“To the memory of David Bohm, whose intellectual honesty in facing the difficult philosophical issues of quantum theory has been deeply inspiring”. (Norman Friedman, echoed by me)

=====================================================================================

    This is the latest in a series about the relationship between the quantum physics revolution and a spiritual worldview. For a guide to what has preceded, see under Religion and Spirituality on the Blog Index Page (click here). It is believed by many that this relationship is real, and highly significant in that it paves the way for a reunification of science and religion. However, in the previous article I discussed Ken Wilber’s claim that there is no such relationship. This new article can be read in isolation, especially if you’re interested in David Bohm, but it will make most sense if you’ve read this preceding article.

    In Quantum Questions Wilber, without mentioning Bohm by name, said: “Today we hear of the supposed relation between modern physics and Eastern mysticism… the implicate order, the holographic paradigm…” This is an obvious reference to Bohm’s theories, and Wilber then says that any similarities “where they are not purely accidental, are trivial when compared with the vast and profound differences between them”. It is therefore ironic that a few years later Norman Friedman wrote Bridging Science and Spirit, with the subtitle Common Elements in David Bohm’s Physics, The Perennial Philosophy and Seth¹, choosing Wilber as his spokesperson for the Perennial Philosophy, and making observations about the numerous similarities between their viewpoints. Wilber, having devoted a whole book to explaining that there is no connection between quantum physics and mysticism, is now apparently going to have it explained to him how he has got this wrong! (The Seth material is not relevant to my theme here, so please research this for yourselves if interested — search for Seth/Jane Roberts.)

    In my estimation Bohm is the most spiritual of the quantum physicists, and makes the most explicit statements in relation to a spiritual worldview. Below I’ll explore that by following Friedman’s exposition. Before that, here are some of his preliminary remarks.

    His book opens with a foreword by Fred Alan Wolf. This is also ironic, since he is another passionate advocate of the relationship between quantum physics and spirituality, who Wilber would think is mistaken, along with Fritjof Capra, the principal target of his complaints in Quantum Questions. Wolf is very complimentary about Friedman’s book, and says that he is a big fan of David Bohm. He reaffirms Wilber’s viewpoint that mystics, unlike physicists, experience the hidden reality directly, but rejects his claim that physics can have nothing to say about this. He believes that David Bohm’s scientific thinking leads to this underlying reality.

    Friedman does not seem to be aware of Wilber’s book and his low opinion of Capra. In his preface he is complimentary about the latter, and answers Wilber’s principal objection, saying “Capra is uniquely qualified to comment on these connections because of his research in high-energy physics and his mastery of meditation techniques. His insights are necessarily general because of the differences in approach between the mystic and the physicist, and because the mystical experience is by nature ineffable” (p16).

    I’ll turn now to Friedman’s account of Bohm’s thinking.

    According to the standard version of quantum physics, particles do not have real existence but have tendencies to exist, and following Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, it is impossible to know both the position and momentum of an electron, which can therefore be predicted only as probabilities. Various physicists, including Bohm, have felt uncomfortable with this model, and “have proposed various solutions in their search for a mathematical construct that will bring determinism back into physics” (p33). (Einstein also disliked the probabilistic model, but could not find an alternative.) This quest to find something beyond and deeper than the probabilistic aspect of events is called the search for Hidden Variables, and Bohm is the physicist most associated with it.

    The majority of physicists have rejected Hidden Variables theory, and have therefore retained the probabilistic version, even though it is somewhat mind-boggling. Thus Carlo Rovelli has written recently: “The price to be paid for taking this theory seriously is to accept the idea that an entire physical reality exists that is in principle inaccessible to us… Is it worth assuming the existence of an unobservable world… only to assuage our fear of indeterminacy?². However, what Rovelli dislikes — the existence of a world unobservable to physicists — is precisely the position of Ken Wilber, the eight physicists he quoted extensively in Quantum Questions in support of his views, and also the physicists he criticises — Fritjof Capra, and by implication Fred Alan Wolf (all as quoted in the previous article). As Friedman says: “The basic operations of our three-dimensional world are manifestations of something going on outside our perceived space. The events of our world require an underlying dimension or process. This hidden arena is not definable in mechanistic terms”.

    We should not therefore rush to reject Hidden Variables because physicists like Rovelli are uncomfortable with the idea. It’s worth noting that he makes the mistake of calling the unobservable world an ‘entire physical reality’, when of course it is not physical, rather non-material; since the very beginnings of quantum physics the reality of substance has been denied.

    According to (John) Bell’s theorem, which I believe is not seriously disputed, any hidden variable theory must involve non-locality, otherwise information transfer would have to occur at speeds faster than light, which is believed to be impossible according to Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. Therefore, as Friedman says, “to accommodate both special relativity and his own nonlocal view of reality, Bell postulates the existence of another (or ‘deeper’) level than our universe. The instantaneous interconnectedness of quantum particles must be accomplished outside our three-dimensional universe” (p35).

    This appears to be the starting point for Bohm’s thinking. He “has suggested a field that does not inhabit space-time, a transcendental realm in which all places and all times are merged” (p35). Ken Wilber should take note that, contrary to what he says, this transcendental realm is inferred directly from the accepted conclusions of quantum physics, not “trivial” speculations.

    The first issue to be addressed is the collapse of the wave function. According to the original Copenhagen interpretation, “the quantum field specifies the probability of finding a particle at a given position in space if one happens to be looking; the particle is a manifestation of the field when observed. When we look at it, it is a particle. When we are not looking, it is a wave, but a wave that is not real”. This wave function is essentially passive: “It cannot stimulate action from within itself. It requires an agent to make a choice among its probabilities for the three-dimensional world to be formed” (p39).

    Many physicists have assumed that it must be human consciousness that is responsible for collapsing the wave function and creating external reality. Bohm, however, “feels that there is such an agent within all matter that performs this function”. He “became convinced that a hidden variable theory was possible and that quantum theory (i.e. the Copenhagen interpretation) was not the last word”.

    After further reflection on these questions, in 1980 he published Wholeness and the Implicate Order, which presented “a new conception of order in which the nature of reality and consciousness are described as a coherent whole, consisting of an unending process of enfoldment and unfoldment from a hidden level called the implicate order”, which is “the nonmanifest aspect of reality; it is outside space-time”. “This concept, in turn, led to the postulation of a meaning or consciousness throughout nature, which Bohm called ‘soma-significance’ ” (p42). If that doesn’t sound like a spiritual worldview, I don’t know what would.

    I’ll now compare the worldviews of Wilber and Bohm. Let us not forget that the latter arrived at his conclusions based on his study of physics, not because he was already attracted to Eastern religions.

    Wilber’s worldview is derived from what is known as the Great Chain of Being. Various versions of this have different numbers of levels, even up to twenty, but these precise details do not matter; it is the principle that is important. In Quantum Questions he provides a simple hierarchy of five levels — matter, life, mind, soul, and spirit. He says that “each higher level contains functions, capacities, or structures not found on, or explainable solely in terms of, a lower level. The higher level does not violate the principles of the lower, it simply is not exclusively bound to or explainable by them. The higher transcends but includes the lower and not vice versa… And it is this ‘not-vice-versa’ that establishes and constitutes hierarchy” (p16).

    According to Friedman, “Bohm has described a ‘hierarchy’ of levels wherein information from the higher level influences that of the lower level, while the higher level itself is influenced by the next level above it. So, in a sense, we have two aspects at each level, depending on our point of view. Looking downward, we see a more explicated order; looking upward, we see a more implicated order… Each level is capable of organizing levels below into various structures or orders” (p78). Can anyone see any difference between these two viewpoints?

    Bohm postulates an ultimate unlimited, undefinable, unmeasurable ground of everything, an unbroken totality which he calls the holomovement. Wilber says: “On the one hand, then, spirit is the highest of all possible domains; it is the Summit of all realms, the Being beyond all beings. It is the domain that is a subset of no other domain, and thus preserves its radically transcendental nature”. How is this different from Bohm’s holomovement?

    Wilber continues: “On the other hand, since spirit is all-pervading and all-inclusive, since it is the set of all possible sets, the Condition of all conditions and the Nature of all natures, it is not properly thought of as a realm set apart from other realms, but as the Ground of Being of all realms, the pure That of which all manifestation is but a play or modification. And thus spirit preserves its radically immanent nature”. Thus, “at infinity, we have reached a paradoxical limit: spirit is that which transcends everything and includes everything” (p16). For Bohm his term holomovement, as well as being the highest level in isolation, “the infinite-dimensional ground of All That Is”, is also the totality of all levels, “a spectrum, a continuum of consciousness with matter on its lowest rung” (p72). Again, where is the difference?

    Bohm also postulates a hierarchy of implicate orders — obviously analogous to the Great Chain of Being — thus levels of organisation and creativity, “the source from which both our physical and mental worlds are created” (p78). “The second implicate order he calls a source of formative, organizing, and creative activity” (p71). Wilber describes a soul-realm which refers to the level of Platonic Forms, archetypes, and so on. How is this soul-realm different from Bohm’s second implicate order? And yet ‘implicate order’ was one of the “trivial” terms that Wilber mocked in Quantum Questions.

    I suggest therefore that Bohm’s worldview, despite the different terminology, is indistinguishable from that of Wilber (thus Eastern religions, the Perennial Philosophy). And it’s not just Friedman that sees great similarities between them. He reports that “Bohm’s ideas and those of Ken Wilbur have been compared in several publications, including interviews in The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes” (p16). Yet Wilber claimed in Quantum Questions that there was no relationship between the findings of quantum physics and Eastern religions (mysticism). He would seem to be a somewhat lone voice crying in the wilderness.

    As I said above, Bohm appears to be the most spiritual of the quantum physicists. We therefore have to accept that he does not represent the mainstream viewpoint although, unsurprisingly, he is frequently praised and quoted in spiritually oriented literature. Was he a genius who saw more deeply into the great enigma, or was he simply mistaken? As I’m not a physicist, I’m not qualified to judge.

    I’ll leave the last word to Gary Zukav, whose The Dancing Wu Li Masters featured earlier in the series. He says that, even though Eastern religions differ considerably among themselves, “all eastern religions are compatible in a very fundamental way with Bohm’s physics and philosophy… While it would be naïve to overstate the similarities between Bohm’s physics and eastern philosophies, it would be foolish to ignore them”. He then offers three quotes, saying that, if taken out of context, “there is no absolute way of knowing whether these statements were made by Professor Bohm or a Tibetan Buddhist”. They were in fact taken from physics lectures given by Bohm.

    In similar vein to what I just said, Zukav notes that “Bohm’s theories are received with some scepticism by most professional physicists”. However, “they would find an immediately sympathetic reception among the thousands of people in our culture who have turned their backs on science in their own quest for the ultimate nature of reality”. (I have to confess that I would count myself as one of that group.) “If Bohm’s physics, or one similar to it, should become the main thrust of physics in the future, the dances of East and West could blend in exquisite harmony”³.

======================================================================================

Footnotes:

1. Living Lake Books, 1990 and 1994

2. Helgoland, Allen Lane, 2021, p56

3. Fontana/Collins, 1979, p327

    This is the latest in a series which explores the links between the quantum physics revolution and the worldview of spirituality. For a guide to what has preceded, see under Religion and Spirituality on the Blog Index Page (click here). 

================================================================================================

    This theme of a connection between quantum physics and spirituality/mysticism was obviously very tempting because, according to Ken Wilber, writing in 1984, “literally dozens of books” had appeared in the previous decade claiming to describe this relationship. It would be pointless to go through them all — I’m not even aware of all of them — so here I’m going to focus on just two authors, Gary Zukav and his cult classic The Dancing Wu Li Masters¹, and the less well known Michael Talbot. I won’t go into great detail, since they are saying broadly the same things as the previous two authors.

    At the beginning of his book, Zukav describes a chance meeting with the T’ai Chi Master Al Chung-liang Huang at Esalen Institute in California, while he was there attending a physics conference. Huang said: “When I studied physics in Taiwan, we called it Wu Li. It means ‘Patterns of Organic Energy’ ”. Zukav says that “everyone at the table was taken at once by this image. Mental lights flashed on, one by one, as the idea penetrated. ‘Wu Li’ was more than poetic. It was the best definition of physics that the conference could produce” (p31). This is interesting, given that it wasn’t a physicist who pointed it out.

    Zukav goes on to explain that Chinese is a very difficult language, since the same ideogram can have several different meanings. “ ‘Wu’ can mean either ‘matter’ or ‘energy’ ”. How could the Chinese have intuited this before Einstein? ‘Li’ can mean ‘universal order’ or ‘universal law’ or ‘organic patterns’, hence the interpretation of ‘Wu Li’ (physics) as ‘patterns of organic energy’. Here is a profound intuition of the relationship between the laws of physics and the true nature of ‘matter’, and again we are confronted with the mystery of how ancient peoples had such a profound understanding of nature before the advent of modern science. As Zukav says, “this is remarkable since it reflects a world view which the founders of western science (Galileo and Newton) simply did not comprehend, but toward which virtually every physical theory of import in the twentieth century is pointing” (p32).

    Zukav, as well as providing a clear history and interpretation of the quantum physics revolution, reiterates some familiar themes:

1. that the basic building blocks of matter are non-material.
2. that there is an “invisible universe underlying, embedded in, and forming the fabric of everything around us” (p45). This is reminiscent of Fred Alan Wolf’s statement, quoted in the earlier article: “We only know that there is something other than space-time but we don’t know what it is, because beyond space-time is nonphysical, unmeasurable. But what is beyond space-time is within everything”².
3. that there may be no such thing as inorganic matter: “When we talk of physics as patterns of organic energy, the word that catches our attention is ‘organic’. Organic means living. Most people think that physics is about things that are not living, such as pendulums and billiard balls. This is a common point of view, even among physicists” (p70). However, “the distinction between organic and inorganic is a conceptual prejudice. It becomes even harder to maintain as we advance into quantum mechanics. Something is organic, according to our definition, if it can respond to processed information. The astounding discovery awaiting newcomers to physics is that… subatomic ‘particles’ constantly appear to be making decisions!” (p72). Having discussed the matter further, he concludes: “The philosophical implication of quantum mechanics is that all of the things in our universe (including us) that appear to exist independently are actually parts of one all-encompassing organic pattern, and that no parts of that pattern are ever really separate from it or from each other”. Such a conclusion comes as no surprise to students of Eastern religions.
4. that “for the first time, scientists attempting to formulate a consistent physics were forced by their own findings to acknowledge that a complete understanding of reality lies beyond the capabilities of rational thought” (p63). As Zukav points out, this was something that Einstein could not accept. It had, however, been insisted on by Capra in The Tao of Physics.
5. that, while classical physics assumes that there is an external world which exists apart from us, quantum physicists believe that, to some extent, we create external reality. They seriously ponder questions like, ‘Did we create the particles that we are experimenting with?’ 

    The last point explains why physicists have become so interested in the role of consciousness in physics. As Zukav points out, “when we study nature there is no way around the fact that nature is studying itself“. Physics has become a branch of psychology, or perhaps the other way round”. Having quoted Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli, he says that, if they are correct, then “physics is the study of the structure of consciousness” (p56). We spiritually oriented people would say that, given that nothing exists except consciousness, what else is there that physics could study?

    Turning now to Michael Talbot, I don’t intend to summarise his books in the same way, as he is going over material familiar from those I’ve already looked at. I mention him, rather than anyone else, because of his personal appeal to me, and in case Medium readers are unaware of him, and would like to investigate this fascinating topic further.

    He was not a professional physicist, rather a student of physics. He does seem to have a very good understanding of the issues, however. His main book is Mysticism and the New Physics³, but he has a special interest in the idea of the holographic universe, which is one of the main features of the connection between quantum physics and the spiritual worldview. He has written another book with that title⁴. This connects him strongly with the physicist David Bohm, who will be the subject of a later article in the series.

    According to the back cover of the first book mentioned, he grew up in a haunted house, which led to a lifelong involvement with the paranormal, a subject I find especially interesting. He is therefore very open-minded about the weirdness of the universe. Fred Alan Wolf describes him as “one of the cleverest writers around today… his eclectic mind ranges far into the deepest and often most controversial mysteries of modern science”⁵.

    Instead of summarising his book, I’ll quote the publisher’s blurb from the back cover, since this contains all the main points that I’m trying to address in this series:

    “The new physics, the physics of quantum theory, tells us what the mystics have been proclaiming for centuries — reality is an illusion. According to the new physics, consciousness plays a role in the so-called physical universe. Since the time of Newton, physics has always tried to maintain a strictly empirical approach. This has demanded a dispassionate observer and a concentration on objective reality as a single observable ‘something’, a priori to the consciousness. But the findings of the new physics show us that we cannot observe the physical world for it is an illusion, and we are participating within a spectrum of all possible realities. It is at this point that mysticism and the new physics meet, a meeting place examined in this book which explores the idea that the implications of this confluence are that all of our notions about the absoluteness of the physical universe are wrong. According to the author, we are experiencing the first pangs of a radical change in our view of reality. Slowly and painfully we are realizing the obvious – our concepts are based upon a most intriguing maya. Our constructs need amending. The very epistemological foundations of our environment and ourselves must shift as our prejudices are attacked. How the omnijective nature of reality will change Western civilization remains to be seen. The only certainty is that the changes will be stupendous”.

    Whether or not there will be stupendous changes will of course depend on how quickly the population of the world takes on board these implications. According to climate change theorists, time may be running out.

    Having made the case with these four authors that there is a strong connection between the quantum physics revolution and the Eastern religions, in the next article this story will take a strange turn.

==========================================================================================

Footnotes:

1. Fontana, 1979

2. Space-Time and Beyond, 1975, my copy Bantam 1983, p56

3. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981

4. The Holographic Universe, 1991, my copy HarperCollins, 1996

5. as 4, back cover.

    This is part 4 of a series which explores the links between the quantum physics revolution and the worldview of spirituality. In the first article (click here) I outlined why I think the quantum physics revolution is so important for the future of humanity; it appears to be the catalyst for the reunification of science and religion that we so urgently need. In the second article (click here) I outlined the ensuing history of this idea — the significant figures and books. In the rest of the series, I intend to summarise and review them one by one, in order to explore in more depth these ideas. In the previous article (click here) I looked at Fred Alan Wolf’s Space-Time and Beyond, which I believe was the first to make the relevant comparisons. It was followed soon afterwards by Fritjof Capra’s highly influential book The Tao of Physics¹, which is my topic here.

    The most significant difference between them is that Wolf outlines a general spiritual worldview that he believes follows on from the discoveries of quantum physics, whereas Capra makes specific comparisons with Eastern religions, having chapters on Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Zen. He says that “Eastern mysticism provides a consistent and beautiful philosophical framework which can accommodate our most advanced theories of the physical world” (p13). This is important because “the awareness of the profound harmony between the world view of modern physics and the views of Eastern mysticism now appears as an integral part of a much larger cultural transformation, leading to the emergence of a new vision of reality that will require fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions and values” (p16).

    It is an interesting question how these ancient sages acquired such a detailed understanding without, we assume, the benefit of modern technology, how they managed to be thousands of years ahead of Western science. Capra believes that it must have been through spiritual, meditative practices. Since he wrote his book, however, there have been many researchers who believe that in ancient times there were civilisations with highly advanced technologies. It is possible therefore that the scientific/spiritual understanding of the Eastern religions was some kind of legacy from these earlier civilisations.

    Here are some of the relevant breakthroughs of quantum physics mentioned by Capra. Firstly, “the experience of all phenomena as manifestations of a basic oneness” (p362). The assumption of classical physics that the world can ultimately be understood through a process of reductionism is no longer tenable. There are no fundamental building blocks since the parts can no longer be well defined, rather “the properties of the parts can only be fully understood through the dynamics of the whole” (p361).

    Secondly, we do not inhabit a mechanical universe, rather a network of relations. It was previously believed “that there were fundamental structures, and then there were forces and mechanisms through which these interacted, which gave rise to processes”. Now process is primary; “every structure we observe is a manifestation of an underlying process” (p362). Putting these two together, Capra says that the universe is “an interconnected, dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interdependent and have to be understood as patterns of a cosmic process” (p363).

    Thirdly, as is well known, quantum physics identified the importance of the role of the observer/experimenter in the whole process of science; “we can never speak about nature without, at the same time, speaking about ourselves” (p363). There has therefore been a shift from objective to epistemic science; it is no longer possible to believe in objective scientific description, independent of the human observer.

    As Capra points out, none of these ‘discoveries’ would come as a surprise to any student of Eastern mysticism, thus:

• the basis of all Hinduism is the idea “that the multitude of things and events around us are but different manifestations of the same ultimate reality” (p99), a basic oneness called Brahman. This is “a Void which has an infinite creative potential”, and “can easily be compared to the quantum field of subatomic physics. Like the quantum field, it gives birth to an infinite variety of forms which it sustains and, eventually, reabsorbs” (p234).
• the universe is thus perceived to be a complex cosmic web. The Buddhist text, the Avatamsaka Sutra provides a “description of the world as a perfect network of mutual relations where all things and events interact with each other in an infinitely complicated way” (p151).
• “In Eastern mysticism, this universal interwovenness always includes the human observer and his or her consciousness” (p152). Eastern mystical traditions “have always regarded consciousness as an integral part of the universe” (p332).

    It is important to note that there are different interpretations of the consistent results of quantum experiments, so that we cannot talk about one unified quantum theory. Capra is heavily influenced by:

• S-matrix theory, which “comes very close to Eastern thought, not only in its ultimate conclusion, but also in its general view of matter. It describes the world of subatomic particles as a dynamic network of events and emphasizes change and transformation rather than fundamental structures or entities” (p307)
• the bootstrap theory of Geoffrey Chew.

    The latter is somewhat controversial. Capra believes that this theory is profound, yet it is “so foreign to our traditional scientific ways of thinking that it is pursued only by a small minority of physicists” (p365). He describes it thus:

• Chew’s “bootstrap theory of particles unifies quantum mechanics and relativity theory into a theory that represents a radical break with the entire Western approach to fundamental science” (p360).
• “The bootstrap hypothesis not only denies the existence of fundamental constituents of matter, but accepts no fundamental entities whatsoever — no fundamental laws, equations or principles — and thus abandons another idea which has been an essential part of natural science for hundreds of years… A very different attitude has now been developed. Physicists have come to see that all their theories of natural phenomena, including the laws they describe, are creations of the human mind; properties of our conceptual map of reality, rather than of reality itself” (p317).

    The radical nature of this theory might therefore lead one to doubt Capra’s conclusions². As he points out, however, it is completely consistent with the ancient Eastern philosophies:

• “The world view of the Eastern mystics shares with the bootstrap philosophy of modern physics not only an emphasis on the mutual interrelation and self-consistency of all phenomena, but also the denial of fundamental constituents of matter… There is no room for any fixed fundamental entity” (p322).
• “The universe is an interconnected whole in which no part is any more fundamental than the other, so that the properties of any one part are determined by those of all the others” (p323)
• “The experience of interpenetration in the state of enlightenment (as described in the Avatamsaka Sutra), can be seen as a mystical vision of the complete ‘bootstrap situation’, where all phenomena in the universe are harmoniously interrelated” (p324).

     Whether or not Capra is justified in accepting Chew’s theory so enthusiastically, his ideas are exciting for me because he:

• speculates about “the intriguing possibility of relating subatomic physics to Jungian psychology and, perhaps, even to parapsychology” (p341)

• says that the bootstrap theory “may lead to the unprecedented possibility of being forced to include the study of human consciousness explicitly in our future theories of matter” (p351)

• speaks favourably about David Bohm, who I believe is the most important of the quantum physicists from a spiritual perspective. (There will be a separate article about him later in the series.) Capra says that he “has perhaps gone further than anybody else in studying the relations between consciousness and matter in a scientific context” (p352).

• sees the quantum physics revolution as a significant aspect of the new emerging paradigm which has the potential to save the planet.

    On that last point Capra says: “Before the seventeenth century, the goals of science were wisdom, understanding the natural order, and living in harmony with it. In the seventeenth century this attitude, which one could call an ecological attitude, changed into its opposite. Ever since Bacon the goal of science has been knowledge that can be used to dominate and control nature, and today both science and technology are used predominantly for purposes that are dangerous, harmful, and anti-ecological.

    The change of worldview that is now occurring will have to include a profound change of values; in fact, a complete change of heart — from the intent to dominate and control nature to an attitude of cooperation and nonviolence. Such an attitude is deeply ecological and, not surprisingly, it is the attitude characteristic of spiritual traditions. The Chinese sages of old expressed it beautifully: ‘Those who follow the natural order flow in the current of the Tao’ ” (p368).

    Amen to that!

    Footnotes:

1. originally published in 1976. Here I’ll be referring to the third edition, Flamingo 1992.
2. The bootstrap theory has been undergoing something of a revival. See for example this article, including: “The bootstrap languished for decades at the bottom of the physics toolkit. But recently the field has been re-energized as physicists have discovered novel bootstrap techniques that appear to solve many problems. While consistency conditions still aren’t much help for sorting out complicated nuclear particle dynamics, the bootstrap is proving to be a powerful tool for understanding more symmetric, perfect theories that, according to experts, serve as ‘signposts’ or ‘building blocks’ in the space of all possible quantum field theories”.

    In the first article in the series, I outlined why I think the quantum physics revolution is so important for the future of humanity. In the second article I outlined the ensuing history of this idea — the significant figures and books. In the rest of the series, I’ll summarise and review them, beginning with Fred Alan Wolf.

    Some of what follows may appear to be closer to the language of a poet, so let me begin by saying that he is a professional theoretical physicist, and former Professor of Physics. His Space-Time and Beyond¹ appeared in 1975. To my knowledge this was the first book which focused on the parallels between the newfound worldview of quantum physics and what ancient religions had been saying for centuries. He says: “The wisdom of thousands of years of mystical experience is walking hand in hand with the emerging knowledge of our sciences”.

    I don’t wish to mislead readers by overstating the case, so I’ll try to make it as clear as possible where Wolf is coming from. He is somewhat contradictory, for on the one hand he says: “The thoughts presented are supported by recent scientific theory. All are referenced to papers and commentary”. However, on the same page he is here more reserved: “Many of the scientific theories presented herein are quite speculative”. Other interpretations may make more sense in the future, but “this is now” (p 15). He later describes himself as a visionary rather than a conservative physicist, and says that visionary physics “is an art form based upon scientific fact and extrapolation from fact into areas of human thought and endeavor that would not normally be included in physics. Visionary physics is the kind of physics done by physicists on the back of envelopes over a cup of coffee. It is ‘shoptalk’ on concepts. It is always a risky business” (p 125). We should therefore not rush to accept some of his ideas as established science; they are nevertheless exciting from a spiritual point of view.

    As I noted in the previous article, even though Wolf is a physicist, this is not a normal academic book. It is divided into two parts. The first (up to p 121) is full of cartoons and pithy aphorisms, so that it almost seems to be aimed at children. Wolf then provides a scientific commentary (p 125 onward). (Page numbers below will therefore indicate which section the quote comes from.) Here are some of his most significant statements around four topics.

1.  “We only know that there is something other than space-time but we don’t know what it is, because beyond space-time is nonphysical, unmeasurable. But what is beyond space-time is within everything” (p56).

    Thus the material universe is not all that there is, but is generated into existence from a non-material level. Everything within the material universe is a product of this non-material level.

    So what is matter made of? “ ‘Matter’ may be nothing but gravitationally trapped light (energy). The chair is not solid but a fantastic interplay of vibrating, spinning rings of light in the turbulent sea of space” (p 46). This echoes Genesis 1.3 where God’s first command is “Let there be light”, which we can assume is therefore the basic building material of the lower levels. Or in Wolf’s words: “The incomprehensible unaware oneness beyond space-time (i. e. God) becomes aware of itself, creating light. Light chases itself in gravitational collapse!” (p 47).

    Or, “is it (matter) pure consciousness?” (p 56). “All of space-time is constructed by consciousness” (foreword). It doesn’t seem to matter whether matter is made of light or consciousness, however, because “we have come to know that consciousness and energy (light) are one”. “Could consciousness itself be pure energy? Perhaps the many forms of energy are similar to the many forms of consciousness… Perhaps all of the different forms in the universe are just different forms of consciousness manifesting as observers and things observed” (p 161).

    Thus matter is ‘made of’ consciousness, and “you and I are ripples in the turbulent sea of space” (p 35).

2. However, the ‘I’ that we perceive ourselves to be is not our true self. “Consciousness is the totality beyond space-time — what may in essence be the real ‘I’… What we perceive as ourselves is only the localized projection of the totality of our true selves” (foreword). This is in agreement with the core of Hinduism, as stated in the Chāndogya Upanishad: “This finest essence — the whole universe has it as its Self: That is the Real: That is the Self: That you are, Śvetaketu!”²

    Or in different words, “perhaps the universe is a gigantic space-time hologram made up of interfering quantum waves” (p 144). Again the hologram idea links to this spiritual notion of each individual human as a microcosm of the universe. Going even further, Wolf states: “The whole of the universe, all knowledge is contained within each individual and each thing. Know a grain of sand completely and you know the universe in its entirety” (p 44). He is here obviously thinking of the lines of the mystical poet William Blake in Auguries of Innocence: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And a Heaven in a Wild Flower. Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour”.

    “You cannot be aware of what is beyond space-time but you can walk in this dream in contact with the higher consciousness that is the real you” (p119). Since “the real ‘I’ is beyond space-time”, “there is no death, only a change of awareness, a change of cosmic address” (p 108). This sounds remarkably like the immortality of the soul, or at least the immortality of consciousness.

3. The universe is a single, unified whole: “Every part of your universe is directly connected to every other part” (p 33). Since “there is no real boundary between living and nonliving things”, “the whole universe is alive, and… there is really only a one unbroken whole” (p 138). According to Wolf, therefore the universe is a living organism, which is a return to the ancient worldview of animism.

4. “Perhaps the universe is just one big dance. If quantum waves are the basis for all matter and consciousness, then it is reasonable to say that rhythm is necessary. For all waves must have periodic or rhythmic movement” (p162). The Hindus have for thousands of years been calling the universe “the dance of Shiva”.

    So there is much speculation (visionary physics), and use of the word ‘perhaps’. Wolf claims, however, that “the thoughts presented are supported by recent scientific theory”. They are presumably therefore not groundless fantasies, but are to some extent based in the realms of intuition and imagination, both of which are necessary ingredients if science is to progress.

    Similar ideas reoccur in the writings of Fritjof Capra, Gary Zukav, and Michael Talbot; they will be the subjects of the next articles in the series.

Footnotes:

1. originally 1975, my copy Bantam 1983

2. in Hindu Scriptures, Dominic Goodall (ed.), Phoenix Giant, 1996, p 140

    In the first article in this series, I outlined why I think the quantum physics revolution is so important for the future of humanity. I concluded it by providing some quotes from the early pioneers who, in their search for the ultimate building-blocks of matter, discovered that they don’t actually exist, that matter is in fact immaterial. Here I’ll outline the ensuing history of this idea. Since it is obviously going to take a long time to work through and review all this material, my purpose here is simply to make readers aware of this history, in case anyone would like to do some research of their own into this fascinating topic.

    The story is in two parts, with a dividing line in 1985. Relevant figures and books, in approximate chronological order, are:

• Fred Alan Wolf, Space-Time and Beyond, 1975. This is an early attempt to draw parallels between quantum physics and the viewpoint of ancient religions. Even though the author is a physicist, this is not exactly an academic book. It almost seems to be aimed at children, full as it is with cartoons and pithy aphorisms. It is nevertheless a useful compendium of the ideas about the nature of reality from a quantum viewpoint. In a later book he wrote: “Quantum Mechanics, perhaps more clearly than any religion, points to the unity of the world”¹.
• Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (1976). This is the first detailed exploration of the perceived relationship between the new science and the Ancient Wisdom.
• Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters: an Overview of the New Physics (1979). A non-scientist describes twentieth century physics (both relativity and quantum) for the general public. The back cover, presumably written by the publisher, describes the book as “an absorbing guide to the mind-stretching mysteries of the new physics (which) points out striking parallels with modern psychology and eastern mysticism”.
• Michael Talbot, Mysticism and the New Physics (1981). The back cover states: “The new physics, the physics of quantum theory, tells us what the mystics have been proclaiming for centuries”.

    Other significant books from this early period, more scientific and referring not quite so specifically to mysticism, were:

• David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980). He was the most spiritual of these later quantum physicists. This is his most significant book, which explores the idea of the material world emerging from other levels of reality, in agreement with spiritual traditions.
• Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (1983). He is more restrained than some of these others. He sees himself as a conventional physicist, not wishing to rush to adopt mystical ideas, rather to expand the frontiers of science. He is nevertheless very open-minded about the problems of materialist science. The back cover says that he explains “how the recent far-reaching discoveries of the new physics are revolutionizing our view of the world and, in particular, throwing light on many of the questions formerly posed by religion”. The book discusses the creation of the universe, and contains chapters on Mind and Soul, the Self, the Quantum Factor, Time, the Fundamental Structure of Matter, and the Physicist’s Conception of Nature. He later wrote The Mind of God (1992).

    At this point the story takes a strange twist. In 1985 Ken Wilber, Perennial Philosophist and prolific writer on spiritual matters, entered the debate with Quantum Questions². He says: “In the past decade there have appeared literally dozens of books (I must have missed some!), by physicists, philosophers, psychologists, and theologians, purporting to describe or explain the extraordinary relationship between modern physics, the hardest of sciences, and mysticism, the tenderest of religions. Physics and mysticism are fast approaching a remarkably common worldview, some say…”(p 3). Wilber wishes to challenge and put a brake on this tendency, and in this book quotes what the early physicists actually said. He claims that “these pioneering physicists did not believe that physics and mysticism share similar worldviews… (but) they nevertheless all became mystics”, and wonders why this is so (P ix).

    I’m not sure how much influence this book had, but in the following period this tendency to compare quantum physics to mystical ideas seemed to change course, or at least be less explicit. Ironically, however, when in 1990 Norman Friedman wrote Bridging Science and Spirit, he chose Wilber as the spokesperson for the spiritual viewpoint, and David Bohm for quantum physics, concluding that they were saying essentially the same thing. The foreword was by Fred Alan Wolf (see above), who said: “The gap of understanding separating the two seemingly irreconcilable viewpoints of spirituality and science can be bridged… These two approaches aim toward the very same truths”.

    In this later period, two trends are worth noting. Firstly, some physicists from a quantum viewpoint are critical of Darwinian evolutionary theory. (It is therefore reasonable to ask whether evolutionary biologists have taken on board the implications of quantum physics, the most successful scientific theory of all time.) Examples would be:

• Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint
• Danah Zohar, The Quantum Self
• Amit Goswami, Creative Evolution
• Also worth mentioning is the former Darwinian biologist Bruce Lipton, who completely changed his views following his discovery of quantum physics. He tells his story in The Biology of Belief.

    Secondly, following the quantum revolution, physicists suddenly became very interested in the nature of consciousness. This was a general preoccupation, but some of the more important examples are:

• Danah Zohar’s The Quantum Self. In one of her later chapters she dares to bring God into the discussion about the implications of quantum physics.
• Fred Alan Wolf’s Mind and the New Physics
• Roger Penrose’s The Emperor’s New Mind and Shadows of the Mind
• Amit Goswami’s The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World.

    Despite this apparent consensus in favour of a connection between spirituality and quantum physics, a small minority of physicists remain unconvinced, impervious to all these arguments. The most strident of the opponents, as far as I am aware, is the late Victor Stenger, author of The Unconscious Quantum, clearly a provocative title given the idealist tendencies of the majority of quantum physicists. He is also the author of God the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist (no comment.)

    Also noteworthy is Jim Al-Khalili, physics professor and populariser of science for BBC TV and radio. He is a physicist who does research into quantum biology; he nevertheless describes himself as an atheist and in 2013 become president of the British Humanist Association. I assume he hasn’t read much of the above literature!

    The latest development, at the time of writing, is that Carlo Rovelli, theoretical physicist and populariser of science, has a new book out called Helgoland in which he attempts to explain quantum physics to the general public. I haven’t read it yet, but I heard him being interviewed on the radio for an hour last week. Two points stood out. Firstly, he would appear to be returning to what Fritjof Capra started, pointing out the connection with Eastern religions, since he has a chapter on the Buddhist teacher Nagarjuna. (I understand from a review that he also reflects on Hinduism.)

    Secondly, he is making the controversial claim that quantum entanglement (action-at-a-distance) is not real, but illusory (one review does say that he is putting his own interpretation of quantum physics centre stage). That will be an interesting read.

==================================================================================

Footnotes:

1. Taking the Quantum Leap, Harper and Row, 1989, p249

2. Shambhala, 1985

    I believe that quantum physics is the most significant cultural development of the last hundred years, not just for science, but for society and civilisation in general, and this for two reasons. It is at the vanguard of a new scientific paradigm, an emerging worldview that can potentially rescue humanity from the follies of scientific materialism. At the same time it is rediscovering and connecting with the ideas and the worldview of ancient peoples before the advent of the philosophical and scientific movement known as the Enlightenment. It is thus the foundation stone of a reunification of science and religion, a tool in the battle against atheism and secularism, which is a necessary way forward for humanity. These are, of course, not original ideas of mine; they are prevalent in much scientific literature of the last fifty years, which is where I found them.

    I recently gave a Zoom talk on these themes, which included positive references to several quantum physicists. I was surprised therefore when I received a comment afterwards via email, criticising me for praising quantum physics in this way. My correspondent wrote: “On the one hand you warn about the physicalist, reductionist science paradigm, yet you quote many quantum scientists. I started out as a physicist specializing in theoretical, nuclear and astrophysics, but always had difficulty with quantum mechanics. Being doubtful of theoretical physics (as you point out what is genuine science and what is metaphysical presumption), my career has been in practical materials science”. My critic then lists some of the appalling technology that, in his estimation, quantum physics has brought us.

    I responded, asking for some clarification, specifically on the point that he seemed to be including quantum physics as part of the physicalist paradigm. In his reply he said that he was indeed saying “that quantum mechanics is part of the physicalist paradigm. This paradigm has been developing during the centuries of the modern era; QM is an extension of the physicalist paradigm, modifying it but does not break out from it. Most of QM thinking is abstract, theoretical and disconnected from any experience of nature, and while thinking in this space we lose sight of the scale and proportion to which it refers. I remind myself that QM is the mechanics of the very small, at the level of the atom and deals in idealized concepts and relations, and it is so easy to assume erroneously that these ideas apply to all realms; quantum in this context means small amount”. (All italics mine, in order to highlight the points with which I take issue.)

    I was very surprised by these comments, since my correspondent is highly intelligent, involved in and deeply knowledgeable about spiritual matters. I had always thought that the main problems preventing the new paradigm inspired by quantum physics from breaking through were, firstly, that its implications have not been sufficiently appreciated and incorporated by the other sciences, specifically evolutionary biology, and secondly that its implications have not sufficiently penetrated the consciousness of the general public. I had not considered the possibility that it could be rejected in principle in this way. I therefore thought it would be worthwhile to do a series of articles on the relationship between the quantum physics revolution, the new scientific paradigm, and their connection with the spiritual traditions of the past, hopefully to make these connections as clear as possible. In this introduction, I’ll begin by responding to these criticisms, leaving the most important until last:

    1. With regard to the technology developed from quantum thinking¹, any new knowledge can be used for both good and evil purposes. One obvious example would be that, as soon as humans developed powered flight, it was used to drop bombs. Also, the study of chemistry and biology increases our knowledge of life and the universe, allows advances in medicine, but humans can also use the knowledge to create chemical and biological weapons. So I would argue that knowledge is neutral, and that the underlying scientific theories cannot be held responsible for human behaviour.

    2. On the nature of the theory, my correspondent describes quantum mechanics as “ abstract, theoretical and disconnected from any experience of nature” and purely mind without emotion. We can easily agree that the maths and the equations are abstruse, and incomprehensible to anyone other than specialists, also that the theory is abstract. (It is not so clear that it is disconnected from nature, as I will discuss in point 3.) Quantum physics has been described as the most successful scientific theory of all time. By this is meant that its experimental results have been precisely confirmed many times over. There is, however, no general agreement about what it all means, i.e. the philosophical implications; there are various interpretations of the theory. Nevertheless, there is a certain consistency in many of the statements made by quantum physicists when, getting away from all the maths and equations, they write for the general public about what they think the experimental results of this obscure science imply.

    3. My correspondent believes that the quantum realms (the micro-level) are distinct from, and apparently unrelated to, everyday reality (the macro-level) where classical physics applies. He says that “we lose sight of the scale and proportion to which (quantum mechanics) refers. I remind myself that QM is the mechanics of the very small, at the level of the atom… and it is so easy to assume erroneously that these ideas apply to all realms”.

    He says ‘erroneously’, but the very least that could be said is that this is a minority viewpoint; I’m struggling to think of any physicist who makes such a bold claim. On the contrary, according to scientist/philosopher Bernardo Kastrup: “The scientific consensus today is that classical, macroscopic physics arises as the compound result of fundamental microscopic (quantum) laws, only the latter being metaphysically real”. On that point he quotes physicist Erich Joos: “Simply to assume, or rather postulate, that quantum theory is only a theory of micro-objects… leads to the endlessly discussed paradoxes of quantum theory. These paradoxes only arise because this particular approach is conceptually inconsistent… In addition, micro- and macro-objects are so strongly dynamically coupled that we do not even know where the boundary between the two supposed realms could possibly be found. For these reasons it seems obvious that there is no boundary”. “Whichever interpretation (of quantum mechanics) one prefers, the classical world has been ruled out”².

    4. Most surprising therefore was my correspondent’s belief that quantum physics is an extension of the physicalist paradigm, “modifying it but does not break out from it… QM is the mechanics of the very small, at the level of the atom”. I’ve never heard such a claim before and, to say the least, it is somewhat unusual. One can understand such a statement insofar as quantum physics was the continuation of the search for the ultimate building-blocks of matter. However, it went beyond the level of the atom to the sub-atomic realm. The word quantum may mean literally ‘very small’, but that is not what the early quantum physics revolution discovered. What they found was not the very small, rather that the ultimate building blocks of ‘matter’ do not really exist; the quantum ‘small amount’ actually disappeared:

• Sir James Jeans: “The universe is looking less like a great machine, and more like a great thought”³.
• Werner Heisenberg: “The smallest units of matter are not physical objects… They are forms, structures, or — in Plato’s sense — Ideas”⁴.
• Sir Arthur Eddington: “The external world of physics has thus become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions”⁵.

    This was a return to the viewpoint of the ancient religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, and philosophers, most notably Plato, as expressed in his famous allegory of the cave. Jeans uses this allegory as the epigram for his book. Heisenberg mentions Plato specifically. Eddington was also clearly thinking of Plato’s allegory in his liberal use of the words ‘shadow’ and ‘shadowy’, not just in the quote above.

    Since shadows are non-material, these are decisive statements in favour of the philosophy of Idealism, in agreement with the ancient religions, that mind is the primary reality, and that what appears to be matter is an illusion. The early quantum physicist who made perhaps the clearest statement suggesting this spiritual interpretation was Max Planck: “There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter”⁶.

    To sum up, my correspondent had said that quantum mechanics “is an extension of the physicalist paradigm, modifying it but does not break out from it”. He was therefore comparing it to Einstein’s modifying and developing of Newton’s theories to accommodate greater velocities, while remaining a classical theory. This viewpoint seems to be contradicted by the quotes above. As Stanislav Grof says in Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science: “Twentieth century physics have questioned and transcended every postulate of the Newtonian-Cartesian model… (Reality) is entirely different from the seventeenth century model used by mechanistic science… The world of substance was replaced by that of process, event, and relation”⁷.

    In the next article, I’ll outline the history of the debate around quantum physics and spirituality.

Footnotes:

1. Some of the examples he offers are: nuclear weapons, drone technology, cyber warfare, propaganda, brain washing and indoctrination. It is not relevant to my argument whether or not these are actually developments from quantum theory or not.

2. Decoding Jung’s Metaphysics, iFF Books, 2021, p 49. 

The Joos quotes are taken from ‘The Emergence of Classicality from Quantum Theory’, in The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion, P. Clayton and P. Davies (editors), OUP, 2006, p 74–76.

3. The Mysterious Universe, Cambridge University Press, 1930, my edition 1947, p 137

4. quoted in Quantum Questions, Ken Wilber, Shambala, 1984, p 51

5. The Nature of the Physical World, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1935, p 10–11

6. from lecture given in Florence (click here)

7. State University of New York Press, 1984, p 10

    This is the beginning of a series which has been in my writing plans for some time, but which so far I haven’t got round to. I’ve been spurred into action, however, by a Grant Piper article on Medium.com (click here) which claimed that Isaac Newton’s devotion to alchemy was a sign of madness. I therefore wrote this article (click here) as a preliminary response. Here I’ll begin a full treatment of the issues. My primary sources are Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer by Michael White¹, and In the Presence of the Creator: Isaac Newton and His Times by Gale E. Christianson². (Unless otherwise stated, the quotes and page references come from White.)

    There is a well known saying, the winners rewrite history, and that is certainly true in the case of Newton. The winners in this context are the scientists of the so-called Enlightenment, who have created a fiction about him which, unfortunately, Piper is perpetuating. The story runs like this.

    Newton was a scientific genius. That part is certainly not fiction. White lists his contribution, impressive in that he achieved it single-handedly, thus:

• he made “unparalleled contributions to science — principles that have moulded the modern world” (p 1).
• he was the father of modern empirical science (p 29), in that he was the first to apply the modern scientific method fully (p 182).
• he unified Galilean and Keplerian mechanics “into a single, coherent, mathematically and experimentally supported whole” (p 221), a synthesis which “can be seen as a watershed in the development of physics”, some perceiving his work “as making possible the Industrial Revolution” (p 29).
• his primary work, the Principia Mathematica, “laid the cornerstone for the understanding of dynamics and mechanics which would, within a space of a century, generate a real and lasting change to human civilisation” (p 221).

    However, he also had a mad side because he was obsessed with alchemy, the ridiculous and impossible search for the ability to transmute lead into gold. Who on earth could take this seriously? This is an inexplicable paradox for modern scientists. As if that were not bad enough, the whole truth is even worse, because he devoted more time to alchemy than he did to science, writing over a million words about it (p 4); “the most respected scientist in history, the model for the scientific method, had spent more of his life intensely involved with alchemy than he had delving into the clear blue waters of pure science” (p 2).

    He also studied and wrote about natural magic, astrology and numerology, which for Piper must be more obvious signs of madness. He was deeply religious, a devoted — albeit heretical (Arian) — Christian, spending many hours on biblical exegesis, being especially interested in the Book of Revelation. This would also have been a mystery to Enlightenment scientists, who promoted the idea that he discovered the laws governing a mechanistic universe, which contributed to the foundation of modern materialism, with its atheistic implications. This is exactly the opposite of what Newton himself believed. In an early notebook he described God as a spirit penetrating all matter, and “he never swayed from his assertion that God was responsible for maintaining planetary motion through the device of gravity” (p 149). So much for a mechanistic universe! In reality he believed that the laws he discovered were a manifestation of divine creativity.

    Newton was also influenced by the ideas of the occultist magician John Dee; they shared beliefs, and both of them were deeply interested in Rosicrucianism, an esoteric secret society. He possessed a copy of the Rosicrucian Manifestos and other Rosicrucian texts, about which he made extensive notes.

    In passing, it’s also interesting to note that Pythagoras was a source of inspiration for Newton’s scientific ideas. By the 1690s Newton “had concluded that the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras had been acquainted with the inverse square relationship and had described how it governed planetary motion. He reached this conclusion from his reading of Pythagorean concepts of harmony and number. The Greek philosopher had supposed that the universe operated via strict numerical relationships. For him, number was all” (p 348). This is somewhat ironical, since this belief of Pythagoras was another target for Piper’s accusations of madness.

    This ‘mad’ side of Newton was kept from the world for a long time, which explains how the false portrayal of him as one of the founders of the Enlightenment, and father of modern science was allowed to develop. The truth came to light when a collection of his private papers was acquired by the economist John Maynard Keynes in an auction in 1936. They had been in the hands of the Portsmouth family, who had earlier made a gift of them to the University Library of Cambridge in the 1880s. However, “the manuscripts on alchemy and theology were soon back in the hands of their donors” (Christianson p 204), since they were deemed to be of no scientific value. That is arguably true. They were, however, obviously of immense historical value, since they would have given us many precious insights into Newton’s true nature. (I have read elsewhere that the University was embarrassed by what they saw, and preferred to keep quiet about it.)

    This Enlightenment myth about Newton continues in that these two sides are now deemed to be completely separate; he was this brilliant scientist, who nevertheless had a mad and inexplicable obsession with something completely unscientific. In the previous article I speculated that maybe it was because Newton was a genius that he was interested in alchemy. Perhaps it was his research into alchemy that led him to his scientific discoveries. That may seem an extraordinarily unlikely suggestion nowadays, but is nevertheless precisely the view of both biographers, who should know better than most, given their extensive research. Michael White’s unequivocal conclusion is: “the influence of Newton’s researches in alchemy was the key to his world-changing discoveries in science. His alchemical work and his science were inextricably linked” (p 5). Christianson: “There is no question that the roots (of the idea of gravitation) eventually found ready nourishment in the fertile field of his alchemical thought” (p 231).

    Further elaborating comments by White are as follows:

• “he constructed a detailed theory (of gravity) based on both alchemical knowledge and experimental verification… Without his in-depth knowledge of alchemy, he would almost certainly never have expanded the limited notion of planetary motion as he saw it in 1665/6 into the grand concepts of universal gravitation, of attraction and repulsion, and of action at a distance” (p 93).
• his scientific achievements were the result of “unsurpassed insight, peerless technical powers and a willingness to explore exotica such as alchemy. Newton saw the power of attraction and repulsion at the bottom of the alchemist’s crucible as well as in the movements of heavenly bodies and was able to make the imaginative leap that linked the two, establishing that all matter attracts other matter” (p 221).
• the Principia Mathematica is “probably the greatest single work of science ever written”, but it was “the mathematical, alchemical and religious ferment of Newton’s imagination (which) gave the book form” (p 190).
• there was a concluding section to the Principia found in his papers, two versions of which were not published during his lifetime. The reason for this was that “the basis upon which his ideas of subatomic forces operated was too obviously derived from alchemy and the hermetic tradition — he could not risk exposing his sources” (p 226). (The practice of alchemy at that time was illegal.)
• “the concept of what the alchemists called ‘active principles’ took on far greater importance and led him to a radical reassessment of how gravity operated… One Newton scholar has gone so far as to say that Newton could not have visualised attraction at a distance had it not been for his alchemical work” (p 206)³.

    How is it possible that the nature of motion and gravity can be inferred from an impossible search for the transmutation of metals? The answer must be that there is much more to alchemy than that; it depends upon a certain understanding of the nature of the cosmos, obviously one radically different from that of Enlightenment scientists. I’ll discuss that in the next article.

    We can see therefore that the portrayal of Newton and his ideas in modern science books is wildly inaccurate; he is “not the man that history has claimed him to be” (p 1). The truth is much closer to the titles of my two source biographies. Newton stood in the presence of the creator, and was the last of the sorcerers. Keynes, the acquirer of his papers, clearly exposed the falsity of the fiction I’ve been describing when he said: “In the eighteenth century and since, Newton came to be thought of as the first and greatest of the modern age of scientists, a rationalist, one who taught us to think on the lines of cold and untinctured reason… (However) Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago”⁴. 

    Along similar lines, White says: “Ironically, although Newton was largely responsible for the development of the scientific enlightenment which swept away the common belief in magic and mysticism, he created the origins of empirical science and the modern ‘rational’ world in part by immersing himself in these very practices” (p 105).

    This leads us on to the question of why he would do that. What did he see in alchemy, astrology, numerology, and magic that persuaded him to spend so much time studying them? The answer, according to White, is that “he was interested in a synthesis of all knowledge and was a devout seeker of some form of unified theory of the principles of the universe… Newton believed that this synthesis — the fabled prisca sapientia — had once been in the possession of humankind” (p 106); “the most ancient civilisation was also the most knowledgeable, the most pure, the most advanced” (p 154). Such a suggestion would obviously be anathema to the incipient Enlightenment movement.

    Alchemy was part of this ancient knowledge: “Newton was motivated by a deep-rooted commitment to the notion that alchemical wisdom extended back to ancient times. The hermetic tradition — the body of alchemical knowledge — was believed to have originated in the mists of time and to have been ‘given’ to humanity through supernatural agents” (p 109).

    It would seem therefore that Newton was actually not the forward thinking and innovative genius that modern science claims; he was rather deeply rooted in the past, an “occultist, the seeker of the ancient flame of wisdom and arcane knowledge” (p 132). He openly acknowledged this in a letter to Robert Hooke where he said: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”⁵.

    The motivation of the Enlightenment scientists for promoting a false picture of Newton is obvious. They want us to believe that humanity is marching onwards and upwards, through the progress of ‘science’, towards ever greater understandings, perhaps even to ultimate truth, and that we have left behind us the magic, superstition, illusions, and false religious ideas of the ancients. (A blatant example of this viewpoint is Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress⁶. The title says it all.) How embarrassing that their principal hero was deeply immersed in all this ‘nonsense’, which was actually the source of his scientific ideas. 

    Grant Piper’s accusation of madness is therefore completely misplaced. If it were not for Newton’s alchemy, we would not have had his science. 

    In the next article I’ll focus upon the practice of alchemy, how it might just be possible to achieve the desired transmutations. In a third I’ll explore those who may have achieved success.

Footnotes:

1. Fourth Estate, 1998

2. The Free Press, 1984

3. Richard Westfall, ‘Newton and Alchemy’, in Brian Vickers (ed.) Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, CUP, 1984, p 330.

4. in a 1942 lecture to the Royal Society Club, quoted by White, p 3

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants

6. Penguin Books, 2019

    This article is partly a response to a recent one on Medium.com by Joe Love, which was in turn a commentary on an article by Steven Ball, a Christian physicist. It is closer, however, to being my own thoughts on the topic under discussion, which is the supposed conflict between the modern scientific understanding of the universe, and the biblical account.

    Love believes that this conflict is illusory, and is aiming to reconcile the Bible with science by arguing for Old Earth Creation. He says: “I have great news for believers in science and believers in God. You are on the same team”.

    Old Earth is a sensible alternative to Young Earth Creation which, working on the assumption that the Bible is infallible, and counting up the years of the genealogies recorded in the Old Testament, comes to the conclusion that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, whereas science has arrived at the figure of about 4.5 billion years, and approximately 13.5 billion years for the universe as a whole. The most famous example of this nonsense was the calculation done by Bishop James Ussher who, despite being a prolific scholar and Primate of All Ireland, therefore presumably intelligent, nevertheless decided that the creation had taken place on October 22nd 4004 BCE.

    Merely agreeing with science that the Earth is much older than the Bible appears to claim, does not of course resolve the dispute. Love’s argument, following Steven Ball, runs something like this:

• the Bible is the inerrant Word of God as revealed to humanity
• science aims to discover the laws and principles of the universe, which originated with God
• therefore the Bible and science must be in agreement
• if they appear to be in conflict, it must be because we are failing to understand something.

    All we have to do, therefore, is to make sure we understand correctly. That is what I shall attempt to do in what follows, although I may arrive at conclusions different from those of Love.

    There are two major problems in his argument, the assumption that Christians have actually understood what the Bible is saying in the first place and, more obviously, the assumption that both the Bible and science are correct and therefore have to be reconciled. Why not at least consider the possibility that one or both might be wrong?

    Before I get round to some of my own thoughts, it’s worth noting that Love says some strange things, and I’m glad I didn’t have the Christian upbringing that he did.

• He describes the supposed conflict thus: “Battle lines have been drawn. You either stand with the bible, and with God, or you stand with those seeking to tear down belief in God’s Word”. Do the majority of scientists, even if some of them are atheists, really think that their primary motivation is “to tear down belief in God’s Word”; surely they are merely trying to draw conclusions about the universe from the available evidence, as they see it.
• Do we really have to stand either with the Bible, or with (atheistic) science? Why can’t we criticise both?
• “You are easily convinced; the bible is either all truth or all false”. Why are you so easily convinced? Why not say, the Bible was written by human beings, therefore contains their thoughts and beliefs; there may be some truth in it, provided you interpret it correctly, alongside things that are possibly false?
• “Suddenly you find yourself struggling to reconcile the faith you’ve been taught with the evidence you are presented”. Why should you have to do this? Why can’t you challenge the faith you’ve been taught? Why do you assume your teachers are infallible? Why not start from a clean sheet, with no preconceived ideas, and attempt to assess the evidence, and perhaps come to the conclusion that the Bible is sometimes wrong? Or even, why not consider the possibility that both your faith and science might be sometimes wrong, instead of right?

=============================================================================================

    Love tends to quote the Bible as if it were ultimate truth, instead of the thoughts and opinions of potentially fallible human beings. If the Bible is ‘infallible’, and ‘the word of God’, why have Christians felt the need to mistranslate it?

    For example, as any biblical scholar will tell you, the Hebrew word translated as God in Genesis 1 is Elohim, which is a plural word. It is less often stated that the verb which follows it is singular. So an accurate translation might be ‘God in its plural form’ (It’s difficult to know which pronoun to use, because the later, most confusing section 26–30 says “God created humankind in his image”, even though his command had said “in our image, according to our likeness” — plural again.) Some time ago, however, I read a preface to a translation of the Bible (from memory I think it was an edition of the Good News Bible), where the translators said that they were aware that Elohim is plural, but that they had translated it as ‘God’ in order to conform with the Christian monotheistic tradition. They obviously meant well, but what they were actually doing was deliberately mistranslating the original text, in order to help Christians feel comfortable, and not have to face problematic questions about their beliefs.

    Historically, the Church has a bad record when it has tried to challenge developments in science — remember Copernicus, the trial of Galileo, the sun orbiting the Earth. As a consequence, it seems that some Christians are now frightened by science, panicking at each new development, and thinking that it has to be accommodated within their worldview.

    Darwinism has been perceived to be the main problem, the suggestion that living organisms have originated and evolved through natural processes without any divine, or otherwise supernatural involvement. This would obviously be a fatal blow to biblical literalism, if it were true, since it is in direct conflict with Genesis 1, where living creatures are said to have appeared because it was the will of God.

    Because Darwinism has been widely accepted as scientific truth, the Christian Churches have felt the need to accept it without too much protest.

    The Roman Catholic Church first addressed the issue in 1950 when Pope Pius XII stated that there was no conflict between evolution and Christian faith. Since then no Pope has said anything significant to distance himself from this position, and several statements have confirmed and indeed strengthened it. In October 2014 the current Pope, in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, went so far as to encourage Catholics to believe in Darwinian evolution and the Big Bang. His statement seemed to leave room for a divine creator, but that role would have been restricted to before the birth of the universe. This is therefore tantamount to deism, even though the official name for the Catholic position is, I believe, theistic evolution.

    Such statements have pleased some, believing that the Church should move with the times, and not challenge the scientific consensus. Others have disagreed, because they thought the Church was falling away from a literal interpretation of Genesis. I would argue that the scientific consensus and a literal interpretation of Genesis are both wrong.

    The Church of England is no better. I was once fortunate to be able to pose the question directly to the top man Rowan Williams, at the time the Archbishop of Canterbury, on a radio phone-in¹. I had emailed my question in advance: “Richard Dawkins is fond of saying that even the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope accept evolution. This seems slightly surprising since one would assume that a man of religion might favour something along the lines of Intelligent Design. Please would you clarify the extent to which you accept evolution with special reference to natural selection, and the random, blind forces which are assumed to lie behind it”.

    He responded: “First of all, I have no problem at all with evolution. It’s a very credible theory about how things got to be the way they are. And I guess, like probably the majority of modern Christians, I’d say that God should make a world designed to evolve, designed to develop in that way, causes me no difficulties at all. You find that sort of view advanced even in the first centuries of the Christian Church — God makes the world that has the capacity to change, and develop”. Here, like Pope Francis, he would seem to be implying deism, which I found strange for someone in his position.

    He continued by saying that “the Intelligent Design idea seems sometimes to talk as if the original design was a little bit faulty, and God has to keep on stepping in to make a little link, rather than putting it all into the works at the beginning”. I read a lot of Intelligent Design literature, and I don’t remember ever reading anything like that, therefore wondered whether he had really understood the arguments. He then continued by offering, in my view, a faulty account of some of the history of evolutionary theory. I was not impressed.

    Without any inspiration forthcoming from their leaders, Christians have responded with books like: Developing a Christian Worldview of Science and Evolution, by Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey², and Creation or Evolution, Do We Have to Choose? by Denis Alexander³. A long time has passed since Galileo, however. Is it not time for the Churches to stand up and be counted, to be willing to challenge the theories of modern science, not passively accept its findings? On the question of Darwinism, the Discovery Institute in Seattle has taken up this challenge, with the theory of Intelligent Design. Their arguments may not be infallible, but they are far more impressive than those of John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, whose book Critique of Intelligent Design⁴ is one of the worst I’ve ever read of this polemical type. Their arguments are laughable, despite the praise heaped upon the book by several university professors quoted inside the front cover. Their subtitle Materialism versus Creationism From Antiquity to the Present, shows how clueless they are, not even being able to distinguish between Intelligent Design and Creationism.

    The second problem for Christianity, although less damaging than Darwinism, is Big Bang theory. Because it has been almost unanimously accepted by cosmologists and physicists, again it seems that we have to have a Christian response in order to accommodate it. One example would be Genesis and the Big Bang: the Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible by Gerald Schroeder⁵.

    I have written at length about the problems with Big Bang theory in previous articles⁶. I have absolutely no qualifications in physics or cosmology, so obviously I am wary of making definitive claims, and consider my point of view to be not conclusive, but worthy of further consideration. I believe the question is still open, and that, if Big Bang Theory is in any sense true, it would have to be accommodated within the spiritual understanding of how the material universe came into being. There are many accounts in the various traditions. Here I’ll use the version of Jonathan Black, who claims to represent the viewpoint of various secret esoteric societies down the ages⁷. I don’t believe that this differs significantly from other spiritual traditions and religions.

    According to Big Bang theory, the universe began from nothing (an infinitely dense singularity), with the potential for matter to form. According to Black, however, “All religions taught that mind came before matter. All understood creation as taking place by a series of emanations” (p68). The material universe is therefore “a series of thoughts emanating from the cosmic mind”. Black says that these should be understood “as working downwards in a hierarchy from the higher and more powerful and pervasive principles to the narrower and more particular, each level creating and directing the one below it”. “At the lowest level of the hierarchy… these emanations… interweave so tightly that they create the appearance of solid matter” (p39, p40). These different levels are what we find in Genesis 1 — the higher and lower waters, and the dry land.

    On the same page he said: “Pure mind to begin with, these thought-emanations later became a sort of proto-matter, energy that became increasingly dense, then became matter so ethereal that it was finer than gas, without particles of any kind. Eventually the emanations became gas, then liquid and finally solids”. These correspond with the three levels just mentioned.

    The whole process is described as one impulse “squeezing out of one dimension into the next” (p30). This is consistent with Genesis chapter 1, where God makes dry land form out of the lower waters, and the findings of quantum physics. One could argue that Genesis 1 is in accord with science, but not necessarily with Christian thinking.

    As Black said, his account is the viewpoint of all religions, and I believe it to be the truth. Two questions arise:

    Can Big Bang theory be made to conform with this account? I don’t think it can, although it is strangely a kind of caricature of the spiritual understanding — the infinitely dense singularity expanding outwards needs only to be replaced by the infinite Cosmic Mind expanding outwards and downwards through the various levels. It’s also worth noting that many myths describe an original void, which is surely what the ‘universe’ must have been before the initial expansion, according to Big Bang theory.

    Black says all religions. It is easy to see how his account would fit with Hinduism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, and esoteric systems like Theosophy or Rosicrucianism, for example, but not so easy to see how it fits with Christianity. However, we perhaps have to distinguish between Christianity as it once was, and what it has become, especially under the influence of modern Evangelicals and Fundamentalists. In the early days, there was a strong Platonic influence, and Plato would have subscribed to something like the account above. If one takes the biblical text literally, as Evangelicals and Fundamentalists tend to do, then a problem arises. If you believe that God created the material universe, as Genesis 1 appears to say, then you will believe firstly that the material universe actually exists, and secondly that this was an event which happened some time in the past.

    According to modern science, however, neither of these two statements are true. Quantum physicists say that there is no such thing as matter — it is an illusion — and that the universe, as we perceive it, is being thought into existence, some saying many billions of times per second (I have discussed this idea in an earlier article).

==============================================================================================

    If the Bible is God’s word, then surely it has to be interpreted correctly. Yet some Christians, so it would seem, have no idea what the Bible is saying. In order to demonstrate that point, I’ll go into one bizarre example at some length. Again we meet a familiar problem, taking literally something which is clearly not intended in that way. In what follows, this stupidity is taken to extreme lengths.

    Genesis chapter 1 (v 6–7) says: “And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters’. So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky”.

    Alan Hayward, in Creation and Evolution: The Facts and the Fallacies⁸, offers the following commentary: “It has become almost a recent-creationist dogma that ‘the waters which were above the firmament’ of Genesis 1.7 formed a vast canopy of water vapour above the earth’s atmosphere. This, they say, was all precipitated in the days of Noah, thus causing the Flood… The idea was popularized by Whitmore and Morris in their classic, The Genesis Flood. They have so much to say about it that there are about twenty page-references to it in their index. Yet they do not offer a single calculation in support of their idea. If they had, they would soon have discovered that it was insupportable”.

    Hayward goes on to explain the scientific flaws in their argument. Far from shutting up the Creationists, however, this merely inspired another one to come up with a revised version of the theory! This was Dr. Joseph Dillow who “has appreciated these difficulties. He spent years trying to produce a detailed scientific explanation of the vapour canopy theory, and recently published his findings in a book of nearly 500 pages”.

    Hayward then goes on to demolish his arguments, and concludes: “The supposed vapour canopy has been much talked about in recent-creationist circles, but very seldom thought about. A little thought soon shows there could never have been such a canopy, unless it was sustained by one long, continuing miracle. And that, of course, would be contrary to the teaching of ‘Flood geologists’, since they invented the canopy in the first place to explain how the Flood could have occurred by ‘purely natural processes’ ” (p151–152).

    Hayward, having established that the vapour canopy is scientifically indefensible, goes on to show “that their scriptural justification for such a belief is also dubious”. This “is a new interpretation of those passages. Even the great canopy enthusiast Joseph Dillow admits that ‘the usual and oldest view is that the reference is to the clouds in the sky’. He mentions that Calvin’s commentary on Genesis teaches this. To forsake this well-established and obvious explanation of the passage in favour of a new and exotic one needs some justification. What other Scriptures are there which can be brought in as evidence? The fact is that there do not seem to be any” (p179–180).

    All this prodigious time and effort spent on defending a ridiculous theory could have been avoided if the Christians concerned had interpreted the passage as it was intended to be understood, symbolically rather than literally. Even this earlier ‘obvious’ explanation of clouds would seem to be wrong, as it is also literal.

    Even if we put to one side the thought that the text was once ancient Hebrew, and has passed through the hands of many interpreters and translators, so that we cannot be sure that the original intended meaning has been preserved, it still seems obvious that in Genesis 1, v 1–10, the words heavens, earth, waters, sky, dry land do not mean what we now understand by these terms. A clear indication of this is the very opening where it says that when the original ‘earth’ was created, it was ‘a formless void’. How could that be, according to any modern understanding of the world ‘earth’?

    One thing we can all agree upon is that Genesis 1 is a very cursory account of what was presumably a very complicated process; it is not exactly a detailed thesis. Despite the brevity, it still manages to be confusing, and it is hard to find a coherent interpretation of the chapter in its entirety in the modern translations.

    It seems to me that there are three distinct sections, verses 1–10 which describe the processes leading up to the emergence of the material universe, 11–25 which describe the evolution of the Earth before the appearance of humans, then 26–30 when humans arrive on the scene. They become progressively more confusing.

    As one example of the inconsistency in the text, up to verse 10 the word ‘dome’ seems to refer to a boundary between different regions of the non-material realms (“the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome”). In verse 14, however it seems to refer to what we now call the sky: “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night..” These lights are presumably the stars, in which case the text then seems to contradict itself, “…and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth”. It can hardly be said that the distant stars achieve this feat, it is rather the more local Sun which does this.

    In any case, it is verses 1–10 that are worthy of most attention, since they contain an important portrayal of the nature of the universe:

• a directing creative principle, standing behind everything
• light as the basic building-block of the multi-levelled universe
• different levels of reality: the higher waters (spiritual realms, the heavens), and lower waters (psyche, astral levels) separated by a boundary, a line of demarcation (the dome)
• the material universe (dry land), which emerges from the lower waters.

    Let’s remind ourselves of the many hours wasted by those Creationists arguing for the water vapour canopy theory, because they failed to understand this obvious symbolism of the text. It is not the Bible that is false in this passage, rather the bizarre interpretation that some Christians have given to it. Thus the Bible and Christianity are not necessarily the same thing. There is the text of the Bible, and how it has been interpreted.

    On that theme, I’ll conclude with a quote from Carl Jung, following a profound personal experience, describing his father, a Protestant clergyman, who had serious religious doubts, but seemed unable to discuss them with his son: “He had taken the Bible’s commandments as his guide; he believed in God as the Bible prescribed and as his forefathers had taught him. But he did not know the immediate living God who stands, omnipotent and free, above His Bible and His Church, who calls upon man to partake of His freedom, and can force him to renounce his own views and convictions in order to fulfil without reserve the command of God”⁹.

    I hardly need to add that this God also stands above all scientific theories.

==========================================================================================

Footnotes:

1. BBC Radio5live, interviewed by Simon Mayo, December 16th 2009

2. Tyndale House Publishers, 2001

3. Monarch Books, 2008

4. Monthly Review Press, 2008

5. Bantam, 1992.

6. See under ‘OLDER’ on the Science section of the Blog Index page.

7. The Secret History of the World, Black Quercus, 2010

8. Triangle, 1985, my copy with revisions 1994

9. The full story can be found in chapter 2, School Years, in Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Collins Fount, 1977. I have also mentioned this in another article, click here.