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In reality, what are
these wooden statues? They can be decorates, artifacts, idols,
gods, deities, in different perceptions.
What do they
look like when no body is watching?
Introduction
A few years ago, I had a discussion with a friend who is a
Buddhist. We talked about ghosts and other stuff, but the most
intriguing topic is “what is reality”. In fact, this topic is so
interesting from the point of view of philosophy and science. He
said I was very good at understanding what he was talking about,
because most people are not able to comprehend the concept. I will
try my best to discuss the idea here so that it is comprehensible
to the majority.
Reality and Perception
We know our surroundings through all kinds of senses: we see, we
hear, we smell, and we feel. Various receptors convert the input
of data that our sense organs received into electrical impulses,
which are sent to the brain through the neuron network for
processing.
So what does perception has to do with reality? Well, obviously
reality is perceived through our senses. But is reality no more
than what we can perceive? Of course the answer is no. Bees can
see ultraviolet pattern on the petals of flowers, rattle snakes
can sense body heat of other animals, while dolphins can use
ultrasound to “see” through solid objects. We possess no such
senses, and hence we perceive the world differently from other
animals. All these are common knowledge, but it leads to other
ideas which can neither be proved nor disproved.
Since reality only exists in our brain, how do we know that what
we see are indeed the appearance of the object? For example, I may
not see an apple as you would see it because our brains are unique
and my not process the same input in the exact same way. Here’s
another question to think about: for short-sighted or long-sighted
people, the world appears to be blur without glasses. Which world
is real? How do we know that objects are not blur in reality, and
short-sighted and long-sighted people are actually seeing things
as they really are? If the entire human population is born with
short sighted eyes, for example, we will certainly think that this
is how the world looks like, and people that perceived things
clearly may have to wear glasses to “correct” their “abnormal”
vision, right? Of course this example is only meant to convey the
idea of perception and reality, if humans are born with
short-sighted or long-sighted eyes, we may not exist in the first
place because natural selection would have got rid of us long time
ago (assuming that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is correct).
Imagine how easy for predators to hunt us down…..
Back to our discussion, let’s think about this question: “What
does a pen (or any other object) look like when nobody is watching
it?” You might think that this question is silly. Of course a pen
will still be a pen. But, is it? How do you know if you aren’t
looking at it? How do you prove that a pen is still a pen when no
one is around? Again, this shows that reality exists only through
our perception. There is no false or true perception; there is
only perception or no perception.
Reality is nothing more than what you perceived through your
senses. Without these senses, there is no outside world. The world
depends on our senses in order to exist. There is no use to say
that the world exist objectively because we can never prove that.
For example, does the world still exist when you are dead?
Assuming that you won’t stay here to perceive the world as a
ghost, the world simply vanishes at the instance of your death. My
point is that, there is no evidence that the world exist outside
of the brain. We could have been hallucinating about our whole
lives and about who we are. (Now I wonder why do I write this
article if there is no real person out there who is going to read
it…..)
“What? This is nonsense! If the world does not exist, where do you
live in? And how do you stay alive if the food is not real?” Well,
what if even we ourselves do not even existed in the first place,
i.e. even our bodies do not exist and are part of the
hallucination? Then the mysteries remain: Who are we? How do we
“hallucinate” if our brains also do not exist?
Some Basic Concepts in Quantum Physics
That was basically what my friend discussed with me. Now I
will discuss the subject from scientific point of view. I will
start with some basic concepts in quantum physics. At the end of
the 19th century, physicists thought that all laws in physics had
been discovered. They thought that the only achievements possible
in physics are more refined and more accurate measurements. But
they soon discovered that their laws were unable to explain the
heat radiation from a black body, nor could they explain
photo-electric effect. All these phenomena lead to the foundation
of quantum physics. Some major concepts of quantum physics are:
Quantized Energy
Radiant energy is not emitted or absorbed in a continuous
matter but in discrete packets each of energy  where
h is known as the Planck’s constant and
is the frequency of wave contained in each packet of energy.
The Probability Wave Function
This was an interpretation of Schrödinger's wave equation for the
wave ψ. It can be showed that the square of this value,
ψ2 gave the probability that a particular quantum
state existed, and that there was no exact prior answer
available for this state, i.e. all possible states of the particle
exist simultaneously.
The Collapse of The Probability Wave Function
The probable state of the particle was resolved through the
collapse of the probability wave function to a particular
state through the act of measurement or observation. In
other words, it is the very act of observation that determines the
state of a particle. This also gives rise to the famous
Schrödinger's Cat problem, where a cat is kept in a box containing
a jar of poisonous gas. The jar will be broken when certain
emission of particle from a radioactive source is detected. Since
whether the particle is emitted or not is determined by the act of
observation, it follows that when no one starts the observation
process, the particle is in all possible states, it is emitted and
not emitted at the same time, and hence the cat must be dead and
alive at the same time!
Another example is the wave-particle duality of light. According
to classical physics, light is a form of electromagnetic wave.
However, Einstein showed that photo-electric effect can only be
explained if lights are quantized packets of energy, now called
photon. But how can light be both wave and particle? Some
scientists believe that whether light is wave or particle depends
solely on our experimental method. In other words, we are the one
who determine what light is.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
Heisenberg showed that it was not possible even in
principle to simultaneously know the exact position and
momentum of a sub-atomic particle. Any experiment can measure both
position and momentum of a particle only with certain limits of
accuracy. These limits are specified by the equation:  where
 and
 represent
the inaccuracy in the measurement of position and momentum
respectively while  is
the Planck constant.
Mysteries in Quantum Physics: The EPR Paradox
Albert Einstein was not quite happy with the uncertainty in
quantum mechanics. His famous remark, “God does not play dice” is
based on his belief that quantum mechanics is inaccurate in some
sense. In 1935, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen put forward the
so-called EPR paradox in order to show that quantum mechanics is
not accurate and there are some things that quantum mechanics had
missed to account for. The EPR paradox was a thought experiment.
It goes like this:
1) First we choose one particle that will decay into two other
particles, say an electron and its anti-particle, a positron.
(Every particle has its anti-particle. They annihilate each other
when come into contact, the result is a burst of gamma radiation.)
2) Let’s say that the original particle has zero spin, i.e. it is
not spinning.
3) The two particles that formed as the product of the decay do
spin in opposing directions. This is a direct consequence of the
principle of
conservation of angular momentum: they must have spins that add up
to the original spin, in this case, zero, so the spins of the two
particles are equal and opposite.
4) Let the two particles move away from each other, say, for a few
light years apart.
5) We measure the spin of one of the particle, and therefore
caused a collapse in the probability wave function and determined
the exact spin of the particle.
6) By the mathematics of the wave function and by conservation of
angular momentum, whatever the result for the particle we measure,
the other particle must instantaneously be fixed in
the complementary spin - without our measuring it.
7) This violates Special Theory of Relativity because it should
take years for the first particle to transmit any signals to its
partner about what state it is in, even at the speed of light.
Einstein argued that this shows that quantum mechanics must be
wrong, and that particles must already have some intrinsic
properties that are not determined by observation. However, his
argument is faulty in logic because it is based on the assumption
that Special Theory of Relativity is correct. How could he
regarded his theory as valid to disprove another theory which is
equivalently well founded on mathematics and observations?
In 1982,
at the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain
Aspect carried out an experiment to understand the EPR paradox.
They used a pair of photons instead of the electron-positron pair.
They came out with the conclusion that under certain circumstances
subatomic particles are able to instantaneously communicate with
each other regardless of the distance separating them. In other
words, instead of leading to a contradiction as predicted by
Special Theory of Relativity, scientists had discovered that
quantum mechanics is correct after all. But how could the
particles communicate with each other instantaneously even when
separated light years apart? Are they really emitting
faster-than-light signals to each other?
Holographic Universe
David Bohm, a physicist from University of London believes
Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist.
Bohm believes that the two particles in EPR paradox do not send
faster-than-light signals to each other at all. They react
instantaneously to the changes in each other spin just because
their separateness, even light years apart, is nothing but an
illusion. Instead of being two distinct particles, he believes
that they are actually a part of some fundamental something. To
illustrate his idea, we consider an aquarium with a fish. There
are two cameras, one placed at the aquarium front, and one placed
at its side. Now, supposed that we can only see through these
cameras and we are not aware of the aquarium. At first glance, we
think that we see two different fishes that look almost alike.
Then we discovered that when one fish moves, the other fish will
move as well in certain direction, and there appears to be some
connection between the fishes. Therefore it is natural for us to
assume that they are communicating to each other in some ways. But
they are actually one and the same!
This further implies that maybe all things in the universe are
connected in some unknown ways, or all things are simply different
facets of one and only one thing! Hence, Bohm believes that it is
possible that our world is nothing more than a hologram like
nature.
We make hologram of an object by bathing it in the light of a
laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected
light of the first and the resulting interference pattern is
captured on film. The developed film looks like a blur of light.
But when it is illuminated by a laser beam, we will see a
three-dimensional image of the original object. What made hologram
interesting is that if a hologram of an apple is cut in half and
then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to
contain the entire image of the apple. We can continue the process
by cutting the halves in half again and again. The image will
still be intact (although some details may lose).
Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram also considered
holographic nature of the universe as a possibility. This belief
is based on his work in brain structure and function. Research
indicates that memories do not appear to be stored in a particular
part of the brain. Brain scientist Karl Lashley conducted
experiments in the 1920s by dissecting part of the brain of
trained rats. He found that no matter what portion of a rat's
brain he removed he was unable to eradicate its memory of how to
perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery. It seems
that every part of the brain has all the memories, i.e. the parts
contain the whole, just like hologram does.
The holographic model of the brain suggests that the concreteness
of the world, i.e. what we know as objective reality is nothing
but a secondary reality and what is "there" is actually a
holographic blur of frequencies. In this model the brain is also a
hologram and it selects some of the frequencies out of this blur
and transforms them into sensory perceptions. Then, what happened
to our familiar “reality”? Well, it just vanished. It does not
even exist in the first place. It is us who perceived them as
such. It seems that some Eastern religion is correct after all.
They believe that the material world is Maya, an illusion,
or a dream of which we will one day awaken from, and face the real
“reality”. The teaching of “nothingness” in Buddhism also seems to
mean the same thing. So do you think you still know what reality
really is? The truth is really out there….and what we think is the
truth, might not be the truth after all!
Implication: Some Possible Explanations of Paranormal
Phenomena?
The holographic model of the brain might explain why some
people are able to perform well although they have only half a
brain or even virtually no brain at all! There is a case of a
student at Sheffield University, who has an IQ of 126 and won
first-class honors in mathematics. But this boy has virtually no
brain; his cortex measures only a millimeter or so thick compared
to the normal 4.5 centimeters. Here is a part of an article from
“New Scientist” about the remarkable ability of human brain:
“The orthodox view of the human brain holds that the left or
dominant half governs the right side of the body and is concerned
with logical thought, verbal analysis, etc. The right side of the
brain controls the left side of the body and is responsible for
spatial and intuitive thinking. The right side supposedly cannot
even participate in verbal expression. The two halves of the brain
are connected by the corpus callosum. That this interconnection
sometimes creates problems is evident from the fact that its
severance often leads to dramatic improvement in some types of
epilepsy. These split-brain individuals, however, must contend
with such bizarre situations as not being able to verbally
identify objects seen or felt by the left eye and hand, even
though they know what the objects are.
“Such situations merely confirm the orthodox view of the brain.
But when half of the brain is completely removed, the conventional
picture of the brain is upset. In one case, a woman with partial
paralysis and frequent epileptic seizures had the left side of her
brain removed. Her seizures and paralysis disappeared permanently;
even more, her personality improved markedly. The half of the
brain that remained assumed all brain functions and performed them
better than the complete brain had. Conclusion: each half of the
human brain has the intrinsic capability of operating as a whole
brain despite the usual specialization of the halves.” (Gooch,
Stan; "Right Brain, Left Brain, “New Scientist”, 87:790,
1980.)
The idea that all things in the universe are a part of something
as yet unknown, i.e. there are a mysterious connections between
all things can also account for the case of telepathy. Telepathy
is not easy to explain using orthodox view of human brain because
each brain is considered as a closed system and has no connection
to other brains. This is not so in holographic model since brains
are selecting information out from the holographic blur itself,
which is the same source of information for all brains.
It is therefore not surprising that some neurologists begin to
consider the holographic model as a possibility of what reality
really is.
References:
1) THE
UNIVERSE AS A HOLOGRAM... DOES OBJECTIVE REALITY EXIST... OR IS
THE UNIVERSE A PHANTASM?
http://www.spiritual-endeavors.org/seth/hologram.htm
2) Does the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument show that Quantum
Theory is Incomplete?
http://www.ahisee.com/content/epressay.html
3) The World As A Hologram, Leonard Susskind, Department of
Physic,
Stanford University.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/9409/9409089.pdf
(This is a technical physics paper. It is well beyond my
comprehension.)
4) The movie MATRIX
5) An old Chinese urban legend "One night a man called Zhou Zhong
had a dream. In his dream he saw himself as a butterfly.
Then he started to wonder, 'Am I being myself to see a butterfly
in a dream, or my being is only a dream of a butterfly that is
me?'"
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Answering
Mysteries
Come