Do not be afraid to penetrate the smoke curtain that materialistic science erected. The view is breathtaking.
Chapter 1 – Paradoxes
What are paradoxes? Paradoxes are apparent contradictions with the emphasis on ‘apparent’. My approach in this book will be that every paradox we encounter is telling us that at least one of our basic assumptions is wrong. Thus, if we encounter a paradox we are essentially invited to investigate where and how we went wrong. Such an investigation could uncover astounding new views on reality, views we deemed impossible.
Chapter 2 – The discovery of the solar system
In order to get an idea of how quantum theory originated and why it is so contrary to how we think our world functions, it will be a good idea to investigate first how our current western image of the universe originated. That western image has a history of at least 24 centuries, so no wonder it has become so naturally self-evident to us. But the question is, is this image correct?
Chapter 3 – The clockwork universe and the ether
In this chapter you will be introduced to the way how light was recognized as a wave phenomenon by the discovery of interference effects. This was one of the first moments in history where Newton’s ideas of the universe were severely contradicted. The acceptance of the idea of the wave character of light gave rise to speculations about in what substance it would be oscillating. An intangible ether was assumed initially. Electromagnetic effects were investigated and exactly measured in the first part of the 19th century. Electric and magnetic fields were introduced as mathematical abstractions and acquired quickly the status of objective existing phenomena.
Chapter 4 – The collapse of classical physics
In this chapter we start with a more extensive treatment of the character and behavior of different types of waves – standing waves in particular– in different mediums, in order to understand that they all have very common characteristics.
Before the end of the nineteenth century physicists were already very proficient in mathematics describing the behavior of every known type of wave. Applying their wave mathematics to the quantum world seemed an obvious choice and proved itself to become so highly apt for creating a quantum theory, that quantum physics would become the most successful and accurate physics theory in the 20th century.
Chapter 5 – Uncertainty, the quantum collapse
At around 1920 quantum physics was still a haphazard collection of intelligent ad hoc hypotheses without a solid mathematical connected framework. Compared to the elegancy and robustness of Newtonian physics this was – and is still – highly unsatisfactory and even unpalatable for most physicists. The exact predictability of nature proved to be a mirage, uncertainty of measurement turned out to be a fundamental aspect of nature.
Solid looking particles were found to exhibit wave behavior including interference. The quantum wave that was at first thought to be a spatially spread out physical particle, was soon acknowledged as a more or less non-material possibility wave. The why and how of the abrupt change of the quantum wave into the measured physical particle, turned out to become the hottest debated subject between quantum physicists. A plethora of interpretations – some even connecting the consciousness of the observer with the observed quantum phenomena – proliferated.
Chapter 6 – An obscuring forest of hypotheses
A true forest of conflicting quantum interpretations arises in the 20th century. It became slowly clear that what physicists had considered as well-defined concepts – such at what was exactly meant by a measurement – turned out, on closer examination, as not that clear at all.
It is indicative of the uncertainty concerning the interpretation of quantum physics that there are so many different quantum hypotheses among physicists, after more than 100 years of quantum physics. It is reminiscent of a church split because all these unproven interpretations are just as many beliefs.
In this chapter the eight best known and academically most commonly advocated quantum hypotheses will be investigated and assessed on their merits. In the second part of this chapter a number of critical and revealing experiments in quantum physics will be analyzed. These eight interpretations will be weighed on their merits with regard to these seven experiments.
Chapter 7 – The delayed choice experiments
What if we assume the material view of reality to be the true view? What if we assume that it is a material particle traveling through our measuring instruments? What, in that case, if we ask ourselves when it decides either to behave like a wave and show interference or to behave like a particle that shows no interference? In this chapter we will study extensively the so-called delayed choice experiments proposed by the eminent physicist John Wheeler (1911-2008) who asked himself these questions.
This chapter deals in rigorous detail with the delayed choice experiments, explains them and defends their logical implications for our concept of objective reality.
Chapter 8 – Information, Communication, Entropy
The mathematical concept of information was conceived and formulated by mathematician and engineer Claude Shannon (1918-2001). In physics information is disconnected from meaning. In this chapter I do an effort to reconnect information with our observation: information + observation = meaning.
Chapter 9 – The dubious existence of the photon
You may ask “Is there any moment in time that the photon was a material particle?”. That is a very legitimate question. Upon arrival at the detector, which is the same event in time as its detection, all its energy is transmitted to the receiving electron: an action which is equal to the total annihilation of that photon; because that’s fundamentally all that a photon is, just a small precise amount of energy. When does the photon exist, actually?
Chapter 10 – Retrocausality in physical reality
The Delayed Choice experiments show limited retrocausal effects, where ‘limited’ means that an act of observation in the present would, by that same observation, create a history that, until the moment of this observation, did only exist as a mere possible history. Which is obviously strange. Observing in the morning that the street is wet would, at that very moment, manifest the midnight rain shower.
Chapter 11 – Quantum biology
This chapter is dedicated to that highly interesting new branch of biology, quantum biology, with emphasis on quantum tunneling in living systems. Livings system show a surprising efficiency at many levels. Evolution seems to have learned how to use quantum coherence.
Chapter 12 – A possible model. Descartes and the illusion of the world
How do we know for sure whether the world exists objectively? Descartes arrived a good part on the way to an answer to that question but stumbled at the end because he couldn’t accept the uncertainty of: ‘I cannot know for sure’. But what is actually wrong with his Cartesian model? Why does it still survive as a subject for philosophical discussions despite having a bad reputation? In any case, we will dwell on that ambiguity. What now is really the problem of the duality of body and mind? And what is the Cartesian Theater?
Departing from Descartes’ rejection of the possibility of the world as illusion, I will try to refresh and argue for an old hypothesis, dating from between the fifth century to the second century BCE, that would be able to explain all enigmatic quantum phenomena based on the premise of a single primary consciousness: One Mind – Multiplayer – Inner Reality (OMMIR).
Chapter 13 – Falsifiability of the consciousness hypothesis
One of the most important criteria for a good theory according to the philosopher of science Karl Popper is its falsifiability. Apart from some purely formal mathematical proofs, any proof that a theoretical model is correct is strictly speaking not a proof but merely a confirmation of theory. If the predictions of the theory are correct, this is a confirmation of the reliability of the predictions, but not proof of the correctness of the model.
This chapter deals with some proposals for experiments to falsify the models presented in chapter 12.
Chapter 14 – Consilience
Should the idea of a consciousness independent from the brain only surface from the field of quantum physics, and not be supported elsewhere in the domains of science, the evidence for the role of consciousness would be as wobbly as a table with a single leg.
This chapter deals with the concept of consilience and why that is an important way of mutually affirming scientific confirmation for the existence of a consciousness being independent of the body.
Chapter 15 – Some assorted thoughts
On my website I publish regularly short blogs concerning quantum physics and the recent findings in this field of expanding knowledge. You can find them on https://quantumphysics-consciousness.eu/index.php/en/selected-blogs/. In this chapter you find, as examples of what I publish there, a small re-edited selection of these blogs.
Chapter 16 – The trodden path
Summary and conclusion .
Although I have argued in the book that the world is an unbelievably detailed and consistent illusion, experienced by you and me as fragments of a cosmic consciousness, it would not be wise to destroy it. It was very probably meant to enjoy it.