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July 17, 2004
quantum consciousness
Started Zohar's book last night, I read half of it about 7 years ago. Interesting to note what I underlined or marked then and what grabs my attention (or is more sensible, smile) to me now. Reinforces my desire to catch up with Enoch Page and try to take his "anthropology of consciousness" course.
Zohar paints quantum physics as a metaphor for our age. "In this book I shall be considering very seriously the possibility that consciousness, like matter, emerges from the world of quantum events; that the two, though wholly different from each other, have a common 'mother' in quantum reality. If so, our thought patterns - and beyond that, our relationships to ourselves, to others, and to the world at large - might in some ways be explained by, and in other ways mirror, the same laws and behavior patterns that govern the world of electrons and photons" (italics mine, p. 23).
Her work is highly speculative because she's working in the realm of analogy. Physicists' reluctance to condone such parallelism may be because, as Zohar explains: "Quantum theory is our most successful physical theory ever. It can predict correct experimental rsults to an accuracy of several decimal points. But its inability to explain either the predictions or the results has meant that no one, new picture of reality itself has emerged..." (italics in original, p. 22).
This short critique of the book is extremely helpful in pointing out its weaknesses (scientistic positivism) and strengths (a relationally-created world).
Posted by Steph at July 17, 2004 8:58 AM
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