Second Ebook Published: "The Quantum Catholic "(Book 2 of "Top Down to Jesus")

To the right is the cover of my new ebook, "The Quantum Catholic", which has just been published by Amazon.com (as Kindle).   It's the second in the series "Top Down to Jesus".   The third, "War? Science vs. Church" should be out in another month or so.

Here's the Table of Contents and the Preface:

• Preface
• Chapter 1--What is Quantum Mechanics all about?
• Chapter 2--Quantum Mechanics--A Veiled Reality
• Chapter 3--Quantum Divine Action
• Chapter 4--A Quantum Analog for the Holy Trinity?
• Chapter 5--Quantum Mechanics and Free Will
• Chapter 6--Quantum Mechanics and the Real Presence
• Chapter 7--Summation: Does Quantum Mechanics Speak to Catholic Teaching?
• REFERENCES
• Afterword

PREFACE

In my blog,  “Reflections of a Catholic Scientist”, of the five most viewed posts, three have to do with the relation of quantum mechanics to Catholic teaching.    That tells me that there are readers who would like to hear more about this relation, and who would also like to get a qualitative understanding of what quantum mechanics is all about.   (When I say “qualitative”, I mean QUALITATIVE—minimal numbers and simple equations.)   

I realize there are people (like my wife) whose stomach churns and whose eyes glaze over when numerical propositions are set before them.   So, I find it amazing that a Google search,“Quantum Mechanics simple explanation”,  shows articles with matrices (arrays of symbols), partial differential equations and so forth.

What are my qualifications for writing a book on QM and Catholic teaching?  As an MRI and NMR physicist, I’ve had to use quantum mechanics for my own work.   In fact, perhaps the best paper I’ve done is an application to NMR of the quantum mechanics learned in graduate school.  (Google “Kurland-McGarvey equation”—it’s nice to have a name equation that doesn’t need footnoting,)  I’ve taught classes on quantum mechanics and its applications to undergraduates, graduate students, and medical residents.    

On the Catholic side, I’ve had theological training in Ecclesial Lay Ministry classes and in graduate work (post-retirement) at the University of Scranton.     And most important, I’ve done much reading, post-retirement, in both philosophy and theology (references are given at the end of the book);  to quote Samuel Johnson  (Boswell’s Life of Johnson):

"I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken." 

  

The book begins with a very brief history of the development of quantum mechanics.   There will follow a qualitative account of two fundamental experiments that relate to philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics, the double slit and the entanglement experiments.   Since there are so many good and interesting sites that give descriptions of these experiments, including animation, I’ll depend on the reader of this ebook to go to the given links and explore them as needs be, for in-depth explanations.   

In the second chapter I’ll speak to the interpretations and mysteries of quantum mechanics (without coming to a definite judgment), and then examine how quantum mechanics and Catholic teaching might intersect.    Several examples, taken from posts on my blog, are discussed in later chapters:   Divine action via quantum mechanics, quantum mechanics as an analog for the Holy Trinity, quantum mechanics and the Real Presence in the Eucharist,  and how quantum mechanics might enter into that ever-puzzling question of free will.

One final note, before acknowledgments:  originally this book was to be the third in a series, “Top Down to Jesus”,    After I spent some time with the second, “War between Science and the Church?”, it struck me that some grounding in quantum mechanics and its intersection with Catholic teaching would be useful as background—hence, the change of order.

I’d like to express my gratitude to those teachers, fellow students, and colleagues (way back when) who helped me understand how to use quantum mechanics and to the students who asked the embarrassing questions that increased my understanding of quantum mechanics.   And finally, of course, a debt of gratitude to my wife, (a historian) who has helped me make all this intelligible to non-scientists and math-phobes.

Comments, both laudatory and critical, are invited.   Purchases will be even more welcome.*

NOTE:

*The book has also been submitted to other outlets through "Draft2Digital". 

Last Days and the Resurrection of the Dead I: Quantum Cosmology and Quantum Logic*

The Resurrection of Christ
James Tissot (Brooklyn Museum)

Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?

But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:

And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.

Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.

 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:

And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins 1 Cor:13-17 (KJV)

"So the same combinations of atoms, the same space volumes corresponding to human bodies, cars, buildings and so on, will come again.   All events in spacetime will be reorganized or 'resurrected'  but not in such a way that they will be in time...It is not that the dead will arise from their graves, as it were, but rather sets of events of any life can arise again,  together with the consciousness of those who were alive." Andrej Grib,  'Quantum Cosmology: Observer Logic' in Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature--Perspectives on Divine Action**

INTRODUCTION

Easter, when we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, will soon be upon us, so it is appropriate to reflect on that resurrection and on the one which will be given to us, as Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians.   It is an article of faith for us as Catholics that we will be resurrected and that we will be judged on the Last Day.  Could there possibly be a basis for that belief in contemporary science?   Possibly, although as I will comment below, in the last analysis Revelation is more convincing than science.

A Russian mathematician, Andrej Grib (who is, I believe, a devout Christian), has  speculated on this possibility in an article in Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature.   I'll attempt to summarize some of his novel ideas about how quantum mechanics is to be interpreted, what that means in terms of cosmology, and finally how it suggests the possibility of resurrection.

QUANTUM MECHANICS REQUIRES AN OBSERVER

Grib's fundamental thesis (relying on early interpretations of quantum mechanics by Von Neumann and London) is that quantum mechanics requires a measurement process and thus an observer must be the final link in the measurement chain,  in order that the measurement be meaningful.

"In the end the final observer is just the  abstract ego of the observer--the one who is the subject of observation [i.e. the one who observes]...So it is this abstract ego which is responsible for the collapse of the wave function.  This is a strong form of the subjective interpretation of quantum mechanics." Andrej Grib,  op. cit. , p 169

Accordingly, to speak of the wave function of the universe without specifying a measurement or an observer to make that measurement is "very bad philology" (to quote Grib), that is to say, contradictory to implicit assumptions on which quantum mechanics is based.***

Grib then links what appear to be puzzling features of quantum mechanics-- the uncertainty principle that says we can't get exact simultaneous measurements on complementary variables, the wave-particle duality, the entanglement of particle shown in Bell's Theorem experiments--to the following.  The human mind operates by Boolean logic, whereas the universe in fundamental reality is governed by a non-Boolean logic, a quantum logic, which I'll discuss below.

QUANTUM LOGIC****

Quantum logic violates the distribution law of Boolean logic.
Consider events or logical statements A, B, C.    The Boolean distribution law says A*(B+C) = A*B + A*C, or in words,
[A and (B or C)] =  (A and B)  or (A and C)
where "and" , "or" are logical conjunctions.   (See this link for a nice illustration applied to circuit theory.)

But in quantum logic, that equality does NOT hold.    What does this means, physically?

Boolean Logic--Newtonian Physics
from Wikimedia Commons

Quantum Logic--Particles as Waves
From Wikimedia Commons

Consider the double slit experiment, shown in the illustration to the left ("Boolean Logic").   If a beam of particles passes through the two slits and behaves according to classical physics you'd expect two spots on the detecting screen, more or less opposite each slit.     Now suppose you have quantum behavior ("Quantum Logic) as shown in the illustration to the right.  You have a beam of particles--photons, electrons (whatever!)--passing through the two slits.  If one takes A to mean a particle hits the screen, B that it has passed through the upper slit and C that it has passed through the lower slit, then the classical experiment would have particle passing either through the upper slit and hitting the screen more or less opposite that slit (A and B), or passing through the lower slit and hitting the screen more or less opposite that slit (A and C).   But that is NOT what happens.   Instead you get each individual particle behaving as if it were part of a wave and "knew" about both slits.

In other words, the logical terms B and C can't be separated into B or C, it remains B and C in quantum logic.  A particle goes through both upper and lower slits at the same time, as does a wave-front.

BOOLEAN MINDS, A NON-BOOLEAN UNIVERSE, THE BIG CRUNCH

Our minds, Grib says, operate in a Boolean logic mode.   We cannot apprehend non-Boolean logic, whence the apparent mysteries of quantum mechanics.   The perception of time itself is a consequence of this Boolean mind / non-Boolean universe dichotomy.   We must experience events separately and in succession, as past, present and future, even though the physics of relativity suggests they are conjoined, that is to say are not really separated in that non-Boolean universe.

In the short space of this blog post I won't attempt to show how this reasoning leads to a quantum cosmology.  (To be frank, I don't altogether understand it myself).    But it is a consequence of the cosmology engendered by this quantum logic that there will be a "Big Crunch":  instead of a continual expansion of space-time there will be a reversal, a contraction and, as given in the introductory quote,  events and material things will come again, as in a resurrection of everything.

Grib suggests that in this case, Revelation may be a better guide to what "will" happen. ("will"--a future tense--seems out of place given his joining past, present and future together.)

"The idea of the collapse of the wave-function of the universe after the Big Crunch corresponds to these lives coming into a new existence where different weights will be given to different events [emphasis added].   Some of the events could be annihilated (i.e. have zero weight), which is very close to the idea of The Last Judgment).   How can we know in this life what will, and what will not be important for the eternal life after the Big Crunch?  The only sure answer is Revelation [emphasis and upper-case added]." op. cit., p. 181

MY TAKE 

I agree with Grib's last sentence in the quote above: "The only sure answer is Revelation."    This attitude is not an appeal to fideism, that through faith only will we know what is truly important.   Rather, it concedes that our knowledge of material things is limited, that there is a "veiled reality" concealing the fundamental nature of things.   

Science changes.   What we take as established today may be tossed in the dust-bin a hundred years from now.   Revelation does indeed supersede scientific theory, because it is the Word of God.  

One final note:  this was published by error before I finished the article--in fact, before I did anything but the title.   I apologize to those readers who came to a blank page.

NOTES

*I've retitled this to be the first of a series of three on scientific ideas about the Resurrection of the dead, versus Catholic teaching.

**Press on the green book icon and chapter summary will appear on the right; press on that by Grib to get a summary.

***Grib also expounds on Fritz London's ideas about consciousness as final agent for quantum mechanical measurement:

"According to London and Bauer the main feature of consciousness is introspection:  in giving an account to myself of the state in which I am, I know that what I see now is white rather than black, and I know that I know."  op. cit. p. 170

****For a brief account of the relevant features of quantum mechanics see
Quantum Divine Action via God, the Berkeleyan Observer.... and links and references therein.

What should be a Catholic response to the Insult Culture?

Anger etching, C. LeBrun
from Wellcome Archive

“Anger is just a cowardly extension of sadness. It's a lot easier to be angry at someone than it is to tell them you're hurt.” G.K. Chesterton

"Call often to mind that our Saviour redeemed us by bearing and suffering, and in like manner we must seek our own salvation amid sufferings and afflictions; bearing insults, contradictions and troubles with all the gentleness we can possibly command."  St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to a Devout Life, Part III

Anyone listening to the recent Republican debates or reading comments on political or news blogs should be disheartened by the tone--angry, insulting, irrational.    People may have reasons for their anger, but these reasons do not justify a barrage of name-calling and insults.  Moreover, insults are not likely to win those whom you have insulted to your side.  I believe that the propensity to use insults rather than rational argument stems from an internet culture, a culture where one can be anonymous and thereby be nasty without attribution or retribution.  

In two earlier posts, "A Lesson from Two Homilies: Don't Argue on the Internet" and Don't Argue on the Internet 2: A Lesson in Gracious Dialogue, I argued that a Christian response to insults was to be patient and gentle and accept the insults, as suggested by St. Francis de Sales in the quote above, and by  St. Francis,  Bl. Mother Teresa,  among many others

One way to respond to insults is to avoid them, that is avoid the occasion of possible sin of anger--don't watch television, don't read internet blogs on politics or the news.    This will work, but you become the proverbial ostrich, hiding your head in the sand to avoid learning of the evil in the world.

A second way is to ignore insults, to accept them and bear them as a cross.   While such might be particularly appropriate in this Lenten season, it does nothing to change those who would inflict the insult, does nothing to modify their behavior.   And even though it may in fact be unreasonable to think that those who call names, rant and rave, can have their ways changed, nevertheless it is up to us to try and if we fail--at least the effort will have been made.  My own notion is to tell those who wield the insults that their verbal weapons will not change my mind, but only make me more opposed to their candidate or policies.

A third way is to counter one insult with another, with a dash of humor that seasons it enough to make the exchange palatable.   I'll give some examples from the Brits:

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."  — George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)

"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
— Churchill's response” 

And

“A member of Parliament to Disraeli: 'Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.'
That depends, Sir,' said Disraeli, 'whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”  

There are also the self-insulting jokes, a favorite in Jewish and Yiddish humor, that can be used to deprecate your real worth and thus take away the weapon of those who would demean you;  if you make yourself little, what point is there for an opponent to do likewise?

"I would never belong to a club that would have me as a member." Groucho Marx

 "How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?"   Woody Allen

(at a charity dinner) "I had my choice tonight of buying a hundred-dollar ticket or being up here on the dais.. So, good evening, ladies and gentlemen."  The late, great radio comedian Jack Benny 

I'm not sure which route I'll take when I next encounter internet insults.  I've taken a Lenten Vow not to comment on the Internet (broken once), so I may not have to make a choice for a while, at any rate.