October 13, 2013 at 7:38 P.M. My home Internet connection was blocked. Computer crime has made accessing these blogs difficult. I will attempt to post a new essay from multiple computers during the week. ("How censorship works in America" and "More Censorship and Cybercrime.")
October 8, 2013 at 3:34 P.M. Disruptions and distractions at NYPL, #2, Morningside Heights, have made writing difficult. Perhaps the altercation involving several library patrons was intended for me?
I will continue writing this essay from multiple computers. I hope to add a final section and list of sources to this work if I am able to regain access to my blogs.
David Z. Albert & Rivka Galchen, "A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity," Scientific American, August 12, 2013, p. 94.
Dennis Overbye, "Einstein and the Black Hole," The New York Times, August 13, 2013, p. D1.
A list of sources mentioned or alluded to in the essay appearing below will be attached at the conclusion of the text.
I.
Entanglement relations emerging in quantum physics have heightened the paradox or "problem of reconciliation" with Einstein's Special Relativity in contemporary science.
Discussion of this important issue in a recent New York Times article by "Dennis Overbye" (Jennifer Shuessler?) is confused and filled with factual and scientific errors that, I am sure, will become clear during the following analysis.
I can neither explain nor understand why this person or persons, "Mr. Overbye" -- who is clearly not a scientist nor philosophically adept -- is entrusted with the discussion and analysis of these matters in America's newspaper of record. It may be that more than one person is responsible for this latest disaster in America's newspaper of record.
To mention only three errors, among many others, that render Mr. Overbye's discussion of limited value: 1). It is misleading or inaccurate to regard the Higgs field boson as the source of matter "for other particles" as opposed to the source of all matter in the universe; 2). to speak of "falling into a black hole" and then of what would happen when one "reaches the bottom" is, as it were, to "throw contemporary science under a bus" because these are the very spacial metaphors (derived from classical physics) which must be transcended in current efforts to fathom the complexities and beauties of the universe revealed by post-quantum physics as well as cosmology after Hawking's work on black holes: Mr. Overbye speaks of a man falling into a black hole as feeling "weightless then and all the way until he hit the bottom." (p. D2.)
There may be no "bottom" to hit, Mr. Overbye. A black hole may be "infinite" or "open on to" another place in time/space. A black hole is not necessarily the same thing as a wormhole. Incidentally, Mr. Overbye, entanglement relations are not limited to black hole physics. More fruitful areas for such research in recent years have had little to do with distant galaxies or exploding stars.
3). Finally, to speak of particle A apart from particle B is to lapse into the "error of particularity," atomism, or locality in analyzing entities whose essence is non-locality. There is no particle A as opposed to, or distinctly and independently from, particle B, let alone particle C. No "illegal marriages" between particles are contemplated, Mr. Overbye. Rather, there are dynamic and fluctuating entanglements (a dialectic) between/among particles that simply "are" entanglements/interactions which must be (and are) mutually constitutive. Hence, the following observations by Mr. Overbye are not only mistaken, they are absurd:
"But quantum theory forbids promiscuous entanglements. In the language of quantum information, Alice, [particle A] can marry either Bob, [particle B] or Ted, [particle C] but not both, even if the second marriage happens inside the black hole where most of us can't see it." (p. D2.) ("What is Enlightenment?" and "Derek Parfit's Ethics.")
The point to entanglement, again, is that there are no "separate" and distinct particle-partners comprehensible apart from their interactions. There is no Alice, Bob, or Ted, but only a complex set of entanglements creating possibilities inclusive of the relevant particle-pairs, constituting a larger entity, even forming networks of entanglements. Entanglement has been defined as "identity in a rule" or dialectic. (See Professor Loughlin's A Different Universe.)
In comprehending these structures theorists have found the writings of physicists such as David Bohm and his "hidden variable" theory suggestive, but also the writings of philosophers and logicians have provided useful metaphors for dialectics/entanglements, such as the "fusion of horizons" between entities defined by dynamic orientations that are mutually-constitutive for all partners-in-relation. It is a profound error to formulate the issues as Mr. Overbye does in this article:
"Quantum entanglement, also known as a spooky action at a distance, in which particles separated by light years can still instantaneously appear to remain connected." (p. D2, emphasis added.)
The connection is not merely "apparent"; it is quite real. Quantum "weirdness" is a feature of reality, not merely of our theories and descriptions of reality.
The debate between Einstein and Bohr and John Bell focuses on the completeness of our understanding of quantum phenomena in alignment with what we know of classical physics or reality.
The most difficult term in this discussion is "reality" since the epistemological and metaphysical implications of quantum theory have not been lost on philosophers, notably Christopher Norris and Tim Maudlin, concerned to establish the boundaries between knowledge and the object of knowledge in a universe that challenges the very notion of "boundaries."
Today the search is for a new interpretation of data and ideas that will allow science to incorporate the truth discovered by investigators on either side of this controversy. This is a hermeneutic project in which terms essential to philosophical analysis (understanding/interpretation) are basic tools of research and conversation. Please see Juan Galis-Menendez, Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Freedom (North Carolina: Lulu, 2004). (Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Please see: "How censorship works in America.")
All of the traditional metaphysical issues concerning "Appearance" and "Reality" are restored to the agenda of intellectuals in the twenty-first century making the writings of thinkers from Kant and Hegel to Derrida suggestive and, fascinatingly, also resulting in frequent paraphrasing of philosophical texts by scientists unaware that they are quoting philosophers in their most up-to-date works. ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz" and "John Searle and David Chalmers on Consciousness.")
The now empirically established entanglement relation at the sub-atomic level was predicted -- even described -- a priori, mathematically, long before the existence of the supercollider in Berne, Switzerland.
Much contemporary particle physics has strengthened the foundations of rationalism (epistemology) and forms of idealism (metaphysics/ontology) as well as constructivism making mathematical realism (Platonism) attractive to scientists such as Roger Penrose. (Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind, pp. 540-541, and entirety.)
Readers with a humanistic interest in these issues of entanglement may wish to turn for suggestive analogies to the writings of Christopher Peacocke and Roy Bashkar, as well as Christopher Norris and Timothy Maudlin -- as I have suggested -- not only to scientists Stephen Hawking's and John Wheeler's works, but also crucial, again, are the writings of hermeneutic thinkers in Continental theory, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricouer are especially important in this tradition. In American philosophy the works of the so-called "Pittsburgh School" are recommended, especially John McDowell's and Robert Brandom's writings:
"Now I have argued against indexicalism (ego-present centrism) and punctualism for non-anthropocentric and distanced concepts of space-time and against blockism and closure for an unactualized and open future. But in what sense are past, present and future real? The 'or a' or some past is real as existentially intransitively determined and determinate (or fixed in its indeterminacy), whether it is knowable or not. The/a/some present (which is an indeterminately extendable boundary state) is real at the moment (or, within the moment, the node) of happening. The/a/some future is real as (generally, increasingly) shaped possibility of happening (and of coming to be determined). These are implicit in the descriptions under which we must act as embodied beings, even if it is only to effect or record a measure, and therefore presuppose a change in the system of material things upon which we must act -- for to act is to bring about a state of affairs which (unless it were overdetermined) would not otherwise have occurred." (R. Bashkar, Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom, p. 252.) ("A Review of the T.V. Show 'Alice.'")
It may be useful, first, to look more closely at entanglement in quantum physics; I describe the tension (not necessarily a contradiction or paradox) between Entanglement and Einstein's "Special Relativity"; I then review some suggestions for possible resolutions -- or dissolutions -- of this dilemma of entanglement made possible by multidimensional accounts of space-and-time. I conclude with a brief comment on ideas emerging in Continental hermeneutic theory that may be applied to debates in mathematics, physics, perhaps biology, leading, someday, to a more unified physics. (See Mark Taylor's discussion of "strange loops" in my list of sources.)
II.
Underlying many of our intuitions and much of our thinking are common sense assumptions about the predictability and order of the universe or what we call "reality."
Many of these common sense assumptions are, in fact, derived from Newtonian or classical physics and would seem strange to persons in the ancient world or to non-Westerners at any time in the way that traditional Chinese medicine's demonstrated efficacy (way beyond placebo effects) seems strange to Western scientists studying the phenomenon today.
The principle of locality, for example, is associated with our understanding of cause-and-effect in Western metaphysics -- especially for the architects of the Enlightenment or Modernity, notably in the discussion that includes Hume and Kant as well as contemporary legal thought. ("Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory.")
We can "affect" only objects we can touch (directly or indirectly) in classical theory. Accordingly, the world seems governed by the "principle of locality" in terms of the assessment of events and actions:
"If A affects B without being right next to it, then the effect in question must be indirect -- the effect in question must be something that gets transmitted by means of a chain of events in which each event brings about the next one directly, in a manner that smoothly spans the distance from A to B." (Albert & Galchen, p. 94.)
The principle of locality is also affiliated with concepts of determination in empirical reality leading to the free will controversy in metaphysics and ethics. ("'The Adjustment Bureau': A Movie Review" and "'In Time': A Movie Review.")
Advocates of free will -- relying sometimes on developments in the hard sciences -- have been encouraged by the detection of entanglement relations among subatomic particles that "appear" to, and do in fact, violate the principle of locality.
It is important to understand that quantum mechanics not only "allows for" but embraces action at a distance (what the medieval world called "magic") whereby two particles behave synchronously with no intermediary or visible shared connection. ("The Galatea Scenario and the Mind/Body Problem.")
"Two particles might spin in opposite ways, yet with neither one definitely spinning clockwise. Or exactly one of the particles might be exited, but neither is definitely the exited one."
"Serendipity, III" and "Metaphor is Mystery" are stories dramatizing these quantum realities, among other things.
"Entanglement may connect particles irrespective of where they are, what they are and what forces they may exert on another -- in principle, they could perfectly well be an electron and neutron on opposite sides of the galaxy." (Albert & Galchen, p. 96.)
Imagine that I am sitting at a dimly-lit and cozy restaurant. Directly across from me is Kate Winslet. We are leaning close to one another to gossip about Meryl Streep. According to classical physics, we are separable entities transmitting sound waves (even in a whisper) to one another. If we -- Kate and I -- happen to be entangled subatomic particles, however, Kate would blend into me and I would be connected to, or part of, her. It would no longer be meaningful to speak of separate or localized persons interacting, but more accurate to speak of one entity that is an entanglement-relation. This would remain true if Kate is in Hollywood and I am in New York. It follows that, in such a state of entanglement, when Kate's nose itches, I find myself scratching my nose and solving her problem.
It is undisputed by all debaters that geographical or spacial distance is irrelevant to the entanglement relation in quantum mechanics. An open question, as we will see, is whether temporal distance -- or, indeed, the concept of distance, locality/non-locality -- needs to be revised in order to be made meaningful or aligned with shifting paradigms emerging not only in quantum physics, but also in the mathematics of manifolds and abstract objects useful to describe these realities of the micro-cosmos, as well as in the arts and philosophy.
Interpreters of Special Realitivity and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen objection (EPR) argue from a reduction to absurdity that entanglement established by quantum mechanics "appears" to violate the speed limit of the universe by requiring particles to affect one another faster than the speed of light (186,000 miles-per-second), which is impossible. Hence, quantum mechanics principles may provide accurate predictions, Einstein says, but cannot be the full story. David Bohm suggests that we are missing the "hidden variable" that explains this apparent and actual contradiction.
None of the scientists dispute the accuracy of quantum mechanics in describing these real effects, their debate focuses on possible explanations of these realities in light of our theories. For instance, John Bell's theorem demonstrates the instantaneous mutuality of effects in reality and not only in mathematical descriptions.
New theories of the multidimensionality of time may resolve the dispute as particles may "pop" into and out of one universe in order to fuse together in another, only to reemerge in our reality. If scientists now believe that there is no such thing as empty space, then it "appears" that time possesses no "inherent" unidirectional "arrow" nor is it a single dimension.
Understanding what may be involved in "instantaneously" affecting particle B when interacting with particle A may require no violation of the "speed limit" for the universe, but a new appreciation of the multidimensionality of time, leading to a new definition of "immediacy" allowing for incorporations of unanticipated complexities: To paraphrase Michio Kaku, we may speak not only of "hyperspace" but "hypertime." This suggestion allows for a return to the discussion of entanglement:
"Thus, entanglement makes for a kind of intimacy amid matters previously undreamt of. ..." (Albert & Galchen, p. 96.) ("What you will ..." and "Conversation On a Train.")
III.
Brian Greene, string theorist at Columbia University, summarizes the lessons of this controversy:
"These [entanglements] are a magnificent affront to our conventional notions of space and time. Something that takes place long after and far away from something else nevertheless is vital to our description of that something else. By any classical -- commonsense -- reckoning, that's well, crazy. Of course, that's the point: classical reckoning is the wrong kind of reckoning to use in a quantum universe. We have learned from the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen discussion that quantum physics is not local in space. If you have fully absorbed that lesson -- a tough one to accept in its own right -- these experiments which involve a kind of entanglement across space-and-time, may not seem thoroughly outlandish. But by the standards of ordinary experience, they certainly are." (B. Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos, p. 199, "Time and the Quantum.") ("What is Memory?" and "Master and Commander.")
Professor Greene paraphrases Bishop Berkeley directly and knowingly. There are also weird (unconscious) paraphrases of Kant and Hegel found in his wonderful book:
"When they are not being observed or interacting with the environment, particle properties have a nebulous, fuzzy existence characterized solely by a probability that one or another potentiality might be realized. The most extreme of those who hold this opinion would go as far as declaring that, indeed, when no one and no thing is 'looking' at or interacting with the moon in any way, it is not there." (B. Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos, p. 121 emphasis added, see also, pp. 116-123.)
It is important to see that quantum entanglement alters our sense of what it means for something to exist "in" space-and-time: locality/non-locality is transformed with the alterations or greater complexity in our understanding of space-and-time.
The analogies from quantum physics to developments in inter-personal psychology were obvious to psychoanalysts and philosophers, like R.D. Laing and Michel Foucault. It is possible for a best version of a person to emerge only in relation to validating emotional interactions with others as opposed to environments of dis-confirmation of identity and values. Reality has become a set of relationships among entities with overlapping boundaries. ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")
We are accustomed to thinking in terms of more stable and static realities, where clarity of thought or faithfulness to "reality" means being precise about the factual nuggets in our experience and abstract logical propositions.
Reality, inconveniently, does not seem to have a "bottom line" or clear boundaries between facts and values, masculine and feminine, caucasians and non-caucasians, allegedly "superior" and "inferior" races of human beings. This observation seems to hold for the empirical world and our systems of meanings.
We exist in (and may be) a seamless web of connections to others and our world which amounts to another definition of "love." ("Would Jesus be a Christian?" and "Cornel West On Universality" then "Carlos Fuentes and Multiculturalism" and "Is it rational to believe in God?")
This does not mean that "it is all relative" nor that there is no "truth," for it would be impossible to articulate entanglement (or anything else) without concepts of accuracy to reality, subjectivity and objectivity, truth and falsehood. ("Hilary Putnam is Keeping It Real.")
We are required to think more carefully about these matters because the universe, inconveniently, is much more complex and our appreciation of that complexity must become more subtle, elegant and beautiful than it ever has been before. (Again: "Is it rational to believe in God?" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")
Not surprisingly, these developments in the hard sciences were anticipated by artists and philosophers during the twentieth century. From the "Surrealist Manifestos" to the hermeneutic turn in Western thought, humanists may be seen to paraphrase scientists even as scientists are now paraphrasing (even quoting) philosophers without realizing it. ("Stephen Hawking's Free Will is Determined" and "Stephen Hawking is Right On Time.")
Whenever such a phenomenon is detected, intellectuals in multiple fields articulating the same or similar ideas in different contexts, something very important is taking place. ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.")
We are witnesses, I believe, to a major paradigm shift in Western civilization that seems to complete and move beyond the Kantian-Hegelian revolution that led to Einstein and quantum mechanics in our time. We are forced to reconsider our boundary-based, border-secure thinking in academia, politics, law, as well as the sciences.
We are being liberated from limited or closed categories and into a world of open categories or interpretive freedom from "rigid" binary oppositions: normal/abnormal, sane/insane, here/there, now/then -- all of the bivalences of our existential situation are called into question:
"To elucidate a quantum concept of time," David Deutsch writes, "let us imagine that we have sliced the multiverse into a heap of individual snapshots, just as we did with space-time, What can we use to glue them back together with? As before the laws of physics and the intrinsic, physical properties of the snapshots are the only acceptable glue. If time in the multiverse were a sequence of moments, it would have to be possible to identify all the snapshots of space at a given moment, so as to make them a super-moment. Not surprisingly, it turns out that there is no way of doing that: In the multiverse, snapshots do not have 'time stamps.' There is no such thing as which snapshot from another universe happens 'at the same moment' as a particular snapshot in our universe, for that would again imply an overarching framework of time, outside the multiverse, relative to which events in the multiverse happen. There is no such framework." (D. Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality, p. 278. "Wrinkles" in space-time?)
The meaning of all of this is still undecided. Hans-Georg Gadamer's conclusion in Truth and Method that "all being that can be understood is being in language" -- where language is a social space(s) with multiple time-signatures (like a symphony) -- creates at least the possibility of "fusions of horizons" through this very understanding that transcends all borders and boundaries:
" ... What the actor plays and the spectator recognizes are the forms and the action itself, as they are intended by the poet. Thus we have a double mimesis: the writer represents and the actor represents. [And the audience represents?] But even this double mimesis is one: it is the same thing that comes into existence in each case. ..." (H.-G., Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 103, p. 105.) ("'Inception': A Movie Review" and see William Shakespeare's "The Tempest.")
Sources:
1. Amir D. Azel, Entanglement (New York & London: Penguin, 2003).
2. Alain Badieu, Conditions (New York: Continuum, 2008). (Please see the chapter "What is Love?" and the excellent introduction.)
3. Roy Bashkar, Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (New York & London: Verso, 1993).
4. J.S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
5. Paul Bencaref & Hilary Putnam, Philosophy of Mathematics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).
6. David Bohm, Quantum Theory (New York: Dover, 1951).
7. David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London & New York: Routledge, 1980).
8. Niels Bohr, "Conversation With Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics," in Paul A. Schilp, ed., Albert Einstein: Philosopher/Scientist (Chicago: La Salle-Open Court, 1969), pp. 199-241.
9. John P. Briggs & F. David Peat, Looking Glass Universe: The Emerging Science of Wholeness (London: Fontana, 1985).
10. Ian Chambers, Border Dialogues: Journeys in Postmodernity (London: Routledge, 1990).
11. Omar Calabrese, Neo-Baroque: A Sign of the Times (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992).
12. Donald Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). ("Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism.")
13. David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality (London: Penguin, 1997).
14. David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity (New York & London: Viking, 2011).
15. Albert Einstein, B. Podolsky & N. Rosen, "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Reality be Considered Complete?," Physical Review, series 2, Vol. 47 (1935), pp. 777-80.
16. Peter Galison, Einstein's Clocks, Poincarre's Maps, Empires of Time (New York: vintage, 2003).
17. Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos (London: Penguin, 2004).
18. Errol E. Harris, The Reality of Time (New York: Vintage, 2003). (Professor Harris was an expert on Hegel and Kant.)
19. Stephen Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes (New York: Bantam, 1994).
20. Michio Kaku, Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
21. Lawrence Krauss, Hiding in the Mirror: The Quest for Alternative Reality, From Plato to String Theory (by Way of Alice in Wonderland, Einstein, and The Twilight Zone (New York & London: Penguin, 2005).
22. Robert B. Loughlin, A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics From the Bottom Down (New York: Perseus, 2005).
23. Tim Maudlin, Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). (Professor Maudlin is among the first thinkers to stress the philosophical implications of quantum phenomena.)
24. John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).
25. David Mermin, "Quantum Mystery for Anyone," Journal of Philosophy 78, (1981), pp. 397-408.
26. Christopher Norris, Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism: Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics (London: Routledge, 2000). (Still the best philosophical discussion of these issues which I have only read in fragments quoted by others because the book is difficult to find.)
27. Peter Osborne, The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant Garde (New York & London: Verso, 1995).
28. Christopher Peacocke, The Realm of Reason (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2004).
29. Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). (2nd Edition.)
30. Roger Penrose, Cycles of Time (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011).
31. Arkady Plotinsky, Complementarity (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1994). (Discussion of Quantum phenomena and Derrida.)
32. Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe (New York: Harper-Perennial, 1983).
33. Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
34. Patrick Waldberg, Surrealism (London: Routledge, 1965).
35. Gary Watson, ed., Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
