Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness [Hardcover]

Two of the most widely misunderstood and abused words in the English language are "quantum" and "God". Bringing them together without being sucked into a black hole of hokum is a rare feat, and one carried off in this book by Victor Stenger, who adds to his long list of books that have shed considerable light on some very entangled subjects. Having spent a lifetime in particle physics research, Stenger is well qualified to respond to "quantum spiritualists" and those theologians who unwisely step into his domain. As for the supernatural, Stenger points to the widely held belief that God not only exists but acts in the world, and so it is entirely reasonable for a scientist like him to expect to be able to detect those actions. Have such actions been detected? Divine intervention "would seem to be ruled out by the data": the world is governed not by gods but by natural, material processes.

This conclusion, of course, does not satisfy most people, who "believe there is more to existence" and who just don't like the idea of being made of the same kind of stuff as slugs and sand and stars. I'm with Stenger on this when he briefly lets his exasperation show: "for the life of me I don't see what they have against particles." Why feel diminished as a human being for having emerged from the world of wonder that is quarks and electrons and photons? Whatever our feelings, the fact is that "from cosmology to neuroscience, no case can be made that we need something more than matter to understand the universe."

That doesn't stop people like Deepak Chopra and the makers of the documentary "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" and respected scientists like Roger Penrose from invoking quantum physics to bolster notions such as "cosmic consciousness". Stenger examines their claims over several chapters and patiently unpicks their often rather intellectually threadbare quilts. It takes a while to reach the conclusion that the "brain is simply too large and too hot to be a quantum device." Along the way Stenger provides some historical context, not just the scientific giants of the twentieth century who developed quantum mechanics, but figures like Rousseau, who "disputed what has become the primary tenet of science since Galileo, that objective observation is the only means by which we can obtain reliable information about the world." The "common belief in an immaterial mind capable of reaching beyond the world of our senses" has been around for a long time and isn't about to go away just because physicists have measured the Lamb shift to more decimal places than you've had hot dinners.

Emergence, apparently, "has become a hot topic in philosophy and theology." For anyone clutching at this particular straw, hoping to find evidence of immateriality or top-down causality, Stenger has bad news: "emergence is both reductive and materialist" and "the attempt to develop a holistic theory of particle physics has failed, while the reductionist model of elementary constituents of matter has enjoyed continued success." Authors like Fritjof Capra enjoyed a window of opportunity to write books comparing modern physics and ancient wisdom, but a less advertised parallel is that while "Capra was trying to make physics look like Eastern mysticism, Maharishi was trying to make Eastern mysticism look like physics." The Maharishi's own brand of transcendental meditation "differs from Zen and other meditation forms in not concentrating so much on the mantra but making as little conscious effort as possible." Quite.

Ancient wisdom, of course, is more revered for its age than its wisdom. No matter how generous the reading, the "stories in sacred books do not bear even the most superficial resemblance to modern physics and cosmology." The Genesis story of creation, for example, "is in deep conflict" with big bang cosmology: far from needing God to run the universe, "we would need God to maintain a state of nothingness".

While there are virtually no equations, there are challenging concepts in every chapter. For example, "the universe has no fundamental direction of time" - so the whole idea of creation has to be rethought. Complexity "can arise naturally from simplicity". There is no wave-particle duality. Photons are just particles. Noether's theorem shows how the conservation laws of energy and momentum all "follow from point-of-view invariance". And, if you've ever wondered why we don't see round corners, it's because of decoherence, which "explains why objects on the macroscale do not normally exhibit interference and diffraction". There are occasional lapses: saying we have "what masquerades as free will, but it is really just random" may not satisfy those who've read, for example, Dennett on free will.

As with all of Stenger's books, it's not just about the science. He argues that many people actually believe in a deist rather than a Christian god, and the difference matters, not just theologically but politically. He also pleads with his "scientist colleagues to take a more active role in what fundamentally continues the ancient battle between science and superstition." Since reason can always be trumped by faith (in the eyes of a believer), this will require steely determination and the character to withstand unfair attacks by the religious. For those of us who aren't particle physicists, it may be tricky - when someone insists the Maharisha was onto something - to remember to ask why "the demise of minimal SU(5) did not cause GUTs to disappear from TM literature." I didn't enjoy "Quantum Gods" quite as much as God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist and Has Science Found God?: The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe (both highly recommended), but it is still very much worth reading.