?

MISHLOVE: I'm not sure we are.

WOLF: You don't think we are?

MISHLOVE: No, I don't know. I'm not sure we are. So maybe my reality's a little -- we'll have a contest of wills here, to see who's going to make it happen.

WOLF: Well, it certainly is a major concern of our societies today.

MISHLOVE: It's in everybody's mind.

WOLF: It's in everybody's mind that that's the direction we're heading in. Now, why is that so?

MISHLOVE: Or it's a probable direction, let's put it that way. It's a probable direction.

WOLF: But it's probable because we believe; the people that think along these lines believe it's inevitable. They believe that it's because we did this in the past, and because we did that in the past, we can't trust them to do this, and we can't trust them to do that. We have a whole picture which goes back, and I said the past is unreal.

MISHLOVE: Well, I'm not sure I agree with what you're saying, sociologically. I don't know what people believe. But perhaps you're right here. I think the deeper issue that you're getting at is that by our thoughts, by our minds, we are creating these realities.

WOLF: That's right, exactly. There's absolutely no reason in the world, not one, not one iota, that we need to blow this place up. Not one. There's not one existing logical, sound reason. There is enough to go around for everybody.

MISHLOVE: And I doubt if we'd ever get anybody on TV who would say that there is.

WOLF: OK. But there is a reason that we're using to blow ourselves up, and that is the basic isolation, the basic mechanism of "I'm alone; you're alone. Don't bother me, bud, because I've got my life to lead. You're Russian; that's fine. You do your thing, I'll do my thing, and man, we're just going to go our own ways." It doesn't work in the world anymore. We have an ecology not only of the material universe, there's an ecology of consciousness. And because of these ideas that I'm talking about in quantum physics, we have in a sense a moral obligation here to create the past to bring out the vision which can see the world in an entirely different light than it's presently being seen. And that I think is a hot issue today. If people could really understand the ideas I'm talking about now -- I'm doing the best I can to present them, but if people could really understand them in a deep-seated sense, they'd realize we don't have to mistrust each other, and we don't have to go through that process, that all is forgiven. There is no past that --

MISHLOVE: Would you say that they'd realize that we are each other?

WOLF: Ultimately that is the great vision -- to recognize that everything is one. There's just one basic being, one basic consciousness, of which we're all parts in some mysterious way -- but not in the simplified way of "You go your way, I go my way, and I don't care what you do, you don't care what I do, as long as we go our separate ways, everything's hunky-dory." It doesn't work that way. If we go our separate ways on a round planet, we're bound to clash as we come around the other side, right? No matter what direction you go off in, you're going to come back together.

MISHLOVE: I think you're talking about something more than a round planet. You're talking about quantum interconnectedness here.

WOLF: I'm talking about global consciousness. I'm talking about the fact that what one being does in some way affects everybody on the whole planet. It's not just separate beings all going their own ways. We are interconnected in ways that are very subtle and not easy to appreciate. It's all a great big ocean of consciousness; it's a living surface of a planet.

MISHLOVE: That's your basic sense of consciousness.

WOLF: That's my basic sense of it, yes. And it goes beyond that, by the way. It goes off into space too. I mean, everything is basically consciousness.

MISHLOVE: I gather from what you're saying that you would therefore see your world view as very compatible with what parapsychologists are researching.

WOLF: I have no problem with what parapsychologists are researching at all, because what is parapsychology? Parapsychology is the workings of science in areas which are very difficult to test. It's called fringe areas. I work in fringe areas myself, so I understand the nature of the problem. It's difficult to test it, and it's difficult to objectify it because we're working on things which break the paradigms of normal mechanistic thinking. So we have to go beyond those paradigms if we're going to have any success at all. So I'm very much a supporter of anything which gives people a new vision of how the universe works.

MISHLOVE: And how about our own understanding of our bodies, in terms of this quantum vision of life?

WOLF: Well, your body is probably the best laboratory for -- you might call it parapsychological experimentation, or quantum physical experimentation. Right now there are consciousness experiments that you can do. With just a turn of your mind, you can begin to experience, for example, your left toe. Suddenly your consciousness is in your left toe. You don't even have to move your left toe to experience it. I can just suggest something to you, and suddenly your mind will go right to that point. I say, "OK, I want to go right beneath, in the crease of your right knee." Suddenly you're there, right? You can feel it. If you want to, you can feel the stocking pressing on the heel of your left foot.

MISHLOVE: Got it, got it.

WOLF: This is what I mean. How can you do that? I mean, how is it -- is this mind doing it? Well, more than just the mind is involved, because obviously there's something very alive going on down where that crease of the foot is, or where the heel is. In my vision of the body -- and I write about this in my latest book called The Body Quantum -- I talk about that the ultimate game would be to become conscious of every living cell, in the same sense that you just became conscious of your toe, or the crease of your right knee, whatever. And if you can do that, I believe that you could find out exactly where the rough spots are, what needs healing. I have a model for healing which is based upon quantum physics. The whole notion here is similar to my world picture. What is illness? Illness is this concept that we can each go our separate ways. Can you imagine one of my cells saying, "Hey, Fred, I want to go my own way, buddy. I don't need you for nothin'. Just keep feedin' me food and I'll just do my own thing." That's called cancer. Got it? That's all it is.

MISHLOVE: Similar to what may be happening on the planet.

WOLF: Similar to what's happening on the planet, exactly. You know, a cancer cell gets it in its mind. In its mind it says, "I'm the only thing around. I'm going to use this sucker to get everything I can from it." So it feeds itself. A cancer cell is a cry for immortality. It has no idea that it's a finite cell. It has no sense of commitment. There was a theory of committed cells that came out in recent physiology, in 1961.

MISHLOVE: We're going to have to cover it quickly, though, because we're just about out of time. We have about thirty seconds, Fred. Can you handle that?

WOLF: Thirty seconds? OK. Very briefly, the idea in this new vision I have is that it is possible to cure yourself of illness by simply becoming aware of where the tight spots are. And I think that's going to be the wave of the future.

MISHLOVE: Great, Fred. We're going to have to do more of this. It's been so exciting. Thank you very much for being with me.

WOLF: You're very welcome. It was fun for me too, Jeffrey.

Physicists are first to 'squeeze' light to quantum limit

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of University of Toronto physicists have demonstrated a new technique to squeeze light to the fundamental quantum limit, a finding that has potential applications for high-precision measurement, next-generation atomic clocks, novel quantum computing and our most fundamental understanding of the universe.

Krister Shalm, Rob Adamson and Professor Aephraim Steinberg of U of T's Department of Physics and Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control published their findings in the January 1 issue of the prestigious international journal Nature.

"Precise measurement lies at the heart of all experimental science: the more accurately we can measure something the more information we can obtain. In the quantum world, where things get ever-smaller, accuracy of measurement becomes more and more elusive," explained PhD graduate student Shalm.

Light is one of the most precise measuring tools in physics and has been used to probe fundamental questions in science ranging from special relativity to questions concerning quantum gravity. But light has its limits in the world of modern quantum technology.

The smallest particle of light is a photon and it is so small that an ordinary light bulb emits billions of photons in a trillionth of a second.. "Despite the unimaginably effervescent nature of these tiny particles, modern quantum technologies rely on single photons to store and manipulate information. But uncertainty, also known as quantum noise, gets in the way of the information," explained Steinberg.

Squeezing is a way to increase certainty in one quantity such as position or speed but it does so at a cost. "If you squeeze the certainty of one property that is of particular interest, the uncertainty of another complementary property inevitably grows," he said.

In the U of T experiment, the physicists combined three separate photons of light together inside an optical fibre, to create a triphoton. "A strange feature of quantum physics is that when several identical photons are combined, as they are in optical fibres such as those used to carry the Internet to our homes, they undergo an 'identity crisis' and one can no longer tell what an individual photon is doing," Steinberg said.

The authors then squeezed the triphotonic state to glean the quantum information that was encoded in the triphoton´s polarization. (Polarization is a property of light which is at the basis of 3D movies, glare-reducing sunglasses and a coming wave of advanced technologies such as quantum cryptography.)

In all previous work, it was assumed that one could squeeze indefinitely, simply tolerating the growth of uncertainty in the uninteresting direction. "But the world of polarization, like the Earth, is not flat," said Steinberg.

"A state of polarization can be thought of as a small continent floating on a sphere. When we squeezed our triphoton continent, at first all proceeded as in earlier experiments. But when we squeezed sufficiently hard, the continent lengthened so much that it began to "wrap around" the surface of the sphere," he added.

"To take the metaphor further, all previous experiments were confined to such small areas that the sphere, like your home town, looked as though it was flat. This work needed to map the triphoton on a globe, which we represented on a sphere providing an intuitive and easily applicable visualization. In so doing, we showed for the first time that the spherical nature of polarization creates qualitatively different states and places a limit on how much squeezing is possible."

"Creating this special combined state allows the limits to squeezing to be properly studied," said Adamson. "For the first time, we have demonstrated a technique for generating any desired triphoton state and shown that the spherical nature of polarization states of light has unavoidable consequences. Simply put: to properly visualize quantum states of light, one should draw them on a sphere."

Quantum Entanglement Theory A Reality

Strange events that Einstein himself called "spooky" might happen at least 10,000 times the speed of light, according to the latest attempt to understand them.

Atoms, electrons, and the rest of the infinitesimally tiny building blocks of the universe can behave rather bizarrely, going completely against the way life as we normally experience it. For example, objects can sometimes be said to exist in two or more places at the same time, or spin in opposite directions simultaneously.

One consequence of this murky realm of quantum physics is that objects can get linked together, such that what happens to one instantaneously has an effect on the other, a phenomenon dubbed "quantum entanglement." This holds true no matter how far apart these objects are from each other.

Einstein rebelled against the notion of quantum entanglement, derisively calling it "spooky action at a distance." One could instead argue that an entangled object releases an unknown particle or some other signal at high speeds to influence its partner, giving the illusion of a simultaneous reaction.

In the past, experiments have ruled out any suspects for such hidden signals from the realm of classical physics. Still, one exotic possibility remains — that such x-factors instead travel faster than the speed of light.

To investigate this possibility, scientists at Geneva in Switzerland began with entangled pairs of photons, or packets of light. These pairs were then split up and sent over fiber optic cables provided by Swisscom to stations at two Swiss villages some 11 miles (18 kilometers) apart from each other. The stations confirmed that each pair of photons had remained entangled — by analyzing one, scientists could predict aspects of its partner.

For any hidden signal to travel from one station to the other in just 300 trillionths of a second — the rapidity at which the stations could accurately detect the photons — any such x-factor had to go at least 10,000 times the speed of light.

As much as Einstein might have disliked the notion of quantum entanglement, he also revealed that signals could not get transmitted faster than light. Any faster-than-light "spooky action at a distance" is therefore implausible, said researcher Nicolas Gisin, a physicist at the University of Geneva. Instead, "what's fascinating here is that we see that nature is able to produce events that can manifest themselves at several locations," he said.

In a sense, these instantaneous events "seem to happen from outside space-time, in that it's not a story you can tell within space-time," Gisin told LiveScience. "This is something that an entire community of scientists is already studying very intensively."

Gisin and his colleagues detailed their findings in the August 14 issue of the journal Nature.