Quantum
Physics and Spiritism II:
Comments on Some Paradoxes
Alexandre Fontes da Fonseca
Department of Chemistry,
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, New Jersey,
08854-8087, USA
Instituto de Física da
Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, S.P, Brazil.
The
phenomena at quantum level present very different characteristics from
those of our daily experience. Nevertheless, it is early to believe
that spiritual agents cause them.
This paper was first
published in Portuguese in the 487th – November 2003 - issue Jornal
Alavanca, in Campinas, SP. This version is the author’s translation of
the original paper.
In
a previous paper [1], we presented an alert on some statements about
Quantum Physics and spiritist or spiritualistic ideas. Here, we intend
to comment on why the paradoxes from the quantum phenomena generate the
idea that God or the spirits are behind them. We shall discuss a
spiritualistic proposal of the Prof. Dr. Amit Goswami, published in his
book “The Self-Aware Universe”[2], to solve these paradoxes. Prof.
Goswami was one of the invited speakers in the IVth National Conference
of the Brazilian Spiritist Medical Association, occurred June,
19th-20th in São Paulo, 2003.
One
of the quantum phenomena that makes people pay attention is the
so-called The
Quantum Jump,
where a particle “disappears” from one position (or a state) where it
is and it “appears” in other position (or state) without traveling
through the space or occupying the spaces between the initial and final
positions. This phenomenon has suggested the idea that the
particle dematerializes in the initial position and materializes in the
final one. Then, the idea of comparing this phenomenon with what the
Spiritist Doctrine teaches about the materialization of objects appears
easily in the mind of people not used to think scientifically. The
mistake occurs, first because the isolated particles are not comparable
to macroscopic objects. Second, the thinking that the “particle is
dematerialized here and materialized there” is a classic way of
reasoning because we are used to see macroscopic objects that are made
of particles. There is not enough information and experiments to
conclude that the phenomena of dematerialization and materialization of
macroscopic objects described by Spiritism occur in the same way that
occur for the microscopic particles: the quantum jump. It is important
to remember that the intrinsic mechanisms of the quantum jump are not
completely understood by Science.
Other
interesting characteristic of the microscopic world is the so-called duality
wave-particule.
It means that a quantum object presents characteristics now as a
particle, now as a wave, depending on how we are “looking” at it, i.e.,
depending on how the experiment is prepared to make a given measure of
its properties. The interesting aspect here is the fact that it depends
on our choice about the kind of experiment. We shall come back to this
point later.
There
is a postulate of the Quantum Mechanics called the
collapse of the wave function.
A wave function is a mathematical function related to the physical
properties of a given quantum system. In accordance to Quantum Theory
the state of a system before making a measurement is represented by the
superposition of all possible situations. Only after making a
measurement a value of a given physical property is expressed. So, it
is said that the wave function collapsed to the state represented by
the measured value of that physical property. Here, as in the case of
the duality wave function the observer plays a decisive role in the
characterization of the physical properties of the system.
Another
phenomenon that was tested experimentally is the so-called phenomenon
of non-locality.
In an experiment known as “the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment” the
possibility of sending information instantaneously from a point of the
space to another was verified. The quantum jump and the collapse of the
wave function are also non-local phenomena.
We
don’t need to mention other examples in order to recognize that the
quantum phenomena are completely different from our daily experiences.
This strange and mysterious characteristic of these phenomena has
leaded some spiritist brothers to formulate spiritualistic
extrapolations so as to explain them. Despite the good intention of
verifying the agreement between Spiritism and the modern theories of
Science such studies need to be performed with much more rigour and
care than that of the usual scientific works. It is because the
responsibility of divulging spiritist statements related to Science is
enormous. The reader can imagine what a scientist will think if he or
she reads a strange or wrong scientific statement. It can repel him or
her from be interested in Spiritism because of a wrong precipitated
statement.
We
wish to comment on something with respect to the Prof. Dr. Amit
Goswami’s thesis. He proposes the so-called Idealistic Philosophy as
the solution for the paradoxes of the quantum phenomena presented
above. In accord to Goswami [2] one solution would be to postulate the
existence of a big consciousness or a cosmic consciousness that would
be all-present (to solve the problem of non-locality) and it would be
connected to each human being (to solve the problem of the collapse of
the wave function).
This
proposal is very interesting in the spiritualistic
point
of view and, in our opinion, it constitutes the first serious
spiritualistic proposal based on a scientific subject. Note that we
used the word spiritualistic
and
not spiritist.
The reason for that is that, in our analysis, despite the
big or cosmic consciousness
introduced by Goswami could be interpreted as the Creator, it does not
solve or mention the problem of the Spirit as an individual
consciousness. This is in disagreement
with
the Spiritist Doctrine that states that we are the “individualization
of the intelligent principle” [3] (issue 79 of The
Spirits’ Book),
and that the intelligent principle is independent of the matter.
As
the Prof. Goswami was a special invited speaker in the MEDINESP 2003,
it is important to remember the alert made in the previous paper [1] in
order to orientate the reader to receive Goswami’s proposals with
precaution. We write down the words of the spirit of Erasto [4]: it is
preferable to “reject
10 truths than accept just one lie”(our
remarks and translation from the original in Portuguese).
We
also would like to take the advantage to invite the reader to the
exercise of prudence when he hears or reads, even from a spiritist
person that scientific disciplines, as Physics, Chemistry or Biology
are proving
spiritist
ideas. We have to take care about all material divulged with the
adjective spiritist.
Even the results of more serious research as the Prof. Goswami’s
proposal must not be considered as completely true. It would be
interesting to ask several professional scientists from the fields of
Physics, Chemistry and Biology about these “new findings” before
accepting them. It is very important that the authors of each work of
research publish the
complete explanation of the mechanisms and the details behind theirs
proposals.
It helps the reader to make a critical analysis of each idea. A
statement does not have scientific value just because it is related to
a scientific subject or because its author is a scientist. Each new
idea must be analyzed in order to see and check the reasoning behind.
It
is good to remember that the paradoxes of the quantum phenomena are not
completely solved by the scientific community. The most prudent
attitude is waiting for the development of the researches in this field
of knowledge so as to have more certainties about the subject.
As
a physicist, I can say that despite we still do not know the deeper
mechanisms of the phenomena found by Modern Physics, they do not prove
anything
against the basic principles of the Spiritism. And what I,
particularly, consider to be too much important to say is that the
phenomena of Modern Physics can
not be used to claim
that the Spiritist Doctrine needs to be updated.
References
[1]
A. F. da Fonseca, Jornal Alavanca n. 485, p. 5, (2003).
[2]
A. Goswami, O Universo Autoconsciente, Editora Rosa dos Tempos, 4a.
Edição (2001). The title of the original in English is:
The Self-Aware Universe.
[3]
A. Kardec, The Spirits’ Book, FEB, 2a. Edition (1996).
[4]
A. Kardec, Revista Espírita 8, p.257, (1861).