Quantum Phsyics

Light a wave or a particle

The Double Slit Experiment came about by the desire to find out if light was a wave or a particle.

If you send photons through a double slit, then if light is a particle you’ll see two slits on the screen at the back. If light is a wave (imagine the slits being in water) then you’ll get an interference pattern.

Two curious things happen when you send single photons at a double slit. It appears that a single photon can go through both slits at the same time, but when you try an observe which slit it goes through the wave function collapses and the photon (or electron) behaves like a particle.

Parapsychologist Dean Radin has taken this experiment further, and found that even mental observation of the experiment at a distance has the same effect: Observation collapses the wave function. Merely observing the experiment changes the outcome.

Whatever people may think about this, this is what Max Planck, the father of quantum physics has to say:

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness”.

That’s panpsychism.

Erwin Schroedinger, was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist in quantum theory ”Individual consciousness is only a manifestation of a unitary consciousness pervading the universe”

Henry Stapp, an American mathematical physicist known for his work with quantum physics also claims that consciousness is fundamental to the universe.

That’s panpsychism.

Einstein:

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

That’s panpsychism.