A major contrast between religious or spiritual thinking and science concerns whether or not physical phenomena can simply be reduced to the sum of their parts. Basic physics, as described by the standard model of elementary particles and forces, is fully reductionist. This notion sticks in the craw of those who see themselves as part of a great, integrated whole.
In the scientific view, evolution reduces to a series of events that are local in space and time -- individual mutations that are passed on to the next generation. In the religious view, every event is part of grand scheme that applies holistically, under divine guidance, to the whole system from bacteria to humans and from billions of years in the past to the present and indefinite future. In the scientific view, physical events also reduce to a series of events local in space and time -- collisions between subatomic particles such as electrons and photons. In the view of quantum spiritualists, subatomic events are part of a grand scheme that applies holistically to every particle from an electron in a french fry at McDonald's to a photon in the cosmic background radiation billions of light-years away and billions of years in the past.
The conventional reductionist picture envisages a series of levels of matter. From elementary particles (or strings, or whatever is the most elementary) we move to the nuclei of atoms, then to the atoms themselves and the molecules that are composed of atoms. While only on the order of a hundred distinguishable atoms exist, the number of molecules is endless -- especially the huge structures built around carbon that form the ingredients of life and our fossil fuels, as well as many synthetic materials from plastics to polyesters.
The objects of our everyday experience are composed of molecules. Living organisms are an important component at this level, at least to us living organisms. How important they are on a cosmic scale is more dubious. Humans organize themselves into societies, so we can regard social systems -- politics, and economics -- as a yet higher level of material existence. Beyond that we have on Earth and its complex environment, the solar system, our galaxy, other galaxies, and whatever else is out there such as black holes, the cosmic background radiation, dark matter, dark energy, and other universes.
Now it should be obvious that an elementary particle physicist cannot take her equations and produce a derivation of every physical property we observe. She cannot calculate the structure of DNA from "first principles" or predict the stock market (though some have tried). At every level of matter from the smallest bodies to the largest we have specialists developing the principles that apply at that level by applying the time-honored methods of science -- observation, model building, and hypothesis testing. These principles are said to "emerge" from the level below. But the fact that we cannot derive everything from particle physics does not mean that the universe still isn't just a collection of particles.
Classical physics was reductionist. While direct proof of the existence of atoms was not found until the twentieth century, Newtonian mechanics was able to describe all of the behavior of macroscopic material systems -- gases, liquids, and solids -- in terms of the motions of their parts. The emergent principles of thermodynamics, which were introduced to describe macroscopic systems such as steam engines and refrigerators, were eventually derived from the submicroscopic atomic theory of matter.
New Age spiritualists and Christian apologists have appropriated quantum mechanics to claim a more holistic picture of nature. However, quantum mechanics and, as mentioned, the standard model of particles and forces, are fully reductionist. The standard model has agreed with all the data gathered at particle accelerators since the 1970s and is only now being seriously tested at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. Discoveries at the LHC are unlikely to change the general reductionist scheme.
In short, reductionism in physics remains consistent with all the data. It isn't defeated just by the fact that it can't derive everything that happens. It still works. Holism has no evidentiary support. It doesn't work. Holism is nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of those who have the hubris to think that they are an important part of some cosmic plan.
New Age: wonderful belief and practices for some to attain congruence and spirituality. I agree with Stenger, the appropriation of the Quantum term is spurious - create a new age term because it appears that there is cashing in on scientific cache unwarranted.
I ask the philosophers about Cybernetics as a study of systems.
My knowledge of Cybernetics is cursory, but discontinuous systems, be they holistic or quantum, I gather, exist. So holism is a little holey it seems. I appreciated the comment saying that scientific observation requires but one more electron.
The commenter who mentioned the reading list of Aristotle, Spinoza, Heidegger, Rorty etc for scientists, great! I like the idea proposed by Manuel Delanda in a graduate seminar on the works of Deleuze & Guattari, suggesting an Ockham's Razor be applied to the Aristotelian division of Specific and General I'd like to know what a scientist could make of this considering this conceptual division lasts up to at least the works of Newton and of course, Darwin.
Science works, sociologically as well. Incredibly complex medium sized carbon based forms are interacting erratically in various ecological contexts. Naming hubris in "believers"? This widebrush label and naming is hubris itself. I charge you with poor social ethical conduct and discursive enlightened absolutism. How do you plea before I bring down the fuzzy gavel?
I trust Quantum and its nooks and crannies can put a sock on big TOE statements.
It boggles me how people without real knowlegde, that have not sweated a little bit doing research, take a book of quantum holism or whatever, half digest it, and suddenly they become experts. Things i would not dare to say to my peers are taked from granted, the most outrageous, contrafactual and nonsensical things have the solemn "truth" behind.
I wish i could invite them to my workplace and say to them "Look, thats a database with 2 or 3 million mammograms, statistics say 1 in 10 of the womans in that database are gonna suffer breast cancer, some of them are gonna live normally throw it, some of them are gonna lost their breast and some of them are gonna die. Apply the grand "truth" you are telling me the whole time, save them".
This is especially true of quantum mechanics, a scientific discipline whose bewildering equations yield lovely probability distribution functions that Nature then obligingly follows with slavish 10 digit fidelity. Sadly, quantum mechanics' track record for providing a gut level intuitive grasp of subatomic physics has been.... a bit spotty, Spotty enough, in fact, to make it quite certain that New Age gurus spouting math free platitudes on the subject are pretty much certain to be operating WAY far away from the peak of the probability distribution function bell curve!
On the other hand, some rather woo-ish types did help rejuvenate interest in QM back in the 70s. David Kaiser tells this story in the recently-published "How the Hippies Saved Physics". I haven't read the book, but I have seen him speak on the subject, and it was both fascinating and at some points very funny. By reviving about some neglected corners of QM - the Einstein/Podolsky/Rosen paradox for one thing - they helped usher in a new era of progress in quantum information theory.
And a good thing too.
Spooky new age theories tend to push systems models into the background. Our world prefers the dichotomous clash between the atheistic reductionist and the mystical-holistic.
Both the holistic and the reductionist are junk. The Cosmos consists of layered systems with different levels of complexity.
Out of the flux of chaos emerged linear causal systems in the physical domain. From the physical emerged feedback systems with the biological and then from the biological, open systems with the sentient.
Social behavior of millions of people cannot be accounted for in the movement of sub-atomic particles or atoms or molecules or biological organisms. Sentience transcends physical causality while remaining embedded in it and constrained by it.
We are sentient beings, creators of open systems we call societies. That is mystery enough.
What is it that makes people diss the physical so much? There's a weird current in Western thought (maybe eastern too, I dunno) in which people assume that there must be some non-material thing called mind, or God, or whatever, that does all this stuff. Material is capable of amazing things, and I think everything we hold dear are emergent phenomena of the physical world. What's wrong with that?
You don't need god or mysticism to conclude that any alien finding a big red truck would not be able by examining it at the atomic level not be able to say anything meaningful about the whole. That is because the truck is a system of a higher order than the molecular. It is a physical organisation of the sentient made manifest in the physical.
Therefore your second paragraph misses the point about emergence and reductionism. The big red truck cannot be explained in a model which can be translated down to the atomic level. And, the physical level has been transcended by the biological and the sentient, which though nested within and subject to the physical, do things differently.
Where is your evidence?
But these "particles" are not particles and your insistence of using the term gives the impression that we are back in the 17th century. These particles "take all possible paths". And ISOLATED particle is 'a drastically non-local, superimposed, interconnected series of probability amplitudes'. This is not your grandpa's "particles", Newton's particles. Not to mention that these "Particles" are non-counterfactual, context-dependent, and do not obey "local realism", and are somehow connected to the mode of observation, so that Neils Bohr said that the word "phenomenon" should be taken to mean BOTH the object under study AND the mode of observation. Stop calling them "Particles", as David Bohm suggested - they are no such thing as that word implies.
So, 'quanta' by existing as such rather than finding "particles", means that our hopes of finding a purely material reality is shattered. One therefore cannot reduce mind to matter, the mystery is much deeper than this wishful thinking that the author presents.
In this context, measurement, observation, interaction, mind take on a much more mysterious quality. This is why I find the assertion that particle physics is totally reductionist to be way over reaching.
Don't get me wrong, I find the contemplation of the "Whole" a very soothing, intellectually challenging and amazingly entertaining, personal, spiritual experience that can be accomplished by working with that wonderful emergent phenomenon we call the mind. By the way, the mind, an emergent phenomenon of the electro-chemical interactions in our brain, is a great place for finding other emergent phenomenon like meaning and purpose.
That's a belief, not something proven.
What is a belief is, if you damage a mind, there is a magic-version of it that is invisible and goes to an invisible magic place. That has definitely never been demonstrated
Reductionism admits the existence of energy, but we don't know everything about energy. To say that energy has any intelligence behind it sounds like a stretch, but we don't know everything that energy can do.
I prefer not to confuse religion with energy. Even though they could be related, energy also exists outside of religion. People with religious beliefs should be encouraged to learn and grow just like reductionists.
So until we learn more, we need to respect both sides, because respect is part of the energy of life.
Don't get me wrong, I find the contemplation of the "Whole" very soothing, intellectually challenging and amazingly entertaining personal, spiritual experience that can be accomplished by that wonderful emergent phenomenon we call the mind. By the way, the mind is a great place for finding other emergent phenomenon like meaning and purpose.
As to "holism," or the existence of the whole, the concept of "evidence" is irrational. Evidence implies something apart, and there can be nothing apart from a whole. What exists prior to your conceived particles is not broken up in the way experience is broken up by intellect and method -- not broken up, and therefore whole. Science is only partially and temporarily useful, as long as that level of intellect is functioning, but that serves ultimately only as conditioning and ignorance of the unbroken context of experience, in other words, the WHOLE.
"The materialist is the most irrational of all believers." — maybe you will be able to prove it some day but for now they seem to be the only ones to be producing tangible results. The pie in the sky, holistic, "whole" approach has produced nada unless you count the irrational cravings for some easy silver bullet that will magically give us meaning, understanding, purpose and free beer as a worthwhile result.
Phenomena, so-called material or so-called spiritual, are all like this. We could also call it "experience." It's all temporary and changeable. The upshot is, human beings eventually get tired of it because the fundamental nature of experience is always thus, no matter what science achieves. And tiring of all this play, we wisely wonder if there is any freedom from it. There is only freedom in realizing, reverting to, surrendering into the holistic context, which we can also call irrefutable truth.
I'm entirely in agreement with the thrust of your argument, though.
You might be able to explain molecules, particles, atoms; you might even have a working theory of gravity or antimatter. Just because you can't see the connection doesn't mean there isn't one either.
We are emotional beings, and thank god, whether it 'exists' or not. It might be hubris to believe the world contains magic and synchronicities, it might even be folly, but it's a lot more fun. Can you explain love scientifically? And if you did, would that change your experience of it? Can you write an algorithm to explain beauty? And how would that change your perception of it?
It doesn't all come down to bits and balls, there's more to a man than that.
This concept of non-human value is incoherent. The most generous thing I could say about it is, it offers an appeal to emotion. Definitely doesn't offer any rational explanation.
Stenger's materialism reveals deep character flaws, not only in him but in all who believe in his brand of "reality," which, like any good fundamentalist, he upholds absolutely.
Materialism and its incestuous brother, fatalism, always devolve into solipsism and nihilism.
Let them have at their misery. And let them call their misery happiness.
I laugh at them. Wholly and holistically.
Quantum be upon you.
I agree that borrowing notions from reductionist natural sciences and claiming to find religious messages is nonsense. In which case the contention fits that holism does not work because it has no evidentiary support. But that would only be the case for "work" and "evidentiary" within a reductionist context.
The recent contention by cosmologists at Oxford that the cosmos is likely to be 250 times larger than what Hubble has showed us thus far and would then be flat and infinite is evidentiary. No one, so far as I am aware, has a 'working' program for implementation of such information. I venture that no one ever will have a working program that manages experimentally to deal with the cosmos at such a level.
So where do we go to get help with such an awareness? Why not try the myth makers. Sure, they only tell stories. That's a whole lot better than being told "Don't you dare imagine that you are part of a cosmic plan, because physics cannot explain the whole cosmos, only elementary sub-atomic particles banging against one another."