- There is the lack of any medium;

- the lack of any wavelike motion of crests and troughs (even through a hypothetical but nonexistent medium); and

-the lack of any conceivable mechanism for converting a spreading wave into a pointlike particle and back again.

• The "particles" we see are defined by their properties, but the properties themselves seem to have less to do with the particles than with our need for information.
  

  - Whether the "particle" will have any property at all depends in some fundamental way on whether we need to know the property. (Double slit particles appear with a location property only if and when we arrange to detect them.)

  - One property can be modified or even completely erased by gaining knowledge of another property.

  
  And so forth. And then there is the fundamental problem of the relationship of these quantum units to consciousness. Our intuition screams that if these things exist at all, they should exist regardless of whether anybody is looking. Why should it matter to an electron, or a photon, or a chair, for that matter, whether anybody is paying attention to it? And yet, experiment after experiment has demonstrated that, in the "quantum world," it does matter whether anybody is paying attention. Properties change, locations change, and even the results of experiments carried out long ago change, depending on the state of knowledge of the person running the experiment.

       In reviewing what we know of the behavior of all things at the quantum level, it seems we must conclude that it is impossible that any of this represents anything substantively physical, or having any independent existence at all. The most widely accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics (the Copenhagen interpretation) appears to rule out the possibility of a physical universe. Consider the following attempts to summarize the world view implied by this scientific orthodoxy:
  

  "[A survey of quantum theory] will demonstrate that the common sense view of the world, in terms of objects that really exist 'out there' independently of our observations, totally collapses in the face of the quantum factor."[1]

  "An independent reality, in the ordinary physical sense, can neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation."[2]

  "If one wants to give an accurate description of the elementary particle, the only thing which can be written down as description is a probability function. But then one sees that not even the quality of being belongs to what is described.[3]

  "[T]he 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.'"[4]

  "According to Bohr, the fuzzy and nebulous world of the atom only sharpens into concrete reality when an observation is made. In the absence of an observation, the atom is a ghost. It only materializes when you look for it. And you can decide what to look for. Look for its location and you get an atom at a place. Look for its motion and you get an atom with a speed. But you can't have both. The reality that the observation sharpens into focus cannot be separated from the observer and his choice of measurement strategy."[5]

  
  What remains. After eliminating the possibility of a physical universe because it is inconsistent with the experimental results and findings of quantum mechanics and, therefore, impossible -- what remains?

       If you were wrapped in a computer simulation -- that is, if you were a character in a video game -- how would you know it? Would you ever be able to deduce your true situation? What clues might you look for if you were to add this to the catalog of possibilities.
  
  
  

  Chapter 8
  
  Endnotes
  

  1. [Back]	Id. at 107.
  2. [Back]	N. Bohr, The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, p. 54, quoted in T. J. McFarlane, Quantum Mechanics and Reality
  3. [Back]	W. Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, Harper, New York, 1962, at 70.
  4. [Back]	H. Stapp, "S-Matrix Interpretation of Quantum Theory," Physical Review, D3, 1971, 1303 ff, quoted in G. Zukav,The Dancing Wu Li Masters, at 64.
  5. [Back]	P.C.W. Davies, God & the New Physics (Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster, New York 1983) at 103.

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