Does physics leave room for the spiritual?

[StarshipEnterprise]

Originally Posted by kagosielu

People often refer to ghost and spirits and all the religious like as supernatural. Meaning outside the realm of science, so it can't be proven or disproven. But what if it's not?

I mean, with all the stuff I read about quantum mechanics(with even that, it's still pretty confusing to me, but I love it), it seems more that ever science has become mystical.

I was just thinking. Even though we can many things in electrons proton and neutrons and the element made from them, we've learned there's much more to the universe than just the stuff on the periodic table. There's gravity, there's dark matter, there's dark energy. Could there be room in there for what would be the spirit?

If there's more more to the universe than atoms, maybe that leaves room for the spirit too, right? And maybe someday, it can be scientifically found and proven. And then we'll have a name for it, just like we have names like "quarks", "axion", "glueball", "meson", "plasmon" and so forth.

Am I right here? Or just completely ignorant about science?

If by "the spiritual" you mean ghosts, spirits, gods, etc. I think science, not necessarily physics, (or scientific thinking rather--looking at the universe as a quantifiable thing that must be studied analytically) is an alternative to this "classical" way of thinking. I personally don't believe in anything supernatural.

I love science. It provides the best way to understand everything around us. There is so much more I want to know.

On the other hand science ultimately doesn't explain anything. In order to "understand" anything you need to "put it in a box"--isolate it and separate it from other things. There lies the great lie. Nothing is separate from anything else, all boundaries are arbitrary. This applies not only to science, but any way of thinking. I know that I know nothing.

Oh jeez, I hope I wrote that in an way that makes sense. lol

[Dream]

Just wanted to ad that the double-slit experiment has been successful with more than just electrons. Buckyballs (and possibly other large molecules) have been tested to pass through more than one place at the same time in diffraction grating experiments. Its actually not news, because the test was performed back in '99.(Fullerene Diffraction) Buckyballs are spherical molecules made of 60 carbon atoms and are significantly larger and more massive than just an electron. 60 carbon atoms cumulatively possess 7 electron volts of internal energy and buckyballs have 174 vibrational configurations, which is another way of saying they definitely have mass and shape. This proves that larger objects definitely (not just maybe) have a deBroglie waveform equivalent and suggests all things might have diffraction characteristics similar to quantum particles.

[lunamoth]

Yes.

.

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by Dream

Just wanted to ad that the double-slit experiment has been successful with more than just electrons. Buckyballs (and possibly other large molecules) have been tested to pass through more than one place at the same time in diffraction grating experiments. Its actually not news, because the test was performed back in '99.(Fullerene Diffraction) Buckyballs are spherical molecules made of 60 carbon atoms and are significantly larger and more massive than just an electron. 60 carbon atoms cumulatively possess 7 electron volts of internal energy and buckyballs have 174 vibrational configurations, which is another way of saying they definitely have mass and shape. This proves that larger objects definitely (not just maybe) have a deBroglie waveform equivalent and suggests all things might have diffraction characteristics similar to quantum particles.

Hmmmmmmm..... does that make it possible to be in two places at once? And what are the implications for claiming overtime pay?

[Dream]

For double pay you will still work twice as hard if not more, and the pay isn't guaranteed. The trick is leaving one time scale and returning to ours at exactly the same time you left. It seems to me that repulsion forces are what govern the particle's departure from our timescale. Perhaps in your job if you were accelerated towards a wall of middle management with two openings it might appear that you did two jobs at the same time, but actually you'd just be doing extra work on your own time. You'd get twice as much done for the same pay probably. I'd stick with an hourly rate.

[Paladin]

I know it's not relevant to the op but I couldn't resist

I'm thinking of having my car serviced. Should I take it to a regular mechanic or a quantum mechanic?

Submitted by Wendy Woollett from Helena, MT

It clearly depends on your driving habits. If you often drive at faster than light speeds, you'd do well to have it serviced by a certified quantum mechanic. That way you can rest assured that if you hit a pothole at Mach 4 million, the suspension won't disintegrate into fundamental particles. Sure, they charge a bit more than your standard grease monkey, but they stand behind their work. I recall hearing about one case where a graduate student took a research vehicle on a joyride and forgot to check the oil first. He's now stuck in the stone age.

[Dream]

Originally Posted by Lunamoth

Yes.

That seems to be impression I get, too. What is interesting is that we can look at the world as being made of Legos, as a smooth painting, or as blinking pixels spewed out of a black hole but the mystery of it still remains.

I am both fragile and complex, yet I exist. I am so insignificant, but everything served me to put me together. If everything is dead, how am I alive? If everything is empty, how was I filled?

[RebeccaJasmin]

I joined these forums to ask precisely the same question!

I work in science and, sadly, I am surrounded by the attitude that physics does not leave room for the spiritual. I have a loose idea that at fundamental levels we don't really understand what energy is - life/consciousness may turn out to be (or at least manifested by) some sort of energy that connects us all.

I think that there are interesting properties to quantum mechanics which challenge our perceptions of reality. It seems interesting to me that matter exists in a particle state only when observed and isn't consciousness really just the act of observation? The article (Does Quantum Mechanics Play a non-trival Role in Life? - Paul Davies) links quantum effects to both the spark of primordial life and possibly consciousness through quantum effects occurring during neuron firing in the brain. Prof Fred Alan Wolf also has some interesting, if not a little mind blowing, reading! My quantum is limited but I think its cute to consider if love is really just a form of quantum entanglement and perhaps death is merely a decoherence problem (our consciousness reverts to a wave function(s) and can no longer be observed ... I could extend the argument to parallel universe/dimension theories but would likely just embarass myself ...So I am happy to admit that we really know nothing of the nature of reality or energy in terms of physics and while such mysteries exist, there is still room for the divine or possibly a reinterpretation of reality which includes an afterlife.

What scares me though is nueroscience. At what point do we examine/map brain function to sufficiently make the 'soul' and any illusion of free will obsolete? ie prove that we are just highly complex, over evolved machines. I think current brain mapping research renders dualist 'soul portal' theories pretty much impossible. You can then argue that the brain is more of a distributed portal for the soul ... perhaps brain imaging is just detecting the soul's energy signature as it goes about performing specialised tasks (ie frontal lobe activity during emotional stimulus doesn't necessarily mean that emotions are purely a brain function but that this is where the soul resides or works things through when being emotional ? Just because the kitchen light goes on every meal time doesn't mean that the house is empty and fully automated ...) ... you can still rationalise some of these arguments but the fact remains that a lot of neuroscientists are pretty confident that they will eventually reduce the entire human experience to brain function (look up Sorry but Your Soul Just Died). So why does all this matter? If every thought, action, feeling and memory, if every sense of consciousness we've ever had is purely a brain function ... then it's all gone when we die. As some one who has recently suffered the loss of a loved one, I can't even begin to accept that possibility.