Feynman didn't say qm was hard to understand, he said, "I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics." That is an unequivocal statement.caspian wrote:The statements made by physicists are saying that quantum mechanics is hard to understand because it runs counter to how we normally experience the world, which doesn't behave in a quantum way on the macroscopic scale.Ludwig wrote:If minds like Niels Bohr and Richard Feynman can state - as they have - that nobody really understands quantum mechanics, that's enough to satisfy me that many who dismiss the possibility of a reality the beyond the material have not grasped the real depth of the mystery.
I don't actually think it is difficult to conceptualise them, if one is prepared to jettison the reductionist paradigm.There's nothing mystical about the subject, but it can be quite difficult conceptualising these concepts outside of a purely mathematical framework.
Your argument might be taken to mean that there is no reality beyond mathematics.
That is a much vaguer statement than you may realise. How do you define "what we already know"? Do you mean "data we have available" or "our current theories about how the world works"? If the former, then as I've mentioned in another thread, there is plenty of experimental data supporting psi phenomena; if the latter, then we would still be believing the sun goes round the earth.But this is not to say that anything goes. To be scientific, any theory you come up with has to be consistent with what we already know,
Any paradigm shift is impeded by people taking the attitude, "I just KNOW this can't be true", hiding their prejudices by denouncing the methods of the experiments that contradict them. This has happened since the dawn of modern science.
Let me say that I don't have a theory of psychic phenomena, I am basing my views on evidence, some of it anecdotal, some of it scientific, some of it personal.and have the ability to make predictions about the world, that can, in principle, be verified.
Science can be data-led or theory-led. At different times, different approaches have dominated. Some people argue that if there isn't a theory to explain data, the data can and should be ignored. I find that absurd, and the opposite of scientific.
As I've said, there is plenty of evidence to support the existence of psychic phenomena - enough evidence to change Carl Sagan's mind about the subject, for example.Now, you might put your mystical hat on and say "ah, but just because something isn't scientific by that definition doesn't mean it's not real". But if something is "real" it needs to have evidence to support it surely? Otherwise literally anything you can imagine could be said to be real, thereby making the word meaningless.
There are several ways of answering this question:So if there is a "reality the beyond the material", how do you propose that we investigate it?
1. Who says we have to investigate it?
2. We investigate it by the ways it affects the material world. For example the interference patterns in experiments on subatomic particles show that there is something going on other than tiny objects following continuous trajectories. Or we conduct experiments investigating whether people seem to be able to influence others' thoughts by telepathy.
That is a difficult question. I would say you define it through imagination, but I don't know how much sense that would make to you. Or you can practice meditation or self-hypnosis and define it through subjective experience. Some people can get themselves into a mental state where they can "feel" the unity of things, or "feel" that they are seeing beneath the surface of things. I don't claim this to be proof of anything, but it is an intriguing enough experience to cause one to reflect on the nature of reality.And how do you define such a "reality" in the first place?
Have you considered that what you see around you is in no absolute sense "real"? We (presumably) perceive the world more richly than an earthworm: does this make the earthworm's experience of reality less valid, or does it imply that human beings have reached the apogee of perceptive ability? No, it doesn't.
Above all, I think scientists should be wary of arrogantly proclaiming the impossibility of transpersonal consciousness when, according to the same criteria, personal consciousness is impossible too.
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