A New World Through Quantum Mechanics

We are experiencing a "revolution" (for want of a better word) that calls for a new Chinthanaya. In the fifteenth century Europe created a new Chinthanaya which we call the Greek Judaic Christian (GJC) Chinthanaya, and it has come a full circle in about five hundred years. The new Chinthanaya that is demanded by the society, at least for the sake of survival of the mankind, has to look to the east for "new" ideas. When the western Physicists state that they cannot understand (understanding is not simply writing equations, solving them and doing experiments), they say that their "system" has failed.
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by Prof. Nalin de Silva

(February 18, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Planck introduced his ideas on quanta or packets of energy towards the end of the nineteenth century. In that sense Quantum Mechanics is more than one hundred years old. From the very beginning Quantum Mechanics came up with strange phenomena that made the western Physicists to disbelieve what they themselves were proposing to understand the new features that were being observed.

The so-called double slit experiment continues to baffle the western Physicists who are glued to two valued logic that is behind western thinking. The experiment can be understood if one were prepared to accept that a photon or any other quantum mechanical particle could pass through two slits at the same time. As it is one of the most fundamental experiments that they could not understand in Quantum Mechanics the Nobel Prize winning Physicist Richard Feynmann once declared that no body understands Quantum Mechanics. This statement by Feynmann makes one to dwell into the meaning of understanding. In other words one has to understand what is meant by understanding. However, it is clear that if one is confined to two valued formal logic, one would be baffled by a statement such as understanding what is meant by understanding. A decade ago the western intellectuals who are only familiar with linear thinking and not with cyclic thinking would have left deliberations into such statements to whom they call mystics, as such statements did not come within their "rational" way of thinking.

However, Quantum Mechanics is gradually forcing the westerners, at least a few of the Quantum Physicists to change their way of thinking. The principle of superposition which was familiar to Classical Physicists as well, has taken an entirely different meaning with respect to Quantum Mechanics. If x and y are two solutions of what is called a linear differential equation then x+y is also a solution of the same differential equation. This is generally known as the principle of superposition. In Classical Physics two magnets giving rise to two different magnetic fields would combine to give one magnetic field, and a compass that is brought to the resulting magnetic field would interact with the field and respond to the resulting field, and not to the field of any one of the magnets. It has to be emphasised that a magnet is in only one state, corresponding to the respective magnetic field and it is the two fields of the two magnets that combine to give one field though one may not find a single magnet giving rise to the resultant field. We could describe this phenomenon as that of two becoming one. However, in the Quantum world things are different.

A single electron could be in two different states at the same time. It is different from two magnets combining to give one magnetic field as there are no two electrons. Further if an interaction takes place between the electron and another object (particle, field etc,) then the electron is reduced to one of the two states. An external object, say a compass, interacts with two magnets as if there was only one magnet but in this case an external object would react with the electron to produce only one of the two states. Initially a single electron exists in two different states simultaneously, and it could be described as one becoming two. In the double slit experiment the electron is in two states which enables the electron to pass through both slits at the same time. Though it defies two valued formal logic this type of situation is compatible with four fold logic or "catuskoti".

The principle of superposition in quantum Mechanics baffled the western Physicists from the very beginning as the statement by Feynmann testifies. Another concept that has made them to think hard is that of entanglement. Particles can be made to entangle with each other and they seem to behave as if they constitute one system. When Bohr and the others formulated the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Einstein did not believe in their statistical interpretation. His famous statement that "God does not play dice" was with respect to Bohr's interpretation. Einstein was the supreme product of Classical Physics (Theory of Relativity belongs to Classical Physics though it effected a paradigm shift) in the twentieth century, and he could not think of a Physics that went contrary to "realistic" and deterministic nature, that involved the formal two valued logic. He introduced the concept of entangled particles, though it was Schrodinger who gave the name entanglement, in order to reject the ideas of Bohr. Einstein said if two particles were created at the same time, and if one of the properties of the particles was measured then contrary to the ideas of Bohr the corresponding property of the other particle was also known, which meant that a Physicist would know that particular property of the second particle without measuring it. Einstein showed that there was no probability involved as a definite answer could be given with respect to the relevant property of the particle.

Bohr, the positivist in Philosophical outlook had to think very carefully before he came out with the answer to this problem raised by Einstein the realist. According to Bohr, the two particles act as a system, and not as two individual particles. Western knowledge, since about the fifteenth century, is based on single particles and at best collection of particles and not with systems. Even the systems studied today are mere collections and not systems as such. Those involved with Western Chemistry, western Biology and finally western Social sciences and Humanities that followed the model of western Physics concentrated on individuality, two valued logic, rationality, reality etc., that are components of western Christian Chinthanaya, (Chinthanaya is a holistic concept that could be defined as the thread that binds culture, knowledge, music, arts, the attitudes of a people etc., in essence what man has created, together) are beginning to feel that they are driven into a dead end. The advent of so called post modernism is only a reflection of this phenomenon.

The way towards future for Social Sciences, Humanities, Biology in spite of its recent advances in the genome project and applications in Biotechnology, and in Physics not to mention Mathematics after Godel Theorem and the collapse of Hilbert's programme, lie in a different direction where systems (not collections), four fold logic or "catuskoti", non reality but creativity out of "nothingness" or "sunyatha" would rein. The thought experiments with entangled particles as described recently in the literature only the beginning of a new Science. The application of these ideas in Biology, Social Sciences and Humanities where theories depending on cooperation and not on competition as in Darwinian Evolution or Marxist Historical Materialism could create a world totally different to that has been created in the last five centuries using western concepts. We are experiencing a "revolution" (for want of a better word) that calls for a new Chinthanaya. In the fifteenth century Europe created a new Chinthanaya which we call the Greek Judaic Christian (GJC) Chinthanaya, and it has come a full circle in about five hundred years. The new Chinthanaya that is demanded by the society, at least for the sake of survival of the mankind, has to look to the east for "new" ideas. When the western Physicists state that they cannot understand (understanding is not simply writing equations, solving them and doing experiments), they say that their "system" has failed. In spite of thriving on individuality and other associated components of the "Chinthanaya" the west had had a system. Though they were ignorant of that system, as there was no way they could formulate such a concept within their system, we had identified it as that is bound by the GJC Chinthanaya. Quantum Mechanics cannot be understood within that Chinthanaya, even though Bohr, Heisenberg and some other Physicists tried to explain certain phenomena within positivism. A paradigm shift within the GJC Chinthanaya is not sufficient to understand Quantum Mechanics and to create new knowledge that would help the mankind to survive. As suggested in the recent articles on Quantum Game Theory and others, survival depends on cooperation and collectivity and not on competition and individuality.

(Professor Nalin de Silva is a Sri Lankan theoretical physicist, philosopher and a political analyst. He is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka.)