Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2007 21:26:25 -0400
From: Tim Eastman <plasmas@starpower.net>

Subject: quotes

Here are some special quotes from Henry's book "Mindful Universe" -
a must read for all of our team!- these are possible quotes for a
textbox or two in the proposal.

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"[Conscious] choices are not fixed by the laws of the new physics,
yet these choices are asserted by those laws to have important causal
effects in the physical world. Thus contemporary physical theory
annuls the claim of mechanical determinism." [Preface VII ]

"it is the revised understanding of the nature of human beings, and
of the causal role of human consciousness in the unfolding of
reality, that is, I believe, the most exciting thing about the new
physics, and probably, in the final analysis, also the most important
contribution of science to the well-being of our species." [p. 6,
bottom]

"The aspects of nature represented by the [quantum] theory are
converted from elements of being to elements of doing. The effect of
this change is profound: it replaces the world of material substances
by a world populated by actions, and by potentialities for the
occurrence of the various possible observed feedbacks from these
actions. Thus this switch from 'being' to 'action' allows - and
according to orthodox quantum theory demands - a draconian shift in
the very subject matter of physical theory, from an imagined universe
consisting of causally self-sufficient mindless matter, to a universe
populated by allowed possible physical actions and possible
experienced feedbacks from such actions. A purported theory of matter
alone is converted into a theory of the relationship between matter
and mind." [p. 20, top]

"The proposition, foisted upon us by a materialism based on classical
physics - that we human beings are essentially mechanical automata,
with every least action and thought fixed from the birth of the
universe by microscopic clockwork-like mechanisms - has created
enormous difficulties for ethical theory. These difficulties lie like
the plague on Western culture, robbing its citizens of any rational
basis for self-esteem or self-respect, or esteem or respect for
others. Quantum physics, joined to a natural embedding ontology,
brings our human minds squarely into the dynamical workings of
nature..." [p. 117, bottom]

"It is curious that some physicists want to improve upon orthodox
quantum theory by excluding 'the observer', who, by virtue of his
subjective nature, must, in their opinion, be excluded from science.
That stance is maintained in direct opposition to what would seem to
be the most profound advance in physics in three hundred years,
namely the overcoming of the most glaring failure of classical
physics, its inability to accommodate us, its creators. The most
salient philosophical feature of quantum theory is that the
mathematics has a causal gap that, by virtue of its intrinsic form,
provides a perfect place for Homo sapiens as we know and experience
ourselves." [143, bottom]

"The falseness of that [classical] deviation of science must be made
known, and heralded, because human beings are not likely to endure in
a society ruled by a conception of themselves that denies the essence
of their being." [145, bottom]

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