The Dancing Wu Li Masters (8 page)

In the autumn of 1927, physicists working with the new physics met in Brussels, Belgium, to ask themselves this question, among others. What they decided there became known as the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.
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Other interpretations developed later, but the Copenhagen Interpretation marks the emergence of the new physics as a consistent way of viewing the world. It is still the most prevalent interpretation of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics. The upheaval in physics following the discovery of the inadequacies of Newtonian physics was all but complete. The question among the physicists at Brussels was not whether Newtonian mechanics could be adapted to subatomic phenomena (it was clear that it could not be), but rather, what was to replace it.

The Copenhagen Interpretation was the first consistent formulation of quantum mechanics. Einstein opposed it in 1927 and he argued against it until his death, although he, like all physicists, was forced to acknowledge its advantages in explaining subatomic phenomena.

The Copenhagen Interpretation says, in effect, that
it does not matter
what quantum mechanics is about!
^†
The important thing is that it works in all possible experimental situations. This is one of the most important statements in the history of science. The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics began a monumental reunion which was all but unnoticed at the time. The rational part of our psyche, typified by science, began to merge again with that other part of us which we had ignored since the 1700s, our irrational side.

The scientific idea of truth traditionally had been anchored in an absolute truth somewhere “out there”—that is, an absolute truth with an independent existence. The closer that we came in our approximations to the absolute truth, the truer our theories were said to be. Although we might never be able to perceive the absolute truth directly—or to open the watch, as Einstein put it—still we tried to construct theories such that for every facet of absolute truth, there was a corresponding element in our theories.

The Copenhagen Interpretation does away with this idea of a one-to-one correspondence between reality and theory. This is another way of saying what we have said before. Quantum mechanics discards the laws governing individual events and states directly the laws governing aggregations. It is very pragmatic.

The philosophy of pragmatism goes something like this. The mind is such that it deals only with ideas. It is not possible for the mind to relate to anything other than ideas. Therefore, it is not correct to think that the mind actually can ponder reality. All that the mind can ponder is its
ideas
about reality. (Whether or not that is the way reality actually is, is a metaphysical issue.) Therefore, whether or not something is true is not a matter of how closely it corresponds to the absolute truth, but of how consistent it is with our experience.
^*

The extraordinary importance of the Copenhagen Interpretation lies in the fact that for the first time, scientists attempting to formulate
a consistent physics were forced by their own findings to acknowledge that a complete understanding of reality lies beyond the capabilities of rational thought. It was this that Einstein could not accept. “The most incomprehensible thing about the world,” he wrote, “is that it is comprehensible.”
¹¹
But the deed was done. The new physics was based not upon “absolute truth,” but upon
us
.

Henry Pierce Stapp, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, expressed this eloquently:

Another way of understanding the Copenhagen Interpretation (in retrospect) is in terms of split-brain analysis. The human brain is divided into two halves which are connected at the center of the cerebral cavity by a tissue. To treat certain conditions, such as epilepsy, the two halves of the brain sometimes are separated surgically. From the experiences reported by and the observations made of persons who have undergone this surgery, we have discovered a remarkable fact. Generally speaking, the left side of our brain functions in a different manner than the right side. Each of our two brains sees the world in a different way.

The left side of our brain perceives the world in a linear manner. It tends to organize sensory input into the form of points on a line, with some points coming before others. For example, language, which
is linear (the words which you are reading flow along a line from left to right), is a function of the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere functions logically and rationally. It is the left side of the brain which creates the concept of causality, the image that one thing causes another because it always precedes it. The right hemisphere, by comparison, perceives whole patterns.

Persons who have had split-brain operations actually have two separate brains. When each hemisphere is tested separately, it is found that the left brain remembers how to speak and use words, while the right brain generally cannot. However, the right brain remembers the lyrics of songs! The left side of our brain tends to ask certain questions of its sensory input. The right side of our brain tends to accept what it is given more freely. Roughly speaking, the left hemisphere is “rational” and the right hemisphere is “irrational.”
¹³

Physiologically, the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body. In view of this, it is no coincidence that both literature and mythology associate the right hand (left hemisphere) with rational, male, and assertive characteristics and the left hand (right hemisphere) with mystical, female, and receptive characteristics. The Chinese wrote about the same phenomena thousands of years ago (yin and yang) although they were not known for their split-brain surgery.

Our entire society reflects a left hemispheric bias (it is rational, masculine, and assertive). It gives very little reinforcement to those characteristics representative of the right hemisphere (intuitive, feminine, and receptive). The advent of “science” marks the beginning of the ascent of left hemispheric thinking into the dominant mode of western cognition and the descent of right hemispheric thinking into the underground (underpsyche) status from which it did not emerge (with scientific recognition) until Freud’s discovery of the “unconscious” which, of course, he labeled dark, mysterious, and irrational (because that is how the left hemisphere views the right hemisphere).

The Copenhagen Interpretation was, in effect, a recognition of the limitations of left hemispheric thought, although the physicists at Brussels in 1927 could not have thought in those terms. It was also a
re-cognition
of those psychic aspects which long had been ignored in a rationalistic society. After all, physicists are essentially people who wonder at the universe. To stand in awe and wonder is to understand in a very specific way, even if that understanding cannot be described. The subjective experience of wonder is a message to the rational mind that the object of wonder is being perceived and understood in ways other than the rational.

The next time you are awed by something, let the feeling flow freely through you and do not try to “understand” it. You will find that you
do understand
, but in a way that you will not be able to put into words. You are perceiving intuitively through your right hemisphere. It has not atrophied from lack of use, but our skill in listening to it has been dulled by three centuries of neglect.

Wu Li Masters perceive in both ways, the rational and the irrational, the assertive and the receptive, the masculine and the feminine. They reject neither one nor the other. They only dance.

This is quantum mechanics. The next question is, “How does it work?”

When we talk of physics as patterns of organic energy, the word that
catches our attention is “organic.” Organic means living. Most people think that physics is about things that are not living, such as pendulums and billiard balls. This is a common point of view, even among physicists, but it is not as evident as it may seem.

Let us explore this viewpoint with the aid of a hypothetical person, a young man named Jim de Wit, who is the perpetual champion of the non-obvious.

“It is not at all true,” says Jim de Wit, “that physics is about nonliving things. This is evident from our discussion of falling bodies. Even if some of them are the human kind, they all accelerate at the same rate in a vacuum. So physics does apply to living things.”

“But that is an unfair example,” we say. “Rocks have no choice in the matter of falling. If we drop them, they fall. If we don’t drop them, they don’t fall. Humans, on the other hand, exercise choice. Accidents excluded, humans ordinarily are not found in the act of falling. Why? Because they know that falling may hurt them and they have no desire to be hurt. In other words, humans process
informa
tion
(they know that they may be hurt) and they
respond
to it (by not falling). Rocks can do neither.”

“That is the way things appear,” says de Wit, “but it may not be the way they actually are. For example, by watching time-lapse photography we know that plants often respond to stimulae with humanlike reactions. They retreat from pain, advance toward pleasure, and even languish in the absence of affection. The only difference is that they do it at a much slower rate than we do. So much slower, in fact, that it appears to the ordinary perception that they do not react at all.

“If this is so, then how can we say with certainty that rocks, and even mountain ranges, do not react also as living organisms, but with a reaction time so slow that to catch it with time-lapse photography would require millennia between exposures! Of course, there is no way to prove this, but there is no way of disproving it either. The distinction between living and nonliving is not so easy to make.”

“That’s clever,” we think, “but from a practical point of view, it cannot be observed that inert matter responds to stimulae, and there is no question that humans do.”

“Wrong again!” says de Wit, reading our thoughts. “Any chemist can verify that most chemicals (which usually come out of the ground as rocks)
do
react to stimulation. Under the right conditions, for example, sodium reacts to chlorine (by forming sodium chloride—salt), iron reacts to oxygen (by forming iron oxides—rust), and so on, just as humans react to food when they are hungry and to affection when they are lonely.”

“Well, this is so,” we admit, “but it hardly seems fair to compare a chemical reaction to a human reaction. A chemical reaction either happens or it does not happen. There is nothing in between. When two such chemicals are combined properly, they react; if they are not properly combined, they do not react. Humans are much more complex.

“If we offer food to a hungry person, he might eat it or he might not, depending upon his circumstances; and if he eats, he might eat his fill or he might not. Consider the person who is hungry and late
for an appointment. If the appointment is important enough, he will go without eating, even though he is hungry. If a person knows that his food is poisonous, he will not eat, even though he is hungry. It is a matter of processing information and responding appropriately that distinguishes a human reaction from a chemical reaction. Chemicals have no options; they always must act one way or the other.”

“Of course,” beams Jim de Wit, “but how do we know that our responses are not as rigidly preprogrammed as those of a chemical, with the only difference being that our programs are enormously more complex? We may not have any more freedom of action than stones do, although, unlike stones, we deceive ourselves into thinking that we do!”

We have no way to dispute this argument. De Wit has shown us the arbitrary quality of our prejudices. We would like to think that we are different from stones because we are living and they are not, but there is no way we can prove our position or disprove his. We cannot establish clearly that we are different from inorganic substances. That means that, logically, we must admit that we may not be alive. Since this is absurd, the only alternative is to admit that “inanimate” objects may be living.

The distinction between organic and inorganic is a conceptual prejudice. It becomes even harder to maintain as we advance into quantum mechanics. Something is organic, according to our definition, if it can respond to processed information. The astounding discovery awaiting newcomers to physics is that the evidence gathered in the development of quantum mechanics indicates that subatomic “particles” constantly appear to be making decisions! More than that, the decisions they seem to make are based on decisions made elsewhere. Subatomic particles seem to know
instantaneously
what decisions are made elsewhere, and elsewhere can be as far away as another galaxy! The key word is
instantaneously
. How can a subatomic particle over here know what decision another particle over there has made
at the same time the particle over there makes it?
All the evidence belies the fact that quantum particles are actually particles.

A particle, as we mentally picture it (classically defined) is a thing
which is confined to a region in space. It is not spread out. It is either here or it is there, but it cannot be both here
and
there at the same time.

A particle over here can communicate with a particle over there (by shouting at it, sending it a TV picture, waving, etc.), but that takes
time
, even if only milliseconds. If the two particles are in different galaxies, it could take centuries. For a particle here to know what is going on over there while it is happening, it must
be
over there. But if it is over there, it cannot be here. If it is both places at once, then it is no longer a particle.

This means that “particles” may not be particles at all. It also means that these apparent particles are related with other particles in a dynamic and intimate way that coincides with our definition of organic.

Some biologists believe that a single plant cell carries within it the capability to reproduce the entire plant. Similarly, the philosophical implication of quantum mechanics is that all of the things in our universe (including us) that appear to exist independently are actually parts of one all-encompassing organic pattern, and that no parts of that pattern are ever really separate from it or from each other.

To understand these decisions and what makes them, let us start with a discovery made in 1900 by Max Planck. This year generally is considered the birthday of quantum mechanics. In December of that year, Planck reluctantly presented to the scientific community a paper which was to make him famous. He himself was displeased with the implications of his paper, and he hoped that his colleagues could do what he could not do: explain its contents in terms of Newtonian physics. He knew in his heart, however, that they could not, and that neither could anyone else. He also sensed, and correctly so, that his paper would shift the very foundations of science.

What had Planck discovered that disturbed him so much? Planck had discovered that the basic structure of nature is granular, or, as physicists like to say, discontinuous.

What is meant by “discontinuous”?

If we talk about the population of a city, it is evident that it can fluctuate only by a whole number of people. The least the population of a city can increase or decrease is by one person. It cannot increase by .7 of a person. It can increase or decrease by fifteen people, but not by 15.27 people. In the dialect of physics, a population can change only in discrete increments, or discontinuously. It can get larger or smaller only in jumps, and the smallest jump that it can make is a whole person. In general, this is what Planck discovered about the processes of nature.

Planck did not intend to undermine the foundations of Newtonian physics. He was a conservative German physicist. Rather, he inadvertently fathered the revolution of quantum mechanics by attempting to solve a specific problem dealing with energy radiation.

Planck was searching for an explanation of why things behave as they do when they get hot. Namely, he wanted to know how objects glow brighter as they get hotter, and change color when the temperature is increased or decreased.

Classical physics, which successfully had unified such diverse fields as acoustics, optics, and astronomy, which had all but satiated the scientific appetite, which had unraveled the enigmas of the universe and rearranged them in neat packages, held no sensible explanation of this commonplace phenomenon. It was, to use the parlance of the day, one of the few “clouds” on the horizon of classical physics.

In 1900 physicists pictured the atom as a nucleus that looked something like a plum to which were attached tiny-protruding springs. (This was before the planetary model of the atom.) At the end of each spring was an electron. Giving the atom a jolt, by heating it, for instance, caused its electrons to jiggle (oscillate) on the ends of their springs. The jiggling electrons were thought to give off radiant energy, and this was thought to account for the fact that hot objects glow. (An accelerating electrical charge creates electromagnetic radiation.) (An electron carries an electrical charge [negative] and if it is jiggling, it is accelerating—first in one direction and then in the other.)

Physicists thought that heating the atoms in a metal caused them to become agitated, and this in turn caused their electrons to jiggle up and down and emit light in the process. The energy that the atom absorbed when it was jolted (heated), the theory went, was radiated by the jiggling electrons. (You can substitute “atomic oscillators” if your friends won’t take “jiggling electrons” seriously.)

This same theory also claimed that the energy absorbed by an atom was distributed equally to its oscillators (electrons) and that those electrons which oscillated (jiggled) at higher frequencies (faster) radiated their energy most efficiently.

Unfortunately, this theory didn’t work. It “proved” some very incorrect things. First, it “proved” that all heated objects emit more high-frequency light (blue, violet) than low-frequency light (red). In other words, even moderately hot objects, according to this classical theory, emit an intense blue-white color, just like objects which are white-hot, but in lesser amounts. This is incorrect. Moderately hot objects emit primarily red light. Second, the classical theory “proved” that highly heated objects radiate infinite amounts of high-frequency light. This is incorrect. Highly heated objects emit a finite amount of high-frequency light.

Do not be concerned with high frequencies and low frequencies. These terms will be explained shortly. The point is that Planck was exploring one of the last major problems of classical physics: its erroneous predictions concerning energy radiation. Physicists dubbed this problem “The Ultra-Violet Catastrophe.” Although it sounds like a rock band, “The Ultra-Violet Catastrophe” reflected a real concern with the fact that heated objects do not radiate large amounts of energy in the form of ultraviolet light (the highest-frequency light known in 1900) the way the classical theory predicted.

The name of the phenomenon that Planck was studying is black-body radiation. Black-body radiation is the radiation that comes from a nonreflecting, perfectly absorbing, flat (nonglossy) black body. Since black is the absence of color (no light is reflected or emitted), black bodies have no color unless we heat them. If a black body is glowing a certain color, we know that it is because of the energy that we have
added to it and not because it reflects or emits that color spontaneously.

A “black body” does not always mean a solid body that is black. Suppose that we have a metal box that is completely sealed except for a small hole. If we look inside, what do we see? Nothing, because there is no light in there. (A little light may come in through the hole, but not that much.)

Now suppose that we heat the box until it glows red and then look through the hole. What do we see? Red. (Who said physics is hard?) This is the kind of phenomenon that Planck studied.

All the physicists in 1900 assumed that after the electrons of an excited atom began to jiggle, they radiated their energy smoothly and continuously until they “ran down” and their energy was dissipated. Planck discovered that excited atomic oscillators do not do this. They emit and absorb energy only in specific amounts! Instead of radiating energy smoothly and continuously like a clock spring runs down, they radiate their energy in spurts, dropping to a lower energy level after each spurt until they stop oscillating altogether. In short, Planck discovered that the changes of nature are “explosive,” not continuous and smooth.
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Planck was the first physicist to talk about “energy packets” and “quantized oscillators.” He sensed that he had made a major discovery, one which ranked with the discoveries of Newton, and he was right. The philosophy and paradigms of physics never were to be the same, although it took another twenty-seven years for “quantum mechanics” to take form.

It is difficult today to understand how bold was Planck’s theory of quanta. Victor Guillemin, professor of physics at Harvard, put it this way: