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Science & Mysticism
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Came across this on Reddit, Scientists and their mystical views/quotes:
All of our esteemed physicists seemed to have mystical views:
John Stewart Bell
"As regards mind, I am fully convinced that it has a central place in the ultimate nature of reality."
David Bohm
“Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one. This is a virtual certainty because even in the vacuum matter is one; and if we don’t see this, it’s because we are blinding ourselves to it.”
"Consciousness is much more of the implicate order than is matter... Yet at a deeper level [matter and consciousness] are actually inseparable and interwoven, just as in the computer game the player and the screen are united by participation." Statement of 1987, as quoted in Towards a Theory of Transpersonal Decision-Making in Human-Systems (2007) by Joseph Riggio, p. 66
Niels Bohr
"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself."
"Any observation of atomic phenomena will involve an interaction with the agency of observation not to be neglected. Accordingly, an independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation. After all, the concept of observation is in so far arbitrary as it depends upon which objects are included in the system to be observed."
Freeman Dyson
"At the level of single atoms and electrons, the mind of an observer is involved in the description of events. Our consciousness forces the molecular complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another."
Sir Arthur Eddington
“In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. . . . The frank realization that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.”
Albert Einstein
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest...a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
Werner Heisenberg
"The discontinuous change in the wave function takes place with the act of registration of the result by the mind of the observer. It is this discontinuous change of our knowledge in the instant of registration that has its image in the discontinuous change of the probability function."
Pascual Jordon
"Observations not only disturb what is to be measured, they produce it."
Von Neumann
"consciousness, whatever it is, appears to be the only thing in physics that can ultimately cause this collapse or observation."
Jack Parsons
We are not Aristotelian—not brains but fields—consciousness. The inside and the outside must speak, the guts and the blood and the skin.
Wolfgang Pauli
"We do not assume any longer the detached observer, but one who by his indeterminable effects creates a new situation, a new state of the observed system."
“It is my personal opinion that in the science of the future reality will neither be ‘psychic’ nor ‘physical’ but somehow both and somehow neither.”
Max Planck
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness."
"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter" - Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], speech at Florence, Italy (1944) (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797)
Martin Rees
"The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it."
Erwin Schrodinger
"The only possible inference ... is, I think, that I –I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that has ever said or felt 'I' -am the person, if any, controls the 'motion of the atoms'. ...The personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self... There is only one thing, and even in that what seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different personality aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception."
"I have...no hesitation in declaring quite bluntly that the acceptance of a really existing material world, as the explanation of the fact that we all find in the end that we are empirically in the same environment, is mystical and metaphysical"
John Archibald Wheeler
"We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense this is a participatory universe."
Eugene Wigner
"It is not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a consistent way without reference to the consciousness."
courtesy reddit user: https://www.reddit.com/user/Pixelated_/ who in turn credits https://www.reddit.com/user/GhostOfSkeletor
Which in it's own way is science challenging science, in it's own way coming full circle, the empirical discovering of religion...
The Week in Review...
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So, a quick recap of the week...
Sunday caught up with Cathy, from the old restaurant, member of the Alumni...
A couple of drinks, catch up, the Royal, the waitress recognizes me (from the Sushi place). It's good to catch up with her. It's supposed to be a day off but I'm called in to work the evening, just time enough to get sober...
Monday, it's Mr. Tickles turn, he's in town, first time since I saw him last, he's fitting in Ymir quite nicely.
And also on Monday the Dentist, a quick cursory $100 inspection...
Tuesday, volunteer, work, slow, slow, slow. The murder of innocent days.
Wednesday, day off, time now to deal with the car, no tickets, but someone has vandalized the back window, smashing it in, no theft (I mean, I left the doors unlocked, so merely midnight pranks and merriments by ass-holes). I call Western Auto Wreckers to come and pick it up, they tell me they'll call me back in 10 minutes.
I'm still waiting.
Thursday, I hear from Leslie. The Mother in Law of a certain Notorious Junior. Apparently, while being declared toxic and low rent they need her to work in July, so she'll be back there. She's drunkenly texting me, the punctuation and lack of congruency in the thought gives it all away. The restaurant, well, same-old same-old, the owner has had it, they've had 4 chefs walk out (in, what? 2 months?), she's not taking it well that her ex-husband has a new hoe...
Nor is JR, apparently. SR is forbidden from entering the restaurant, and I'm wondering who's mowing the lawns, with all the rain we've had lately...
And, on that note, it's the rainiest May/June I can recall, but - come Wednesday the skies brightened, a beautiful porcelain blue, the sun is out, everywhere on Baker there are the pretty faces, and summer doesn't seem so far away...
Thursday is also the day I finally gave up on the MacBrick, did the final OS upgrade and found it left nothing working, not the internet, the flash drives, the screensaver, not nothing.
A last ditch effort, I take it to the Mac Store. And the owner, friendly, knowledgeable, tells me to give him 15 minutes, and that's all it takes, he loads all the patches, and when he's done for the pittance of $30 I'm the proud owner of a basically brand new (to me, anyways) MacBook Air, and I check my blog, everything else, and bloody hell if it doesn't all work like it should...
Next steps, wipe and sell the HP Scream. And by the time I'm done wiping down the keyboard, screen (filthy), wiping my profile, deleting my data, well, damn if the thing doesn't seem to work not half-assed bad, and there's a full spare Gigabyte on the HD to store my files.
But nope, list it on FB marketplaces, $20, a few nibbles and it finally sells, to HotSauce Guy.
Bringing us to Sunday, Today. This morning, hear from Rossi, from the Italian Joint in Calgary, Google has made him up a "memories" of our day off in the Drumheller, and another ex contacts me to tell me about the laugh she was having with her sister about me. The day ends, again, now, from a beautiful morning to a rainy and wet evening, and I think that catches me up. The week, uneventful, learning how to use a Mac, (the notes feature I'm loving), trying to get back on track, all this time off and I need to start making good use of it before it all runs out...
JS Mill - On Liberty
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The upgrade to the Mac, as I feared, has left a lot of old things behind. Namely my writing, comparing the version of my blog (notes, local to the PC) with the version that was backed up and I find for some reason I'm a few pages short.
To be expected, I guess.
Anyways, Mill does not need my recommendation (damn, I had 5 pages of notes on him!! Where did they go?). Almost 200 years later and everything he says is still valid. This should be taught in schools.
His insights, into the role and responsibility of the individual vs society has never rung truer. And his defence of individual liberty only goes so far - an individual can say or do as he wishes, but he is accountable for these sayings.
I could go on. I did, several pages of notes, but you've been saved by my migrating to a laptop and by a thumb drive that very clearly did not back everything up.
Anyways, his reputation as being one of the most intelligent men ever was well confirmed. Well worth the read.
When all else fails...
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See a professional. Had it, up to here, with my MacBook, upgrading, installing, pissing around and getting no where. And so I took it down to the Mac Guy in Nelson, professional, who ran all the patches and roved through the settings and got it to where it should be. And my TinyMCE is working and I now have 1 computer to rule them all...
$30.00 is what it cost me. How many hours of hair pulling? Well, precious little left anyways.
Now to back up, purge the HP Scream and I can get on with my life. Bloody hell.
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