1 result for (book:deavf1 AND heading:"essay 8 sunday may 23 1982" AND stemmed:physicist)
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That all seeming divisions reflect portions of a unified whole is surely one of our oldest concepts, growing, in those terms, with us out of our prehistory as we struggled to grasp the “true” nature of reality. Traditionally we’ve cast that feeling or knowledge in religious terms, for want of a better framework, but I think that more and more now the search is also on within science for a theory—even a hypothesis—that will lock up our often subjective variables into what might be called a more human equivalent of the still-sought-for unified theory in physics. What are human beings, anyhow? From what Jane and I can gather (through our reading especially), at least some of the world’s leading scientists are becoming willing to contend with consciousness itself. (Including their own consciousnesses? I can’t help wondering!) Portions of the latest scientific literature I have on hand, particularly that produced by physicists, contain references that not long ago would have been branded as metaphysical, or even worse.
But I note with some amusement that science absorbs such heresies by weaving them into and developing them out of current establishment thinking—concepts, say, like the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Put very simplistically, this “quantum approach” allows for the theme that each of us inhabits but one of innumerable probable or parallel worlds. Even the theory of evolution is invoked, for those other worlds are said to evolve in parallel with the one we inhabit. Yet there is no answer within quantum mechanics as to how or why one’s personal identity chooses to follow a certain probable pathway, and consciousness per se is not considered. (Some physicists, however, have implied that subatomic particles—photons—communicate with each other as they take their separate but “sympathetic” paths.) Pardon my irony here, but Seth has always dealt with the ramifications of consciousness and maintained also that we do not inhabit just one probable world, but constantly move among them by choice—and by the microsecond, if one chooses.
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I also think that if asked Seth would point out that since the concept of quantum mechanics is based upon the idea that everything we “know”—matter, energy, our sensual information—is made up of quanta, or the interactions of insubstantial fields that in turn, and quite paradoxically, produce very active subatomic packets or particles, then quantum mechanics is at least analogous with his statements that basically the universe is composed of consciousness itself. But I think that the continuum of consciousness, or All That Is, contains not only the phenomena of quantum mechanics, but also Seth’s nonphysical EE (electromagnetic energy) units, and his CU’s (or units of consciousness). In those terms, then, quantum mechanics is a theory that doesn’t penetrate deeply enough into basic reality, even if physicists these days are basing their unified field theories upon quantum thinking. (These theories are themselves quite incomplete, since at this time they incorporate only three of the four basic interactions in nature: electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. So far, gravitation remains outside all attempts at integration.)
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