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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Quantum Mechanics
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Quantum theory signaled the end of an era that began with Galileo and Newton. By the middle 1800s, Newtonian mechanics was at its zenith; all physical phenomena, it seemed, could now be explained in terms of mechanical models. Even as the celebratory hubris climbed, however, its demise was already fomenting.
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Gary Zukav:
Any answer is only a point of view. A point of view itself is limiting. To "understand" something is to give up some other way of conceiving it. This is another way of saying that the mind deals in forms of limitation. Nonetheless, there is a relationship between the content of awareness and the ability of the mind to transcend itself.
"Reality" is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends upon what we think. What we think depends upon what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality. The central focus of this process, initially at any rate, is "What we think."…
The psychological gestalt of physics has shifted radically in the last century to one of extreme openness. In the middle 1800s, Newtonian mechanics was at its zenith. There seemed to be no phenomenon which could not be explained in terms of mechanical models. All mechanical models were subject to long-established principles.
don't bother doing graduate work, we've got it all covered
The chairman of the physics department at Harvard discouraged graduate study because so few important matters remained unsolved. In a speech to the Royal Institution in 1900, Lord Kelvin reflected that there were only two "clouds" on the horizon of physics, the problem of black-body radiation and the Michelson-Morley experiment. There was no doubt, said Kelvin, that they soon would be gone.
He was wrong. Kelvin's two "clouds" signaled the end of the era that began with Galileo and Newton. The problem of black-body radiation led to Planck's discovery of the quantum of action. Within thirty years the entirety of Newtonian physics became a special limiting case of the newly developing quantum theory. The Michelson-Morley experiment foreshadowed Einstein's famous theories of relativity.
By 1927, the foundations of the new physics, quantum mechanics and relativity, were in place. In contrast to Kelvin's time, the allegiance of physicists today is to a symbol of extreme openness.
Isidor Rabi, Nobel Prize winner and Chairman Emeritus of the Physics Department at Columbia University, wrote in 1975: “I don't think that physics will ever have an end. I think that the novelty of nature is such that its variety will be infinite—not just in changing forms but in the profundity of insight and the newness of ideas.” Stapp wrote in 1971: “. . . human inquiry can continue indefinitely to yield important new truths.”
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