VERIFICATION
THE QUANTUM AND RELATIVITY
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality,
they are not certain,
And as far as they are certain,
they do not refer to reality"
Albert Einstein
A hundred years ago, the scientists of the day, secure in their discoveries of "immutable laws of nature", were confidently proclaiming that the world was like a giant clockwork machine, whose inner workings would soon be discovered. Nature would stand revealed in all its simplicity and science would have nothing further to discover.
But by the end of the nineteenth century, huge cracks were appearing in the structure of this mechanistic scenario. Anomalies which were quite inexplicable in terms of 'classical' physics were clamouring for explanation: the complacency of the physicists gave way to total confusion.
From this confusion, from the ashes of the old classical determinism, there arose two mighty theories, two columns which now underpin the edifice of all modern physical science. They were respectively the Quantum Theory, which deals with the behaviour of the microscopic particles of energy and matter, and the Theory of Relativity, which deals with the behaviour of the macroscopic inhabitants of the universe, the planets, stars and galaxies.
But the greatest problem facing the physicists of to-day is that while there is ample evidence supporting the two theories, they do not support each other. And scientists have now been trying to unify the two theories for a hundred years - with no success whatever.
First, what was the central discovery of the Quantum Theory? It was that, underlying all physical laws, there lurks the hidden principle of the material Universe.
And its name? Individualism. Individualism not only in structure, as demonstrated by the atomic structure of matter, but also in behaviour. And individualism in behaviour means Indeterminacy.
This has perhaps been modern Science's most fundamental and exciting discovery: that nothing is absolutely determined: that truth is to be found in probabilities, never in certainties. The practicalities of the Quantum Theory are determined by the wave equations formulated by Erwin Schrodinger. These give a precise value to the probabilities governing the behaviour of each individual particle, but they give no certainty of prediction.
Of course, if you want to predict the collective behaviour of the trillions of particles which make up the everyday objects we usually have to deal with, you must multiply together all their trillion individual probabilities. You then get a collective probability for the behaviour of the object as a whole that is so enormous that it can be treated as a certainty for all practical purposes. This means that because an everyday object is made up of trillions of particles, we can make confident predictions about how it will behave. Yes, so long as scientists were considering mass effects, the behaviour of trillions of particles collectively, then the classical laws of physics held good. It was only when they had acquired the instruments which enabled them to study the behaviour of single particles that they found that such individual behaviour could only be described in terms of probabilities, never of certainties.
This principle of indeterminacy is one of the main planks of the Quantum Theory. Does it offer any clues in the search for the Meaning of Existence?
Remember that I shall be approaching such questions from a dualist's perspective. I do not believe that 'the Material is All'. I am not impressed by the reductionist approach, by the belief that every individual Whole can be reduced to its parts. I believe that the Whole can be more than the simple sum of its parts. Indeed, I am going further: I am proposing that the Whole is of a different order of reality from its parts.
So, to understand the Quantum Theory, I will be looking at each Whole individual and not simply at its parts.
Let's start then with the one individual Whole which we know best - ourselves.
FREE-WILL
"Who shall command the skylark not to sing?"
Kahlil Gibran
If you were to observe a human individual disobeying a rule of natural behaviour - suppose, for example, you were to see him walking on his hands instead of his feet - you would not be mystified by such aberrant behaviour, for you would know from your own personal experience that anyone walking on his hands is doing so simply because he has chosen to do so: because he is exercising the free-will which is one of the attributes of his individual human Aether
.
Take a look at yourself. First, there's what you look like and second, there's what you think and do. There isn't much you can do about how you look, for the physical structure and appearance of your body are not in your gift: they are determined by your parts, by your cells and organs. But what you think and do as a Whole, how you behave, that's very much your responsibility!
Note that by 'behaviour', I mean purposeful activity. I don't mean the involuntary activities of the body, like the beating of your heart or the cold sweat of fear. Are you driving your car fast or slowly? That is your choice. Has that sheep sought the trees for shade? - or the open hill to get away from the flies? That was its choice. These were examples of behaviour. Behaviour involves choice and choice involves free-will. Your behaviour is controlled by you, by the self, by that Non-Material Something which makes the Whole greater than the sum of its parts, which some call Mind or Consciousness, others call Soul or Spirit, and which we are calling Aether.
So if I were to formulate a natural law about you, I could say that your behaviour is dictated and controlled by your individual Aether.
But natural laws have universal application, so I do not need to be so personal! What I shall say instead is that what is generally true of you and me is also generally true of everything in the Universe. In other words, I deduce a natural law that "behaviour is controlled by Aether".
Aether, therefore, and its manifestation as Free-will would have to be an attribute of every individual entity, however primitive and insignificant.
Free-will is the ability to choose, so every individual would have to have some measure of choice. This would mean that no natural law could ever be absolute or certain: there must always remain the possibility, however small, that an individual might exercise its capacity for choice to disobey any particular law. Obedience to a law could never be predicted with one hundred per cent certainty, even though its probability might be enormously high.
I believe that this is just what the Quantum Theory describes.
What I am suggesting, then, is that it is the immanence of Aether in all materiality that allows free-will and gives the lie to strict mechanistic determinism.
In the nineteenth century, a materialist, a positivist or an atheist could appeal to the findings of Science, which seemed to show that all things behaved in ways which were simply determined by natural laws, by the intrinsic structure and nature of the Universe, which were thus because they were thus. Yes, in the nineteenth century materialism as a philosophy did have some justification in the light of the scientific knowledge then prevailing, even though it had to argue, contrary to all human experience, that man was no more than a complex lump of matter, whose behaviour was unalterably programmed and therefore totally predictable, and whose belief that he had choice and free-will was simply an illusion.
But to stick to such a hypothesis now, in the twenty-first century, would be to deny the very fundamentals of scientific probability, to deny the uncertainty principle, to deny the Quantum Theory.
The truth is that the Quantum Theory has invalidated the materialist philosophy. But it is entirely in harmony with our hypothesis of a self-willed Aether as an inherent component of every individual part of the material universe - an Aether which imposes uncertainty on materiality.
INFORMATION
In recent years, an increasing number of scientists have pointed to the pivotal role played by 'Information' in fundamental physics. Indeed, a whole new branch of physics called 'Information Theory' has been created, largely to be a handmaiden of the new technology of computers. Some pioneers in this field go so far as to claim that 'information' is the fundamental reality. The latest experiments are said to support this view and to offer an explanation for the weirder aspects of quantum mechanics.
Now one thing is certain: information is not material. So on the one hand we have physicists postulating bits of information as the (non-material) building blocks of reality, while we are assigning this role to (non-material) Aethers or consciousnesses.
It seems an exciting possibility, therefore, that the two propositions are mutually supportive: that there is a link between consciousness and information. Indeed, what is information if not that which is received, stored and processed by consciousness? And could Aether exist without Information?
[In Appendix II, I discuss some further possibilities which might flow from a dualist approach to the strange world of the Quantum.]
OUR TIME
When we talk about Time (i.e. the 4th dimension, what I'll be calling Time-4), we distinguish between Past Time and Future Time. Objects and events in Past Time, because they have actually happened, can be known with certainty and are therefore wholly determined. Similarly, objects and events in Future Time, because they have not yet happened and because therefore they cannot be observed, must in logic be wholly unknown, wholly undetermined.
As for objects and events in Present Time, or 'the Now', they are located at the interface between the land of the Unknown, the wholly undetermined Future, and the land of the Known, the wholly determined Past. It seems logical to suppose that objects and events lying in this, the land of the Present, must be characterised by qualities intermediate beween the wholly determined and the wholly undetermined. Being neither wholly knowable nor wholly unknowable, objects or events in the Now can only be described by a range of probabilities. This conclusion is borne out by the strange world of the Quantum, where the Present consists only of probabilities, never of certainties.
The question we now have to ask is this: "How long is this Present? How long is the Now?" What is its duration? How thick is this slice of Time?
The truth is that we simply do not know. Indeed, to be honest, it is not a question that Science is even asking.
However, my hypothesis does shed some light upon it. For a start, I am proposing that Time is the dimension of Aether. This fits in neatly with the definition of Past Time as 'the Known' and Future Time as 'the Unknown', for the terms 'known' and 'unknown' are quite meaningless without an Aether, without an observer, without a 'knower'.
I have already suggested that each and every object in space-time must have, in addition to its extension in Space, some extension in its Time dimension, some characteristic duration of its Now. While I do not know how long this is, my hypothesis (Eighth Proposition) proposes that it is not the same for every level of Aether. Indeed, I go further and propose that in the limit, the gap between levels of Aether can be so large that they inhabit different dimensions. In such cases, the Now of a lower dimension individual will appear to a higher dimension observer as a minute extension of one of its space dimensions, with no duration in its time dimension at all. So that, to take an extreme example, a human observer would be quite unable to observe the Now of, say, an atom.
I am also proposing that the higher the Aether, the longer is the likely duration of its Now. If this is the case, then we should have to predict that the Now of a higher level Aether would overlap the Now of a lower level Aether. I'll illustrate the idea with a little diagram:
A glance at this diagram leads to the prediction that the higher level Aether (HL), should be able to observe from its Now not only the Now of the lower level individual (LL), but also LL's immediate past and future. Thus if HL looks at LL in LL's immediate past, which is determined and known, it will get a different view of it than if it looks at it in its possible/probable Now. In fact, it will be impossible for HL to determine the precise instant at which the unknown future of LL passes into its known past. In a similar way, the eye, which depends on light to observe an object, cannot observe anything that is smaller than the wavelength of light, no matter how powerful the microscope available to it.
When we talk about 'observing', we are talking about using our eyes. As human beings, we cannot observe material objects directly with our Aethers, which as higher order observers have an extra time dimension. No, we have to use our eyes, or rather the outer electrons of the molecules of the retina. These electrons are the particles which alone can absorb the photons which carry information about the material world.
Communication Between Aethers
Here I'd like to mention a point to which I'll be returning later. Einstein showed that the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, is the maximum speed at which signals, and hence information, can be transmitted through space. But this limitation would not apply to Aether, which does not dwell in space. I predict, then, that communication between Aether and Aether could be instantaneous. In Appendix II you will find the phenomenon of 'entanglement' described. Two particles which have a common origin are said to be 'entangled' and as such affect one another instantaneously, no matter how far apart they may be. But, as we shall see, everything had a common origin at the singularity which marked the birth of the universe, so everything should originally have been 'entangled': a physical demonstration of the unity of all aether.
This instantaneous spiritual communication, incidentally, is what most religions have implicitly supposed.
SUMMARY
* Materialism has no explanation for the indeterminacy of particle behaviour, which is the centre-pieces of the Quantum Theory. Materialism has no explanation for the necessary existence of an Observer, which is the centre-piece of the Quantum Theory and of Relativity. But these fit in well with the proposition that each and every particle has its own intrinsic Aether, its own observer.
* This proposition also appears to be entirely in harmony with many of the predictions of the Theory of Relativity, particularly the linkage between Space and Time, the meaning of the Speed of Light, the relationship between matter and energy - and, of course, the necessity for a 'relative' observer!
In my discussion of quantum and relativity theories (most of which I have put in Appendix II as it makes for rather heavy reading), I have tried to show that the first eight propositions of my hypothesis are in harmony with the fundamentals of modern physics.
You will remember that the hypothesis I have been trying to verify proposes that:
(a) Consciousness or, as we are calling it, Aether is the non-material controlling ingredient of every material individual and exists as an integral part of it.
(b) The laws of nature apply to every material particle and object in every part of the universe.
(c) Matter is individuated and hierarchical. This hierarchy is characterised by individuals of ever increasing complexity - a complexity which calls for a longer and longer time dimension or, in the limit, the addition of an extra time dimension or dimensions.
I have tried to show that such a hypothesis is not just in harmony with modern physics, it actually makes key predictions which have been verified by modern experiments. Also, it provides a coherent explanation for some of the more mysterious aspects of quantum and relativity effects.
Having now established a reasonable theoretical basis for my assertion that Aether is part of every individual entity and that the time dimensions of the universe are its 'aetheric
' dimensions, the way is clear for me to complete my hypothesis.