The Non-Local Universe: The New Physics and Matters of the Mind [Paperback]

Sometimes the language of this book, with its long flowing sentences and abstract ideas sounds a little Hegelian, but the vast majority of it is down-to-earth, well thought out and sticks to the task of describing some of the most difficult conceptual areas in science. Quantum Mechanics can never be easy because it is not visualisable as such. There may be some flaws in the argument however (why I marked it down!). The author's explanation of entanglement is solely in terms of non-locality. However they seemed to have ignored the alternative of retro-causality. They actually describe an important retro-causal experiment, but do not seem to incorporate it into their arguments. A further problem seems to occur when they go on to extend the idea of complementarity beyond physics (following Niels Bohr). They describe how `biological reality' might be affected by the same measurement difficulties as physical reality at the micro level. But biology is far too complex, in my opinion, to be able to isolate such an effect. It seems an unwarranted generalisation.

Anyone interested in the area of quantum mechanics should read this book. It is easy to understand, yet detailed and technically superb - explaining the various different interpretations that are available. This book is particularly impressive in bridging the knowledge gap that most books on the subject leave - the gap between quantum mechanics and what it implies for the human mind and our everyday lives. For anyone that thinks quantum mechanics has nothing (or very little) to do with reality - think again!

The main strength of this book is its uncompromising tenacity in explaining and staying with the facts. Where little is known, the authors explain the various thories that are around and their likely implications. For me, this book is the best available explanation of quantum mechanics and its unexpected possibilities.

From the blurb and the title I was expecting a book that would help deepen my understanding of quantum mechanics, and give me new and subtle insights into the implications of the Aspect/Gisin quantum entanglement experiments, possibly including some implications for thought and consciousness, a-la-Penrose. This turns out not to be the book's purpose at all however. It's hard to determine who the intended audience is. While the discussion on Quantum Mechaincs is pitched at layman's level, the discussion around it would seem more aimed at academics in the arts and humanities. It is a wide-ranging book touching on far more than QM. I found the book, informative, provocative, irritating, and in the end, rather moving. I'm glad I persisted with it though I can't say I agree with everything in it.

The introduction announces a post-modernist malaise in the academic humanities, rooted, the authors claim, in the removal of mind from the material world by Cartesian Dualism. This was surprising for me because, as a reader in Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind, I know that the modern scientific currency is reductive materialism. I had no idea that there was a community of folks out there who presumed dualism, and deduced pessimism.

The first half of the book then gives a layman's (non-mathematical) description of quantum mechanics. It's a bit sloppy. Terms are introduced without definition. Conclusions are drawn from premises without explanation. Schrodinger's cat is trotted out again, as usual, without qualification, so yet more credible folks will come away thinking that there is something magical about conscious observerhood that collapses superposed quantum states. The dual slit experiment is explained pretty well. Then we come to an exposition of Bell's inequality theorm as an intro to the Aspect/Gisin experiments. We gather that the implications are that Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation is now incontrovertible, Einstein's Realism is refuted, and the hopes for deeper breakthroughs, such as hidden variable approaches, restoring it are shattered once and for all. The authors then specify a 'logic of complementarity' required to do constructive thinking about quantum phenomena, and point out along the way how Relativity requires the same kind of logic when thinking about space and time. This latter point I did find quite illuminating.

We then get a couple of chapters looking at aspects of Biology and Human Evolution where similar complementarity logic might be applicable. We are essentially looking at emergence, and how wholes can be greater than than sum of parts. We look at how co-operation operates alongside Darwinian competition as a dynamic in evolution, and we look at how culture could have driven the evolution of the physical substrates of human language in a virtuous spiral. Whether complementarity is fruitful of original insights in these areas, or merely provides analogies is hard to say.

The last third of the book gets to its main point which is to use the logic of complemantarity, derived from quantum mechanics, to bring solace to all these languishing postmodernist academics, and show them a way out of their pessimism.

I should say before I go much further that as a scientist who believes in a world out there, that gets on with it regardless of whether we do or can observe it, I don't have a lot of patience with post-modernist thought. The notion that science is a mythical social construction, promulgated by the power elite, is just institutionalised solipsism, and the money spent maintaining serious academic careers and filling our children's heads with this nonsense would be better spent on alleviating poverty or putting a person on Mars.

We get an intellectual history of post-modernism, tracing a line of descent from Descartes, through Nietzche, Husserl, Sartre and Existentialism, the post-structuralists and then the Derridas, Foucaults, etc. We have discovered that language can only ever refer to itself. That nothing meaningful can be said or deduced about the world outside our minds, and that all our thoughts have been hijacked by the power elite so they can get on with oppressing minorities of various pursuasions. Here, I just lose it. The Power elite does it's thing with violence and the exploitation of ignorance, pure and simple. They don't need to control our thoughts and language to do that, and the fact that they don't is what gives us hope for the future. Eventually we learn that the logic of complementarity allows the meanings of words to signify things in the external world and language is saved from the power elite. This is great because I hate to think of these postmodernists suffering needlessly.

We then get a chapter on the implications of the nonlocality implied by the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Aspect/Gisin experiments. Quantum entanglement from the big bang ensures that all particles/quanta in the universe are ultimately bound up in a single whole across all of space and time which is ultimately unknowable, in principle, to science. There can never be ontology, a science or knowledge of what's actually out there. I'm familiar with this understanding and have made my peace with it. The book makes the point that most of the science community simply adopt an ostrich approach to the full implications of nonlocality, so long as the maths works out.

The authors see things in terms of C.P.Snow's culture war between the disaffected postmodernists and the pragmatic mentality of science, a rift that itself follows the complementarity paradigm. In the final chapter they argue that that a dialogue is required between the two cultures if the ecological catastrophe, for which they present a very incisive analysis, facing humanity is to be confronted successfully. They here make a very moving appeal for the rift to be healed and a new complimentarity based unified system of thought to be developed as the basis for a completely new form of religion, shorn of all anthropomorphism and compatible with science but which speaks to all aspects of the human being. Their logic is that only a belief system with the force of a religion will be powerful enough to transform global society into something that can reach a sustainable realtionship with the world. I kind of agree, which is why I found it moving, but I have little optimism of it happening and less so that a shift in rational perspectives will provide the foundation for it.

So a very wide ranging book with some interesting points to make, none of which you'd suspect from the title. As a layman's introduction to Quantum Mechanics, I know there are better ones out there.