**Doha Meeting**

**"Science, Culture, and the Future of Humanity"**

**(May 31 -- June 1, 2008)**

**Session II: What is the fundamental nature of the world?**

**The Nature of the World, and How We Fit In!"**

**Henry P. Stapp**

**1. The Basic Question, and Why It Is Important.**

The basic question before us here in Doha is this:

"How do we fit in?"

"How are we human beings related to the world we inhabit?

This question is important because our beliefs about our relationship to
the world underlie our *values*, and our values determine the sort of
world we strive to create.

The problems we face today stem primarily from the fact that different
approaches this basic question lead to different conclusions, and hence
to conflicting values.

My topic is:

What does *basic physics* says about the nature of the world,

and about our connection to the world?

The conclusion is this:

Contemporary basic physics gives answers that are very different from
the answers given by the "classical" physics of the seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

This is important because the changed answers lead naturally to a shift
in values that could profoundly affect the future of humanity.

**2. The "Classical" Approach: Materialism.**

Three key ideas of the classical physics of the late nineteenth century
are:

1\. There exists a material universe that develops over the course of
time by means of interactions of tiny material parts with neighboring
tiny material parts.

2\. These interactions are governed by mathematical laws.

3\. These laws entail that *the material future* is completely
determined by the *material past*, *with no reference to human thoughts,
choices, or efforts.*

This conclusion is called: *The principle of* the *causal closure of the
physical*!

This "Principle" seemed at one time so secure, and so central to the
scientific enterprise, that some scientists came to view science as not
just an open-minded empirically based inquiry into the structure of the
world, but also as an *ideology*:

*as a tenacious defender* *of the dogma that we human beings are
essentially material systems governed exclusively by matter-based laws
and hence that our conscious thoughts can have no actual effects upon
our physical actions.*

This dogma leads to an irresolvable conflict between science and most
religions.

**3. Quantum theory rescinds the materialist dogma.**

Contemporary basic physics\-\--specifically quantum mechanics\-\--does
not entail

"The Principle of the Causal Closure of the Physical!

In spite of this loss of its scientific underpinning, the classical
materialist ideology continues to infect the thinking of many scientists
and philosophers.

Tomorrow I shall discuss the impact upon the future of humanity

of this failure of classical materialism

Today I shall focus on the physics.

**4. The Basic Conflict Between Classical and Quantum Physics.**

Classical mechanics assumed that the ideas that work well for large
objects, such as planets, moons, and falling apples, will continue to
work all the way down to the level of the atoms and molecules.

According to this classical notion, each particle, such as an electron,
has a well defined trajectory in space-time. This idea is illustrated in
diagram 1.

![](media/image1.jpeg){width="2.752083333333333in"
height="2.2263888888888888in"}

Diagram 1 shows a possible evolution in time of a system consisting of
three classically conceived electrons. Each particle has a well defined
trajectory in space-time, and each particle repels the others
increasingly as their trajectories come closer together.

The classical-physics laws of motion ensure that the trajectories of all
the particle (and fields) in the universe at times earlier than some
fixed time t fix the trajectories of all particles for all future times.

A principal change introduced by quantum theory is the "quantum
uncertainty principle".

This p*rinciple* asserts that each particle must be represented, NOT by
one single well defined trajectory, but by *a cloud of possible
trajectories*, as is shown in Diagram 2.

![](media/image2.jpeg){width="2.7444444444444445in" height="2.26875in"}

The effect of these uncertainties, *if left unchecked*, would be
disastrous.

The uncertainties at the atomic level tend to bubble up, irrepressibly,
to macroscopic

levels. If the uncertainties originating at the micro-level were left
unchecked from the time of the "big bang", the macroscopic world would
be by now a giant cloud encompassing all possible worlds, in stark
contrast to the essentially single macroscopic world that we actually
observe.

For example, if the uncertainties were left unchecked then the moon
would be spread out over much of the night sky; And each person's brain
would correspond to *a mixture* of all of the many *alternative*
possible streams of consciousness that the person *could in principle*
be having, instead of corresponding to the essentially *single* stream
of consciousness that each of us actually experiences.

To deal with this difficulty the founders of quantum theory were forced
to draw a clean conceptual distinction between the two aspects of
scientific practice, the empirical and the theoretical, and to introduce
a special process to account for their interconnection.

The *empirical component* describes *our experiences* pertaining to what
we human beings do, and to the feedbacks that we then receive.

The *theoretical component* describes objectively existing "particles
and fields".

The process that connects them is called the process of measurement.

This process erects *a firewall* that protects the empirical realm from
the unfettered intrusion of quantum uncertainties from the theoretical
realm.

**5. The Firewall that Holds the Quantum Uncertainties in Check**

But how are the quantum uncertainties held in check?

The theory of the process of measurement was put into rigorous form by
John von Neumann, building on ideas of Werner Heisenberg.

The theory demands that each experience occurs in conjunction with an
*associated* *action*. This action specifies a particular
psychologically understandable *question* that the associated experience
must then answer either 'Yes' or 'No'. (Multiple choice questions can be
reduced to sequences of Yes-or-No questions).

Each such action is a psycho-physical event. It has two related aspects,
one in the empirical domain of "our knowledge", and the other in the
theoretical domain of the mathematical description.

On the empirical side the action specifies a certain possible "increment
in knowledge":

an experientially recognizable 'Yes' response to the question.

[On the theoretical side, this 'Yes' answer is linked to a *reduction*
of the prior theoretical/mathematical state to that part of itself that
is *consistent* with the increase in knowledge corresponding to the
answer 'Yes'.]{.underline}

If nature fails to deliver the answer 'Yes', then the prior physical
state becomes reduced to the part of itself that is associated with the
answer 'No'.

This *action* process is represented in Diagram 3.

![](media/image3.jpeg){width="5.625in" height="4.5in"}

Von Neumann calls the *physical* part of the action by the name "process
1".

Two important facts about process 1:

1.  The process 1 choices enter importantly into the dynamics.

2.  Quantum mechanics does not identify any sufficient physical cause
    for this action!

*Consequently, the "principle of the causal closure of the physical"
fails!*

The measurement process has a second part: the *Yes-or-No feedback* from
the associated action. This second stage is pictured in diagram 4.

![](media/image4.jpeg){width="5.25in" height="3.011111111111111in"}

According to quantum mechanics, the *feedbacks* conform to statistical
conditions that are specified by the theory.

The choice of the *feedback* (or *outcome*) is what Dirac called:

"a choice on the part of nature".

According to quantum mechanics, this choice of *outcome* is statistical,
and it lies outside the hands of human beings.

The choice of *action* is what Heisenberg called

"a choice on the part of the 'observer' constructing the measuring
instruments and reading their recording."

As regards this choice Bohr says:

The freedom of experimentation...corresponds to the free choice of
experimental

arrangement for which the quantum mathematical formalism offers the
appropriate latitude."

These remarks of the founders of quantum mechanics emphasize the clear
difference between the choices of *outcomes*, which are statistically
constrained, and are beyond human control, and the choices of our
actions which, in the context of orthodox quantum theory, at least
*appear* to arise from *our reasons*.

The process of measurement creates a firewall that blocks the unfettered
diffusion of the quantum uncertainties into the empirical realm

It is the choice of action, [which is not controlled by any known
process, statistical or otherwise]{.underline}, but which appears to be
influenced by value-based reasons, that, in conjunction with a
stochastic process 3 choice of feedback, controls what passes through
the firewall!

**6. Conclusions.**

1.  Quantum mechanics rescinds the materialistic conception of human
    beings foisted upon us by classical physics.

2.  Quantum mechanics elevates us, within science, to agents able to act
    on the basis of values erected upon a science-based self-image of
    ourselves as partial-creators of an unfolding universe that is not
    controlled exclusively by the material aspects of reality alone.

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3.  Quantum mechanics also entails that the effects of our independent
    individual creative efforts, occurring in spatially separated
    locations, are linked in ways that are incompatible with the
    classical concept of the causal separability of spatially separated
    parts. The next speaker will elaborate upon this property of quantum
    interconnectedness.