6. The New Physics

The New Physics puts us face-to-face with the self-same mysteries that characterize Old-time religion – the existence of G-d, the soul, and the significance of human life in the grand scheme of things. For the next few issues, we will be exploring how this is so.

The good news is that you don’t need to be a physicist or a theologian to appreciate these things. The bad news is that even if you were both, you still wouldn’t understand it.

Quantum theory, the guts of the “New Physics,” is nearly a century old. Yet it can’t shake its popular label of newness. It is hands-down the best-substantiated model of atomic behavior in existence, but with all that, it is no less mind-boggling, counter-intuitive, and downright vexing as it was when it was first conceived.

Albert Einstein bucked it for decades, calling it “impressive” but “spooky”. Physics super-star Richard Feynman says, “I think it is safe to say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” Nobel Physicist Max Von Laue said, “If that turns out to be true, I’ll quit physics!” Even its co-founders were confounded. Erwin Schrodinger, author of its very equations said, “I do not like it and I’m sorry I had anything to do with it.” And the theory’s most famous expositor, Niels Bohr, said “Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.”

What, you may ask, is driving all these clever scientists so bonkers? And why should a layman like me even bother to scratch the surface if these brave souls have plumbed its depths to no avail?

The answer to why is why not! Physics is fun, nature is interesting, paradoxes are intriguing, and more than all this, understanding creation is a means to understanding the Creator, and that is indeed a most noble avocation.

In 1926, eighty years ago, when quantum physics was still in its infancy, Niels Bohr came to the University of Toronto to explain his exciting theory at a seminar for professors and greaduate students in the physics department. The school newspaper reported that after 45 minutes, the only two attendees that were awake were the speaker and the journalist.

At that time science was a purely materialistic and rational enterprise and the last thing anyone expected a scientist to say was that science had spiritual implications.

Today, however, there are literally tens of thousands of books, articles, lectures and movies, all dealing with the synergy of science and spirit. Some are academic, others popular. And while every branch of science has contributed to the spirituality revolution, the vanguard of them all seems to be quantum theory.

Next week we will start following the experimental trails that lead us into an enchanted world, our world, where mind matters more than matter does.