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Quantum Physics & the Occult
Quantum physicists must get so annoyed with everybody constantly twisting around just what their work really means. Among the New Age set, quantum physics is one of those buzzwords that’s constantly trotted out whenever anybody wants to add an air of legitimacy to what they are saying. Rarely, if ever, does it actually really relate to quantum physics as a true scientific discipline.
This latest rant was inspired by a comment in an article on “Witch Myths” in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, PM Edition (registration required - and it’s not really worth the effort to read the article, honestly). A Wiccan shopkeeper in Pittsburgh, named simply (and perhaps predictably) “Kali” is quoted as saying:
“Whenever you’re working with energy and trying to direct it’s flow, that’s just quantum physics.”
Unfortunately, Kali didn’t give really any follow-up to what she meant in that article. I don’t want to pick on her in particular (as she may be very nice for all I know - and maybe even superbly knowledgeable about quantum physics), but this assertion strikes me as being so vague that it’s virtually meaningless.
I imagine this as a bit like saying (imagine a half-stoned voiceover), “Man, you know like that tree over there and that cat and that Coke can in the street man, it’s like all quantum physics. You know?”
“Whoa man, you’re right. That’s so deep.”
Problem is, it’s really not. No real information is being conveyed here. No new connections or useful patterns for us to build worthwhile life information on. And I know this newspaper quote I picked out here is by no means an isolated case. I’ve seen people again and again try to correlate magical and spiritual phenomena to quantum mechanics. I’ve read through some of the popular books on the subject too, and I’m still essentially unconvinced. If anybody wants to take a simple and concise stab at formulating what the connection is in their own words, I’d personally really love to hear it.
Fundamentally though, I think there’s one really important philosophical problem here that’s being overlooked when it comes to equating esoteric science and spirituality. Namely, science and magic aren’t reality. They are theories of reality. The theory stands in for or points to the reality (or in some cases occludes the reality). So it’s all well and good to say that Theory A = Theory B and to be excited about points where they agree. But the reason they overlap at all is because they point back to the same thing: reality. So of course they are going to share characteristics.
The key thing in the end might be to ask ourselves what benefit can be derived from comparing two models of reality to one another? Are the points where they agree signs of the “Truth”? Or might we find even more useful information in the areas where the models break down, don’t fit together or form a paradox? Or should we stop wasting our time with models all together? How do we even approach doing that?
October 18th, 2005 at 4:05 pm
I’ve heard some get ‘very’ frustrated about it. And I can certainly understand that. They’ve spent a significant portion of their lives mastering some very difficult fields of knowledge. Their reward is to be thrown into the increasingly distrusted group of “the egg-head”, often seen as total dorks as a result, and receive comparitively modest amounts of money for the investment involved. The final nail on the coffin for many of them is then seeing someone who simply read a shoddy pop-science book on the subject raking in the popularity, dough and fame even though their understanding of the subject is pretty much nill. Though just a student at the time, and intersted in various mystical-type topics, the subject used to drive a friend of mine crazy. Nicest, calmist, guy in the world until he saw people with no background in the subject talking about quantum mechanics.
October 18th, 2005 at 4:30 pm
victor stegner has a great book about this called the unconscious quantum
his site is cool too
October 18th, 2005 at 4:48 pm
some phyicists, to compete in the marketplace of ideas(of which thier`s is a highly codified form.), hire a publicist. examples of this are michio kako and frijof capra. they are, by definition, egg heads, and chose to play that game with all it`s inherent rules and rewards, knowing what they are. any second division physicist who gets twisted when a girl in goth attire says the word quantum in a sentence needs help. nobody owns words.
people constantly make jokes about hypnosis and witch doctors to me and i take it as fun, which it is.
few scientists see any spotlight whatsoever.
the media is on physics because it has held it`s self out as a way to describe reality in predictable ways, much like religion and philosophy has done in the past. religion has, of course, had armies to force the issue, historically. and science did passive/agressively deliver the bomb.(but was terribly troubled by it.)
the few physicists i`ve had contact with were social maladoit types playing the really smart game. sort of what i imagine a torquamada would be like at a cocktail party.
my message to phyicists; we can`t eat the menu boys. and why is it that retentives seem to be so humour impaired?
here`s a short list of things that i know virtually nothing about, but i talk about all the time;
space.
time.
love.
existance.
trance.
the human brain.
addiction.
quantum mechanics.
endorphines.
you get the idea. the long list includes just about everything else. but i go on anyway. nobody owns the words.
October 18th, 2005 at 6:07 pm
Well, the benefits might be in looking at what they’ve done with theories. Magic posits that you can control/affect quantum events with actions, words, and even thoughts unrelated to the event you are trying to affect. As such, it’s the “Engineering” portion of QM, although it may be like saying that tying a stick to a rock is an engineering example of classical physics.
As you’ve stated, these theories are an attempt to describe the reality we live in, although Magic has attached to it an engineering component, while pure QM does not, because QM is still trying to figure out what it means to itself.
If QM gives the magician a better/more ‘realistic’ rational for what he’s doing, more power to him. Just by throwing a theory out there, it’s open to all sorts of misuse. Ask Darwin. Or Mendel (Eugenics). Or Marx. Even the big JC had his message contorted all out of proportion. I’m sure newton didn’t have ICBMs in mind when he developed his theory of gravity, yet understanding that theory makes it possible.
Perhaps understanding QM will make magicians better. Perhaps not. But lots of magicians seem to think it will.
October 18th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
Good point. I guess maybe the best question I should have asked is: does quantum mechanics enrich (rather than explain) the experience of magic or spiritual reality?
October 18th, 2005 at 6:37 pm
Here’s a link to the Amazon review of “The Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/d...70625190/102-6290944-5015367?v=glance
What you are upset about is not exclsuive to quantum phsyics. How many people do you know who talk about the occult in broad terms, never giving specific examples? What you’re upset about is people dropping terms like “quantum physics” into conversation without citing anything of substance.
I don’t pretend to know everything about QP, but then again neither do the scientists who do the research. And since it’s all theory anyway, their guess is as good as mine– they just happen to be on the front trenches while I am far far removed from any research on the subject. They can readily prove their arguments, whereas I can’t.
October 18th, 2005 at 6:39 pm
Well yeah, exactly. I can’t really make that point as well unless I use a specific example though. But you’re right, this instance is just one of many of a much broader issue.
October 18th, 2005 at 7:16 pm
I’d say the problem isn’t that people try to make this comparison - it’s that they try to pass off equivocating magic and quantum mechanics as some great innovation. That I don’t see. So we get a different set of jargon, one that’s approved by guys in lab coats (as opposed to Holy Books, religious sects, ancestral voices, our surroundings, our own gnosis, etc). That doesn’t seem like a big step forward. Comparing sympathetic magic to the action at a distance of electrons spinning doesn’t really seem to push anything forward, in my experience. I mean, it’s an interesting parallel, but there’s a difference between an interesting fact and some experiential moment that actually changes how you do things and how well you do those things. It’s good to know, but it doesn’t change how I do candle magic to help friends get jobs and repair friendships. Frankly, I feel like the nonlocality of electrons doesn’t really go far enough if you’re trying to explain magic, ‘energy,’ and things of this nature. I’ve found that my practices have expanded more as I’ve allowed for more - spirits, Saints, the Mysteries. But even if you can get the same thing out of quantum mechanics, electrons, etc - if it’s the same thing, then so what? Most people don’t seem to use this ‘paradigm’ in new, exciting ways - it’s just doing what magicians have done and known for centuries dressed up in scientific lingerie.
October 18th, 2005 at 7:50 pm
Mm, scientific lingerie…
October 18th, 2005 at 8:17 pm
when my oldest boy was first born my brother came over to see the child, and he asked my girlfiend”so what does he do?”. i have to ask that about quantum mechanics. phyiscists want to be the ones to have the answers. in the mean time what do they do, other than talk in a foriegn language, then sneer because we don`t understand?
October 18th, 2005 at 8:18 pm
My inclination is that the problem is not limited to quantum physics, but that new-age and other non-scientific, yet practical people seem to feel that using scientific language gives what they do, or sell legitimacy.
My feeling is that it’s more a problem of language than method.
There are better ways of using language for the occult, and new-age communities, but they are far more difficult to use well… for instance poetry.
What I’d like to see is more use of scietific language poetically, stop worrying about truth and identiy, when you don’t need it, and use metaphor and analogy: The thing is that ideas in science change how we view the world in a philosophical sense, and poetic use of scientific concepts can illuminate and intiate this change.
P.S. Hope this makes sense, but it’s late here… way past my bed time
October 18th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
it takes work and an artistic sense to introduce poetry into the conversation. it`s much easier to say quantum……………though if you say it too much it loses it`s sense of meaning.
October 18th, 2005 at 8:44 pm
I’ve never been into the quantum-this, quantum-that; I’m surprised that so many New Agers and some occultists took up gibbering about “Quantum Mechanics” as a sort of Thor’s Hammer.
I find that phenomonology is a far more rewarding field for coming up with hackeyned explanations, but then again, phenomenology isn’t “scientific”, doesn’t have any glossy magazines, and most certainly isn’t mathematical. The attempt to make magick quantum seems to me like, first, an attempt to sell books, then, an attempt to participate in mainstream dialogue by jacking into the Popular Science thread, and finally, an attempt to sell more books.
I’m going to use Ken “Buy My Books” Wilber’s jargon, but magickal *experience* is heavily based on subjective experience, something science really can’t handle, because you need to engage in an “intersubjective dialogue” and not a scientific method approach. You can’t tell if I see a crocodile in the mirror, or if I’m having a conversation with it, until you and me start talking about it. No one in a lab can tell what I’m dreaming, not yet.
October 18th, 2005 at 9:32 pm
it`s kinda like hip hop taking(finding) led zeppelin drum recordings and putting it behind urban poetry. it`s open source. nobody owns the words, although you might have a hard time saying “do it” in an ad. i wonder how many ministers are using the Q word now too. and english teachers, and spongebob.
October 18th, 2005 at 9:50 pm
Except it really isn’t open source in the context of led zeppelin or hip hop, as all the court battles over sampling shows. I would more say its re-packaging old commodities to make money in new ways, in that case. Open source when it comes to music might be people doing file-sharing, mashups, and using the technology and the raw material of the music without regard for profit. I’d hardly call P-Diddy a part of the open source movement, however much I like the idea
October 18th, 2005 at 10:11 pm
it`s still stirring up all the same ideas. the semantics is where the war is. scientists call it one thing and defend thier turf and the wizards and poets do it thier way(with a touch more humour.) i promise not to say quantum again, it`s begining to semantically disintegrate for me.
i would agree to never say the Q word again if science would stop denying consciousness just because they can`t measure it.
October 18th, 2005 at 11:52 pm
models of reality may agree simply because they are making the same mistakes.
all we can do is this:
1. observe
2. reflect
3. act
4. repeat
it all works out in the end.
October 19th, 2005 at 10:49 am
Particles are particles. Energy is energy (the capacity to do work). Everything is not ” made of energy “.
You can draw a straight line from the alchemists of the middle ages, through Isaac Newton, to the scientists of the 19th century. We (the human race) were getting too close. The Matrix (the automated control system of The Archons) had to do something.
Enter the double whammy of QM and Einstein’s “theory” of relativity, both of which are mystical magical gibberish. They are not a serious attempt to find out what reality is; they were specifically designed to divert us.
This is why the “scientists” react so badly to the New Agers and Magicks saying “it’s QM” - they’re so busy trying to pretend that they’re being scientific, and these people come along and threaten to blow their cover. I’m not saying the QMers know it isn’t true, they probably really believe - like children really believe in Santa Clause.
There are a couple articles on this at my website.
October 19th, 2005 at 11:47 am
jeffrey, that`s beautiful. energy is energy. it just is. alan watts pointed out that rain rains. “it” isn`t raining. “it” is a ghost. a misdirection. i have wondered ever since i heard him talk about these ghosts, why they were there and who put them there. the archons needed a misdirection, a slieght of the mouth so subtle as to be hidden in what we say.
alan never mentioned archons though, but i keep hearing about them here. intriguing.
October 19th, 2005 at 1:14 pm
“when my oldest boy was first born my brother came over to see the child, and he asked my girlfiend”so what does he do?”. i have to ask that about quantum mechanics. phyiscists want to be the ones to have the answers. in the mean time what do they do, other than talk in a foriegn language, then sneer because we don`t understand?”
Are you serious? Putting aside things like nuclear energy, the medical uses of ionizing radiation, and all of the many many other obvious things that theoretical physicists have made possible… what they do is ask questions about the universe and try to figure out the answers. Isn’t that the same kind of curiosity that fuels the conversations in this circle?
P.S., most physicists don’t really “sneer” at people who don’t understand them. That’s why Steven Hawking wrote books like “A Brief History of Time”… because he wanted to dumb down string theory and its history to the point that everybody could understand it. Because he thinks it’s exciting that physicists are approaching a unified theory of everything, and because scientists generally do science for the sake of humanity better understanding the universe… not just to be obnoxious.
Anyway, that said, I agree that people like to throw around scientific language without understanding or explaining it… and it’s generally meaningless. I watched this show on spontaneous human combustion on the History Channel, and it was a kind of “skeptics” vs. “believers” type of show… The believers really annoyed me because they didn’t make any sense. The skeptics gave very good explanations of how the few fires in question could have started, and the believers kept repeating, “It is a cascade of chemical reactions that initiates inside the cells.” Ok, what chemical reactions? How did they initiate? Say SOMETHING with meaning. And then I was forced to wonder if they really didn’t have any kind of theory, or if they just didn’t think their viewers would understand biochemistry talk.
People who use quantum physics to validate their theories by making equally meaningless announcements are annoying… but I hardly think that’s grounds to ban “science talk” from non-scientific circles. Granted, theoretical physicists make up “theories of reality”, but it’s 2005, and they’re generally pretty good theories. So, if you’re out there trying to preach the gospel about some non-physical theory, and you notice that it happens correspond perfectly with the predictions of physical theory, by all means, point that out. All the better for your theory. If you have a theory that involves any matter, energy, space, or time but DOESN’T correspond with the predictions of physical theory… then I’m more likely to think that your theory is a little crazy.
I guess where it becomes meaningless is when people use totally irrelevant physical theories to back their arguments. It would be like Charles Darwin announcing, “This is my theory of evolution… Please notice that the forces at play within the atoms of the Galapagos finches act in a manner totally consistent with the predictions of quantum mechanics.” Sometimes physics is NOT the best way to talk about biology. In response to Tim’s question: “does quantum mechanics enrich (rather than explain) the experience of magic or spiritual reality?” ….I’m thinking it’s probably pretty irrelevant there as well.
October 19th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
most physicists aren`t steven hawking or michio kaku. these are the extremely rare types who even recognise the need to explain themselves to a taxpaying public who say “black hole?,w.t.f.?” most phyicists are grant whores. and about ionising radiation. that was engineers and other technologiest in conjunction with ideas generated by theoretical types. teamwork. physicists measure things, they act as if they are the only ones. bit like catholics. bit tiresome.
regarding the scientific language. people don`t own words. if that was so we couldn`t talk about anything but our own field, if we have one.
the trap of tim`s question is that we have been asked by the physicists not to use the Q word to try to enrich the description of magic and spiritual reality. so how are we to tell?
October 19th, 2005 at 8:43 pm
True. People don’t own words. Anyone can talk about quanta… Ministers, English teachers, Spongebob… there’s no owndership. But when anyone throws the word “quantum” around without understanding it, or tries to pretend quantum mechanics is relevant to magic or spirituality without even suggesting what that relevance might be, I am going to quietly judge him for not knowing what he’s talking about.
October 19th, 2005 at 9:46 pm
i think the most amusing thing is that nobody really understands things that small, and i still can`t eat a menu. i need food. magic and spirituality gets into the preparation of sumptuous meals to feed hungry souls. maybe it was ill advised to borrow a term from the grumpy types. have the Q word back, i gotta go pig out.