What is it about quantum mechanics that has drawn the attention of so many normally not interested in hard science?  Physics professor Alastair Rae explains in this short book.  Rae describes, first, the experiments which have verified the essentials of quantum theory.  These basic principles with their associated experimental demonstration include:

Heisenberg’s “Uncertainty Principle,” that the product of the change in position and the change in momentum of a subatomic particle will always be greater than Planck’s constant divided by 4 times pi.  In English, one can know the position of a particle but only by sacrificing any knowledge of its momentum, or speed,

Wave-particle duality, or the notion shown through experimentation that “photons” of light can behave either like a particle or like a wave depending on whether an attempt is made to observe the individual particle,

Schrodinger’s wave equation, describing the specific quantized “wavelengths” available to the electrons of an atom in order for it to be stable,

The Einstein-Podolski-Rosen (EPR) effect, sometimes referred to by Einstein’s colloquial phrase “spooky action at a distance,” which implies either nonlocality (a fancy way of saying the particles are behaving in a way well outside of classical interactions), or the existence of some as-yet-undiscovered hidden variable, which led to

Bell’s Theorem, an attempt to determine whether the heretofore unexplainable behavior of subatomic particles could be governed by some as-yet-undiscovered “hidden variables.”  Experiments testing what are now known as “Bell-type inequalities” have born out conventional quantum mechanical theory and ruled out hidden variables, and

The Copenhagen Interpretation, which is the view that the quantum world does not have any true physical reality; physical reality is established by macroscopic measuring apparatus interacting with the microscopic world.

All of these, summed together, suggest that the behavior of particles on the subatomic level changes under observation.  Now one can see where the ears of theologians and philosophers might perk up.  So after establishing the basic physics, Rae explores how some have chosen to deal with this current state of physics. There are some, such as Sir Karl Popper (a philosopher) and Sir John Eccles (a Nobel-prize winning neurologist) who see in these ideas some evidence for a soul, or at least a distinction between the mind that observes the world and the brain by which it is observed.  Call this the “Consciousness Interpretation” of quantum mechanical theory.  The universe exists because conscious entities observe it.  Rae has difficulties with this interpretation, but does present it fairly well.

There are, obviously, those who would rather keep theology out of physics altogether.  Many in this group hold to the “Many Worlds Interpretation” of quantum observation, the idea that each observation spawns a universe in which every possible experimental outcome occurs simultaneously.  While this has the benefit of getting around talk of God, souls, and consciousness, it is (in Rae’s oft-quoted phrase) “cheap on assumptions but expensive on universes.”

The view which Rae prefers is that proposed by Ilya Prigogine, and flows from the concept of time’s arrow, or the notion that certain types of occurrences are  observed to happen in one direction only.  Watching Humpty Dumpty fall from the wall into a state beyond repair is easy to visualize.  We do not, however, observe broken eggs reassemble themselves to be re-situated in a state of high potential energy.  French scientist Henri Poincare suggested that this “arrow” of time was in fact an illusion, since subatomic processes do not see to be bound by this same restriction.  He suggested what is now known as a Poincare recurrence, the concept that given sufficient time the Second Law of Thermodynamics will be observed in certain cases to have been merely a suggestion.  We might call this the “Hebraic Model,” where the universe asks us to accept it as fundamentally dynamic and not static.

Prigogine proposed that in fact is it the seeming reversibility of subatomic processes that are the illusion.  The universe is less something that “is” and more something that “is becoming.”  In fact Prigogine’s book on the subject is called “Being and Becoming.”  Certainly this idea has its own philosophical and theological implications which are worth exploring.

Rae, Alastair.  Quantum Physics: Illusion or Reality?  Cambridge University Press: 1986