The Dancing Wu Li Masters

by Gary Zukav

  Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, wrote:

  The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves.9

  Jung’s friend, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, put it this way:

  From an inner center the psyche seems to move outward, in the sense of an extraversion, into the physical world…10

  If these men are correct, then physics is the study of the structure of consciousness.

  The descent downward from the macroscopic level to the microscopic level, which we have been calling the realm of the very small, is a two-step process. The first step downward is to the atomic level. The second step downward is to the subatomic level.

  The smallest object that we can see, even under a microscope, contains millions of atoms. To see the atoms in a baseball, we would have to make the baseball the size of the earth. If a baseball were the size of the earth, its atoms would be about the size of grapes. If you can picture the earth as a huge glass ball filled with grapes, that is approximately how a baseball full of atoms would look.

  The step downward from the atomic level takes us to the subatomic level. Here we find the particles that make up atoms. The difference between the atomic level and the subatomic level is as great as the difference between the atomic level and the world of sticks and rocks. It would be impossible to see the nucleus of an atom the size of a grape. In fact, it would be impossible to see the nucleus of an atom the size of a room. To see the nucleus of an atom, the atom would have to be as high as a fourteen-story building! The nucleus of an atom as high as a fourteen-story building would be about the size of a grain of salt. Since a nuclear particle has about 2,000 times more mass than an electron, the electrons revolving around this nucleus would be about as massive as dust particles!

  The dome of Saint Peter’s basilica in the Vatican has a diameter of about fourteen stories. Imagine a grain of salt in the middle of the dome of Saint Peter’s with a few dust particles revolving around it at the outer edges of the dome. This gives us the scale of subatomic particles. It is in this realm, the subatomic realm, that Newtonian physics has proven inadequate, and that quantum mechanics is required to explain particle behavior.

  A subatomic particle is not a “particle” like a dust particle. There is more than a difference in size between a dust particle and a subatomic particle. A dust particle is a thing, an object. A subatomic particle cannot be pictured as a thing. Therefore, we must abandon the idea of a subatomic particle as an object.

  Quantum mechanics views subatomic particles as “tendencies to exist” or “tendencies to happen.” How strong these tendencies are is expressed in terms of probabilities. A subatomic particle is a “quantum,” which means a quantity of something. What that something is, however, is a matter of speculation. Many physicists feel that it is not meaningful even to pose the question. It may be that the search for the ultimate “stuff” of the universe is a crusade for an illusion. At the subatomic level, mass and energy change unceasingly into each other. Particle physicists are so familiar with the phenomena of mass becoming energy and energy becoming mass that they routinely measure the mass of particles in energy units.* Since the tendencies of subatomic phenomena to become manifest under certain conditions are probabilities, this brings us to the matter (no pun) of statistics.

  Because there are millions of millions of subatomic particles in the smallest space that we can see, it is convenient to deal with them statistically. Statistical descriptions are pictures of crowd behavior. Statistics cannot tell us how one individual in a crowd will behave, but they can give us a fairly accurate description, based on repeated observations, of how a group as a whole behaves.

  For example, a statistical study of population growth may tell us how many children were born in each of several years and how many are predicted to be born in years to come. However, the statistics cannot tell us which families will have the new children and which ones will not. If we want to know the behavior of traffic at an intersection, we can install devices there to gather data. The statistics that these devices provide may tell us how many cars, for instance, turn left during certain hours, but not which cars.

  Statistics is used in Newtonian physics. It is used, for example, to explain the relationship between gas volume and pressure. This relation is named Boyle’s Law after its discoverer, Robert Boyle, who lived in Newton’s time. It could as easily be known as the Bicycle Pump Law, as we shall see. Boyle’s Law says that if the volume of a container holding a given amount of gas at a constant temperature is reduced by one half, the pressure exerted by the gas in the container doubles.

  Imagine a person with a bicycle pump. He has pulled the plunger fully upward, and is about ready to push it down. The hose of the pump is connected to a pressure gauge instead of to a bicycle tire, so that we can see how much pressure is in the pump. Since there is no pressure on the plunger, there is no pressure in the pump cylinder and the gauge reads zero. However, the pressure inside the pump is not actually zero. We live at the bottom of an ocean of air (our atmosphere). The weight of the several miles of air above us exerts a pressure at sea level of 14.7 pounds on every square inch of our bodies. Our bodies do not collapse because they are exerting 14.7 pounds per square inch outward. This is the state that we usually read as zero on a bicycle pressure gauge. To be accurate, suppose that we set our gauge to read 14.7 pounds per square inch before we push down on the pump handle.

  Now we push the piston down halfway. The interior volume of the pump cylinder is now one half of its original size, and no air has been allowed to escape, because the hose is connected to a pressure gauge. The gauge now reads 29.4 pounds per square inch, or twice the original pressure. Next we push the plunger two thirds of the way down. The interior volume of the pump cylinder is now one third of its original size, and the pressure gauge reads three times the original pressure (44.1 pounds per square inch). This is Boyle’s Law: At a constant temperature the pressure of a quantity of gas is inversely proportional to its volume. If the volume is reduced to one half, the pressure doubles; if the volume is reduced to one third, the pressure triples, etc. To explain why this is so, we come to classical statistics.

  The air (a gas) in our pump is composed of millions of molecules (molecules are made of atoms). These molecules are in constant motion, and at any given time, millions of them are banging into the pump walls. Although we do not detect each single collision, the macroscopic effect of these millions of impacts on a square inch of the pump wall produces the phenomenon of “pressure” on it. If we reduce the volume of the pump cylinder by one half, we crowd the gas molecules into a space twice as small as the original one, thereby causing twice as many impacts on the same square inch of pump wall. The macroscopic effect of this is a doubling of the “pressure.” By crowding the molecules into one third of the original space, we cause three times as many molecules to bang into the same square inch of pump wall, and the “pressure” on it triples. This is the kinetic theory of gases.

  In other words, “pressure” results from the group behavior of a large number of molecules in motion. It is a collection of individual events. Each individual event can be analyzed because, according to Newtonian physics, each individual event is theoretically subject to deterministic laws. In principle, we can calculate the path of each molecule in the pump chamber. This is how statistics is used in the old physics.

  Quantum mechanics also used statistics, but there is a very big difference between quantum mechanics and Newtonian physics. In quantum mechanics, there is no way to predict individual events. This is the startling lesson that experiments in the subatomic realm have taught us.

  Therefore, quantum mechanics concerns itself only with group behavior. It intentionally leaves vague the relation between group behavior and i
ndividual events because individual subatomic events cannot be determined accurately (the uncertainty principle) and, as we shall see in high-energy particles, they constantly are changing. Quantum physics abandons the laws which govern individual events and states directly the statistical laws which govern collections of events. Quantum mechanics can tell us how a group of particles will behave, but the only thing that it can say about an individual particle is how it probably will behave. Probability is one of the major characteristics of quantum mechanics.

  This makes quantum mechanics an ideal tool for dealing with subatomic phenomena. For example, take the phenomenon of common radioactive decay (luminous watch dials). Radioactive decay is a phenomenon of predictable overall behavior consisting of unpredictable individual events.

  Suppose that we put one gram of radium in a time vault and leave it there for sixteen hundred years. When we return, do we find one gram of radium? No! We find only half a gram. This is because radium atoms naturally disintegrate at a rate such that every sixteen hundred years half of them are gone. Therefore, physicists say that radium has a “half life” of sixteen hundred years. If we put the radium back in the vault for another sixteen hundred years, only one fourth of the original gram would remain when we opened the vault again. Every sixteen hundred years one half of all the radium atoms in the world disappear. How do we know which radium atoms are going to disintegrate and which radium atoms are not going to disintegrate?

  We don’t. We can predict how many atoms in a piece of radium are going to disintegrate in the next hour, but we have no way of determining which ones are going to disintegrate. There is no physical law that we know of which governs this selection. Which atoms decay is purely a matter of chance. Nonetheless, radium continues to decay, on schedule, as it were, with a precise and unvarying half life of sixteen hundred years. Quantum theory dispenses with the laws governing the disintegration of individual radium atoms and proceeds directly to the statistical laws governing the disintegration of radium atoms as a group. This is how statistics is used in the new physics.

  Another good example of predictable overall (statistical) behavior consisting of unpredictable individual events is the constant variation of intensity among spectral lines. Remember that, according to Bohr’s theory, the electrons of an atom are located only in shells which are specific distances from the nucleus. Normally, the single electron of a hydrogen atom remains in the shell closest to the nucleus (the ground state). If we excite it (add energy to it) we cause it to jump to a shell farther out. The more energy we give it, the farther out it jumps. If we stop exciting it, the electron jumps inward to a shell closer to the nucleus, eventually returning all the way to the innermost shell. With each jump from an outer shell to an inner shell, the electron emits an energy amount equal to the energy amount that it absorbed when we caused it to jump outward. These emitted energy packets (photons) constitute the light which, when dispersed through a prism, forms the spectrum of one hundred or so colored lines that is peculiar to hydrogen. Each colored line in the hydrogen spectrum is made from the light emitted from hydrogen electrons as they jump from a particular outer shell to a particular inner shell.

  What we did not mention earlier is that some of the lines in the hydrogen spectrum are more pronounced than others. The lines that are more pronounced are always more pronounced and the lines that are faint are always faint. The intensity of the lines in the hydrogen spectrum varies because hydrogen electrons returning to the ground state do not always take the same route.

  Shell five, for example, may be a more popular stopover than shell three. In that case, the spectrum produced by millions of excited hydrogen atoms will show a more pronounced spectral line corresponding to electron jumps from shell five to shell one and a less pronounced spectral line corresponding to electron jumps from, say, shell three to shell one. That is because, in this example, more electrons stop over at shell five before jumping to shell one than stop over at shell three before jumping to shell one.

  In other words, the probability is very high, in this example, that the electrons of excited hydrogen atoms will stop at shell five on their way back to shell one, and the probability is lower that they will stop at shell three. Said another way, we know that a certain number of electrons probably will stop at shell five and that a certain lesser number of electrons probably will stop at shell three. Still, we have no way of knowing which electrons will stop where. As before, we can describe precisely an overall behavior without being able to predict a single one of the individual events which comprise it.

  This brings us to the central philosophical issue of quantum mechanics, namely, “What is it that quantum mechanics describes?” Put another way, quantum mechanics statistically describes the overall behavior and/or predicts the probabilities of the individual behavior of what?

  In the autumn of 1927, physicists working with the new physics met in Brussels, Belgium, to ask themselves this question, among others. What they decided there became known as the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.* Other interpretations developed later, but the Copenhagen Interpretation marks the emergence of the new physics as a consistent way of viewing the world. It is still the most prevalent interpretation of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics. The upheaval in physics following the discovery of the inadequacies of Newtonian physics was all but complete. The question among the physicists at Brussels was not whether Newtonian mechanics could be adapted to subatomic phenomena (it was clear that it could not be), but rather, what was to replace it.

  The Copenhagen Interpretation was the first consistent formulation of quantum mechanics. Einstein opposed it in 1927 and he argued against it until his death, although he, like all physicists, was forced to acknowledge its advantages in explaining subatomic phenomena.

  The Copenhagen Interpretation says, in effect, that it does not matter what quantum mechanics is about!† The important thing is that it works in all possible experimental situations. This is one of the most important statements in the history of science. The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics began a monumental reunion which was all but unnoticed at the time. The rational part of our psyche, typified by science, began to merge again with that other part of us which we had ignored since the 1700s, our irrational side.

  The scientific idea of truth traditionally had been anchored in an absolute truth somewhere “out there”—that is, an absolute truth with an independent existence. The closer that we came in our approximations to the absolute truth, the truer our theories were said to be. Although we might never be able to perceive the absolute truth directly—or to open the watch, as Einstein put it—still we tried to construct theories such that for every facet of absolute truth, there was a corresponding element in our theories.

  The Copenhagen Interpretation does away with this idea of a one-to-one correspondence between reality and theory. This is another way of saying what we have said before. Quantum mechanics discards the laws governing individual events and states directly the laws governing aggregations. It is very pragmatic.

  The philosophy of pragmatism goes something like this. The mind is such that it deals only with ideas. It is not possible for the mind to relate to anything other than ideas. Therefore, it is not correct to think that the mind actually can ponder reality. All that the mind can ponder is its ideas about reality. (Whether or not that is the way reality actually is, is a metaphysical issue.) Therefore, whether or not something is true is not a matter of how closely it corresponds to the absolute truth, but of how consistent it is with our experience.*

  The extraordinary importance of the Copenhagen Interpretation lies in the fact that for the first time, scientists attempting to formulate a consistent physics were forced by their own findings to acknowledge that a complete understanding of reality lies beyond the capabilities of rational thought. It was this that Einstein could not accept. “The most incomprehensible thing about the world,” he wrote, “is that it is comprehensible.”11 But th
e deed was done. The new physics was based not upon “absolute truth,” but upon us.

  Henry Pierce Stapp, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, expressed this eloquently:

  [The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics] was essentially a rejection of the presumption that nature could be understood in terms of elementary space-time realities. According to the new view, the complete description of nature at the atomic level was given by probability functions that referred, not to underlying microscopic space-time realities, but rather to the macroscopic objects of sense experience. The theoretical structure did not extend down and anchor itself on fundamental microscopic space-time realities. Instead it turned back and anchored itself in the concrete sense realities that form the basis of social life…. This pragmatic description is to be contrasted with descriptions that attempt to peer “behind the scenes” and tell us what is “really happening.”12

  Another way of understanding the Copenhagen Interpretation (in retrospect) is in terms of split-brain analysis. The human brain is divided into two halves which are connected at the center of the cerebral cavity by a tissue. To treat certain conditions, such as epilepsy, the two halves of the brain sometimes are separated surgically. From the experiences reported by and the observations made of persons who have undergone this surgery, we have discovered a remarkable fact. Generally speaking, the left side of our brain functions in a different manner than the right side. Each of our two brains sees the world in a different way.

  The left side of our brain perceives the world in a linear manner. It tends to organize sensory input into the form of points on a line, with some points coming before others. For example, language, which is linear (the words which you are reading flow along a line from left to right), is a function of the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere functions logically and rationally. It is the left side of the brain which creates the concept of causality, the image that one thing causes another because it always precedes it. The right hemisphere, by comparison, perceives whole patterns.