04.08.08
Quantum Quackery
Quantum Quackery
Quantum physics is claimed to support the mystical notion that the mind creates reality. However, an objective reality, with no special role for consciousness, human or cosmic, is consistent with all observations.
Victor J. Stenger
QM has been the object of metaphysical raids by ‘mystics’ who turn out to be ‘idealists’, thus injecting the debate over ‘idealism’ into a physical discourse.
But the range of ‘idealism’ covers something arguably not idealism at all, transcendental idealism, which is neither transcendental (in conventional usage) nor an idealism, and this brand shows rather odd echoes in QM.
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Certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, the revolutionary theory developed early in the century to account for the anomalous behavior of light and atoms, are being misconstrued so as to imply that only thoughts are real and that the physical universe is the product of a cosmic mind to which the human mind is linked throughout space and time. This interpretation has provided an ostensibly scientific basis for various mind-over-matter claims, from ESP to alternative medicine. “Quantum mysticism” also forms part of the intellectual backdrop for the postmodern assertion that science has no claim on objective reality.
The word “quantum” appears frequently in New Age and modern mystical literature. For example, physician Deepak Chopra (1989) has successfully promoted a notion he calls quantum healing, which suggests we can cure all our ills by the application of sufficient mental power.
According to Chopra, this profound conclusion can be drawn from quantum physics, which he says has demonstrated that “the physical world, including our bodies, is a response of the observer. We create our bodies as we create the experience of our world” (Chopra 1993, 5). Chopra also asserts that “beliefs, thoughts, and emotions create the chemical reactions that uphold life in every cell,” and “the world you live in, including the experience of your body, is completely dictated by how you learn to perceive it” (Chopra 1993, 6). Thus illness and aging are an illusion and we can achieve what Chopra calls “ageless body, timeless mind” by the sheer force of consciousness.1
Amit Goswami, in The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World, argues that the existence of paranormal phenomena is supported by quantum mechanics:
. . . psychic phenomena, such as distant viewing and out-of-body experiences, are examples of the nonlocal operation of consciousness . . . . Quantum mechanics undergirds such a theory by providing crucial support for the case of nonlocality of consciousness. (Goswami 1993, 136)
Since no convincing, reproducible evidence for psychic phenomena has been found, despite 150 years of effort, this is a flimsy basis indeed for quantum consciousness.2
Although mysticism is said to exist in the writings of many of the early century’s prominent physicists (Wilber 1984), the current fad of mystical physics began in earnest with the publication in 1975 of Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics (Capra 1975). There Capra asserted that quantum theory has confirmed the traditional teaching of Eastern mystics: that human consciousness and the universe form an interconnected, irreducible whole. An example:
To the enlightened man . . . whose consciousness embraces the universe, to him the universe becomes his “body,” while the physical body becomes a manifestation of the Universal Mind, his inner vision an expression of the highest reality, and his speech an expression of eternal truth and mantric power
Lama Anagarika
Govinda Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism3
(Capra 1975, 305)
Capra’s book was an inspiration for the New Age, and “quantum” became a buzzword used to buttress the trendy, pseudoscientific spirituality that characterizes this movement.4