The New Story in Physics: Mind, Matter, and the Nonlocal Universe

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Nadeau
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Classical Physics ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
The World ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Symbolic Universe ◽  
Rational Place

The capacity to acquire and use fully complex language systems made the members of our species fully conscious and self-aware beings in the vast cosmos. But this enormous privilege came with a price. After our ancestors began to live storied lives in a linguistically based symbolic universe, the world that previous generations experienced as an integrated and undivided whole split into two worlds—an inner world where the self that is aware of its own awareness exists and an outer world in which this self seeks to gratify its needs and establish a meaningful sense of connection with other selves. And this explains why the most fundamental impulse in the storied lives of fully modern humans has always been to close the gap between these inner and outer worlds by integrating all seemingly discordant parts of a symbolic universe into a meaningful and coherent whole. The narrative that has consistently served this function is religion. But during the first scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, another narrative emerged called Newtonian or classical physics that also promised to bridge the gap between self and world by integrating all of the seemingly discordant parts of the physical universe into a coherent and meaningful whole. In this physics, one universal force, gravity, governs the motion, interaction, and blending of indestructible atoms or mass points. And since the laws of gravity were completely deterministic, it was assumed that all events in the cosmos are predetermined by the forces associated with these laws and that the future of any physical system could be predicted with absolute certainty if initial conditions are known. In the worldview of classical physics, human beings were cogs in a giant machine and linked to other parts of this machine in only the most mundane material terms. The knowing self was separate, discrete, and isolated from the physical world, and all the creativity of the cosmos was exhausted in the first instant of creation. As physicist Henry Stapp points out, “Classical physics not only fails to demand the mental, it fails to even provide a rational place for the mental.

Determinism and indeterminism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Butterfield
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Physical Science ◽  
Physical Theory ◽  
Classical Physics ◽  
Tentative Conclusion ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
The World ◽  
Determinism And Indeterminism

Over the centuries, the doctrine of determinism has been understood, and assessed, in different ways. Since the seventeenth century, it has been commonly understood as the doctrine that every event has a cause; or as the predictability, in principle, of the entire future. To assess the truth of determinism, so understood, philosophers have often looked to physical science; they have assumed that their current best physical theory is their best guide to the truth of determinism. It seems that most have believed that classical physics, especially Newton’s physics, is deterministic. And in this century, most have believed that quantum theory is indeterministic. Since quantum theory has superseded classical physics, philosophers have typically come to the tentative conclusion that determinism is false. In fact, these impressions are badly misleading. The above formulations of determinism are unsatisfactory. Once we use a better formulation, we see that there is a large gap between the determinism of a given physical theory, and the bolder, vague idea that motivated the traditional formulations: the idea that the world in itself is deterministic. Admittedly, one can make sense of this idea by adopting a sufficiently bold metaphysics; but it cannot be made sense of just by considering determinism for physical theories. As regards physical theories, the traditional impression is again misleading. Which theories are deterministic turns out to be a subtle and complicated matter, with many open questions. But broadly speaking, it turns out that much of classical physics, even much of Newton’s physics, is indeterministic. Furthermore, the alleged indeterminism of quantum theory is very controversial: it enters, if at all, only in quantum theory’s account of measurement processes, an account which remains the most controversial part of the theory.

scholarly journals Global citizenship and the challenge from cultural relativism

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1141
Author(s):  
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Universals ◽  
The World ◽  
Anthropological Research

Do human beings live in a shared world or in several? The traditional answer from social and cultural anthropology has been that although the physical world is uniform, the world as it is perceived by humans is fundamentally and irreducibly diverse, since human worlds are culturally constructed and cultures are unique and particular in character.As a result of this perspective, there has always been a tense relationship between anthropology and universalist claims, as in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. This chapter charts the dialogue and tension between the cultural relativism of classic anthropology and human rights universalism, but the main focus is on the consequences of globalisation for anthropological thinking about diversity and human universals. It is argued that as a direct result of the increased interconnectedness of human societies, classic cultural relativism has become both epistemologically obsolete and normatively objectionable. Although the moral worlds inhabited by humans are still diverse, they are now connected in ways which have implications for the ethics of anthropological research. By discussing a handful of examples, the analytical and moral dilemmas are exposed, and the contrast with mid-20th century anthropology, when the world was still widely seen as ‘an archipelago of cultures’, is made abundantly clear.

Determinism and indeterminism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Butterfield
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Physical Science ◽  
Physical Theory ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Classical Physics ◽  
Tentative Conclusion ◽  
The World ◽  
Determinism And Indeterminism

Over the centuries, the doctrine of determinism has been understood, and assessed, in different ways. Since the seventeenth century, it has been commonly understood as the doctrine that every event has a cause; or as the predictability, in principle, of the entire future. To assess the truth of determinism, so understood, philosophers have often looked to physical science; they have assumed that their current best physical theory is their best guide to the truth of determinism. Most have believed that classical physics, especially Newton’s physics, is deterministic. And in this century, most have believed that quantum theory is indeterministic. Since quantum theory has superseded classical physics, philosophers have typically come to the tentative conclusion that determinism is false. In fact, these impressions are badly misleading, on three counts. First of all, formulations of determinism in terms of causation or predictability are unsatisfactory, since ‘event’, ‘causation’ and ‘prediction’ are vague and controversial notions, and are not used (at least not univocally) in most physical theories. So if we propose to assess determinism by considering physical theories, our formulation of determinism should be more closely tied to such theories. To do this, the key idea is that determinism is a property of a theory. Imagine a theory that ascribes properties to objects of a certain kind, and claims that the sequence through time of any such object’s properties satisfies certain regularities. Then we say that the theory is deterministic if and only if for any two such objects: if their properties match exactly at a given time, then according to the theory, they will match exactly at all future times. Second, this improved formulation reveals that there is a large gap between the determinism of a given physical theory, and the bolder, vague idea that motivated the traditional formulations: the idea that the world as a whole, independent of any single theory, is deterministic. Admittedly, one can make sense of this idea by adopting a sufficiently bold metaphysics: namely, a metaphysics that accepts the idea of a theory of the world as a whole, so that its objects are possible worlds, and determinism becomes the requirement that any two possible worlds described by the theory that match exactly at a given time also match exactly at all future times. But this idea cannot be made sense of using the more cautious strategy of considering determinism as a feature of a given physical theory. Third, according to this more cautious strategy, the traditional consensus is again misleading. Which theories are deterministic turns out to be a subtle and complicated matter, with many questions still open. But broadly speaking, it turns out that much of classical physics, even much of Newton’s physics, is indeterministic. Furthermore, the alleged indeterminism of quantum theory is very controversial: it enters, if at all, only in quantum theory’s account of measurement processes, an account which remains the most controversial part of the theory. These subtleties and controversies mean that physics does not pass to philosophers any simple verdict about determinism. But more positively, they also mean that determinism remains an exciting topic in the philosophy of science.

scholarly journals Is Mind Quantum?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Kauffman ◽  
Dean Radin
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Classical Physics ◽  
Substance Dualism ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Excluded Middle ◽  
Oriented Approach

If all aspects of the mind-brain relationship were adequately explained by classical physics, then there would be no need to propose alternative views. But faced with possibly unresolvable puzzles like qualia and free will, other approaches are required. We propose a non-substance dualism theory, following a suggestion by Heisenberg, whereby the world consists of both ontologically real Possibles that do not obey Aristotle’s law of the excluded middle, and ontologically real Actuals, that do obey the law of the excluded middle. Measurement converts Possibles into Actuals. This quantum-oriented approach solves numerous puzzles about the mind-brain relationship, but it also raises the intriguing possibility that some aspects of mind are nonlocal, and that mind plays an active role in the physical world. We suggest that the mind-brain relationship is partially quantum, and we present evidence supporting that proposition.

scholarly journals The Metaphorical Use of Collocations: A Corpus-Based Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
Yanqin Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Physical World ◽  
English Word ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
Bodily Experience ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
The World ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
National Corpus

The meanings of collocations, which have been accepted as an abstraction at the syntagmatic level, may have been defined by the way human beings conceptualize the world. The patterns in the use of the English word “contain” are summarized using the British National Corpus and an attempt is made to use conceptual metaphors to interpret how these patterns came into being and how they could have derived from human beings’ earliest bodily experience in the physical world. Such insight into English collocations may help improve the teaching of collocations to EFL learners.

scholarly journals The indeterminist objectivity of quantum mechanics versus the determinist subjectivity of classical physics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasil Dinev Penchev
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Hidden Variables ◽  
Classical Mechanics ◽  
Niels Bohr ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Classical Physics ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
Max Born

Indeterminism of quantum mechanics is considered as an immediate corollary from the theorems about absence of hidden variables in it, and first of all, the Kochen – Specker theorem. The base postulate of quantum mechanics formulated by Niels Bohr that it studies the system of an investigated microscopic quantum entity and the macroscopic apparatus described by the smooth equations of classical mechanics by the readings of the latter implies as a necessary condition of quantum mechanics the absence of hidden variables, and thus, quantum indeterminism. Consequently, the objectivity of quantum mechanics and even its possibility and ability to study its objects as they are by themselves imply quantum indeterminism. The so-called free-will theorems in quantum mechanics elucidate that the “valuable commodity” of free will is not a privilege of the experimenters and human beings, but it is shared by anything in the physical universe once the experimenter is granted to possess free will. The analogical idea, that e.g. an electron might possess free will to “decide” what to do, scandalized Einstein forced him to exclaim (in a letter to Max Born in 2016) that he would be а shoemaker or croupier rather than a physicist if this was true. Anyway, many experiments confirmed the absence of hidden variables and thus quantum indeterminism in virtue of the objectivity and completeness of quantum mechanics. Once quantum mechanics is complete and thus an objective science, one can ask what this would mean in relation to classical physics and its objectivity. In fact, it divides disjunctively what possesses free will from what does not. Properly, all physical objects belong to the latter area according to it, and their “behavior” is necessary and deterministic. All possible decisions, on the contrary, are concentrated in the experimenters (or human beings at all), i.e. in the former domain not intersecting the latter. One may say that the cost of the determinism and unambiguous laws of classical physics, is the indeterminism and free will of the experimenters and researchers (human beings) therefore necessarily being out of the scope and objectivity of classical physics. This is meant as the “deterministic subjectivity of classical physics” opposed to the “indeterminist objectivity of quantum mechanics”.

scholarly journals LOKSAMGRAH: AN AFFIRMATIVE THOUGHT FOR SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 246-249
Author(s):  
Jatin Bishoyi
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Social Reconstruction ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Bhagavad Gita ◽  
Minimal Impact ◽  
The World ◽  
Bhagavad Gītā

For Bhagavad-Gita, both individual and society as a whole is dependent on three principal conditions for their existence such as Niskama karma, Svadharma and Loksamgrah.  Loksamgrah is used in a very comprehensive connotation as it not only looks at the collective well-being of this world but the universe as a whole. It is because in Loksamgrah the word ‘Loko’ does not mean only people of this world but all the beings of satyaloka, pitruloka, devaloka, bhurloka and other loka. In Gitarahasya Tilak points out, “The word ‘Loksamgrah’ has been used in the Bhagavad-Gita to mean the maintenance, not only of human beings, but that the human and all others spheres, such as of the Gods etc. should be maintained, and that they should become mutually beneficial”. True to say the recommendation of Loksamgrah on our public life have triggered concerns that public services, ranging from physical world to metaphysical world could become more imperative but in fact, it only would have minimal impact on public life i.e. it only attempts to minimize distress and problems both at individual and society levels. As a whole it could only attempt to inculcate the values of public service and integrity attitude. Radhakrishnan points out that, “Loksamgrah stands for the unity of the world, the interconnectedness of society.  If the world is not to sink into a condition of physical misery and moral degradation, if the common life is to be decent and dignified, religious ethics must control social action”.

The Specter of Polygenesis

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Diversity ◽  
The World

This chapter follows the development of Renaissance debates about the nature of human diversity into the following century, and particularly as they played out in France and England. It focuses in particular on so-called polygenesis, as represented most famously by Isaac La Peyrère's pre-Adamism, according to which different human groups were created at different moments. Furthermore, the chapter considers some of the elaborate attempts to account for the migration of human beings throughout the world in terms of diffusionist models, focusing in particular on the work of the seventeenth-century English jurist Matthew Hale, and arguing that such attempts played an important role in the increasing naturalization of modern paleoanthropology, and therefore also of modern accounts of the nature of human diversity.

The concept of the heroic in V. Nabokov’s Glory [Podvig]

2019 ◽  
pp. 245-265
Author(s):  
Alla V. Zlochevskaya
Keyword(s):  
Personality Traits ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Physical World ◽  
The World ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Narrative Model ◽  
New Interpretation

The article offers a new interpretation of the heroic theme in V. Sirin’s novel Glory [ Podvig ] (1932). The protagonist’s ‘deed’ was not only to show personal courage, but also to fulfil the secret and unabated desire of all Russians scattered across the world (including the author) to return to their country. Nabokov’s/Sirin’s realization of the heroic is based on the threedimensional model of existence, characteristic of mystical metaprose, where the reality of the physical world is fertilized by the author’s metaphysical epiphanies and recorded in the reality of the novel’s text. Glory’s uniqueness also stems from the fact that the character’s inner world is three-dimensional too: of all Nabokov’s characters, Martin Edelweiss is the first to gain such an experience in full. As far as the personality traits are concerned, the protagonist is a very close imitation of V. Sirin himself. Although lacking a talent for writing, Martin still shows a budding skill for prose. All in all, the narrative model creates an illusion of the character and the author blending almost completely.

scholarly journals An Ecocritical Reading of Selected Poems of Muhammad Haji Salleh

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Hamoud Yahya Ahmed ◽  
◽  
Ruzy Suliza Hashim
Keyword(s):  
Physical World ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Significant Feature ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ecological Consciousness ◽  
The World ◽  
Human World ◽  
Literature And Environment ◽  
The Relationship

Ecocriticism is concerned with the relationship between literature and environment or how the relationships between humans and their physical world are reflected in literature. In this paper, we attempt to analyse selected poems of Muhammad Haji Salleh using some concepts from ecocriticism as an analytical lens. The premise of this paper is based on the poet’s symbiotic relationship which has become a significant feature of his work. Using six of his nature poems to exhibit Muhammad’s idea of mutual relationship between the human world and the natural world of environment, we show the poet’s concern about the slightest interference of human beings into the world of nature which results in the disruption of human-nature relationship. Muhammad Haji Salleh does not limit himself to presenting the brighter and darker side of nature, rather he has gone a step further to reveal the very concept of ecosystem and reflect the blossoming of ecological consciousness in modern Malaysian society. This approach of reading Muhammad Haji Salleh exhibits the current interest in the environment and the ways in which it has to be treated with respect and love. By explicating the intrinsic features of nature in his selected poems, we can inculcate environmental awareness and inspire ecological consciousness among people in Malaysia and elsewhere in the world. Keywords: Ecocriticism, ecosystem, interrelationship, ecological consciousness, poetry and Muhammad Haji Salleh

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