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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gary Zukav
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May 31 - July 30, 2023
What physicists do, however, is actually quite simple. They wonder what the universe is really made of, how it works, what we are doing in it, and where it is going, if it is going anyplace at all.
Physics, in essence, is simple wonder at the way things are and a divine (some call it compulsive) interest in how that is so. Mathematics is the tool of physics. Stripped of mathematics, physics becomes pure enchantment.
“When I studied physics in Taiwan,” said Huang, “we called it Wu Li (pronounced ‘Woo Lee’). It means ‘Patterns of Organic Energy.’”
In short, Wu Li, the Chinese word for physics, means “patterns of organic energy” (“matter/energy” [Wu] + “universal order/organic patterns” [Li]. This is remarkable since it reflects a world view which the founders of western science (Galileo and Newton) simply did not comprehend, but toward which virtually every physical theory of import in the twentieth century is pointing!
PHYSICS = WU LI Wu Li = Patterns of Organic Energy Wu Li = My Way Wu Li = Nonsense Wu Li = I Clutch My Ideas Wu Li = Enlightenment
A Master teaches essence. When the essence is perceived, he teaches what is necessary to expand the perception.
This is another characteristic of a Master. Whatever he does, he does with the enthusiasm of doing it for the first time. This is the source of his unlimited energy. Every lesson that he teaches (or learns) is a first lesson. Every dance that he dances, he dances for the first time. It is always new, personal, and alive.
a common misunderstanding. When most people say “scientist,” they mean “technician.” A technician is a highly trained person whose job is to apply known techniques and principles. He deals with the known. A scientist is a person who seeks to know the true nature of physical reality. He deals with the unknown. In short, scientists discover and technicians apply.
people whose gift it is by nature to take those things which we call commonplace and to re-present them to us in such ways that our self-imposed limitations are expanded. Those people in whom this gift is especially pronounced, we call geniuses.
Quantum mechanics are not the fellows who repair automobiles in Mr. Quantum’s garage. Quantum mechanics is a branch of physics.
It was Galileo Galilei who, following the Middle Ages, first quantified the physical world. He measured the motion, frequency, velocity, and duration of everything from falling stones to swinging pendulums (like the chandelier in his cathedral). It was René Descartes who developed many of the fundamental techniques of modern mathematics and gave us the picture of the universe as a Great Machine. It was Isaac Newton who formulated the laws by which the Great Machine runs.
The new physics, quantum mechanics, tells us clearly that it is not possible to observe reality without changing it.
The point to think about is that when we make a measurement in a quantum mechanical experiment—when the observed system interacts with the observing system—we reduce a multidimensional reality to a three-dimensional reality compatible with our experience.
From the classical point of view, a real photon travels between the light source and the screen. The odds are 50–50 that it will go to slit one and 50–50 that it will go to slit two. From the point of view of quantum mechanics, there is no photon until a detector fires. There is only a developing potentiality in which a photon goes to slit one and to slit two. This is Heisenberg’s “strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.”5
Without perception, the universe continues, via the Schrödinger equation, to generate an endless profusion of possibilities. The effect of perception, however, is immediate and dramatic. All of the wave function representing the observed system collapses, except one part, which actualizes into reality. No one knows what causes a particular possibility to actualize and the rest to vanish. The only law governing this phenomenon is statistical. In other words, it is up to chance.
In other words, the wave and particle characteristics of light are unified by quantum mechanics, but at a price. There is no description of reality.
Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of western religion. Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of western science. In other words, religion has become a matter of the heart and science has become a matter of the mind. This regrettable state of affairs does not reflect the fact that, physiologically, one cannot exist without the other. Everybody needs both. Mind and heart are only different aspects of us.
In terms of Schrödinger’s standing wave theory, Pauli’s exclusion principle means that once a particular wave pattern forms in an atom, it excludes all others of its kind.
most probable state for that time, is a matter of chance. In other words, the “probability” of quantum mechanics is the probability of observing an observed system in a given state at a given time if it was prepared in a given initial state.* Thus it was that the wave aspect of quantum mechanics developed. Just as waves have particle-like characteristics (Planck, Einstein), particles also have wave-like characteristics (de Broglie). In fact, particles can be understood in terms of standing waves (Schrödinger). Given initial conditions, a precise evolution of standing-wave patterns can be
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There is no way that we can know simultaneously the position and the momentum of a moving particle. All attempts to observe the electron alter the electron. This is the primary significance of the uncertainty principle. At the subatomic level, we cannot observe something without changing it. There is no such thing as the independent observer who can stand on the sidelines watching nature run its course without influencing it.
Whatever it is that we are observing can have a determinable momentum, and it can have a determinable position, but of these two properties, we must choose, for any given moment, which one we wish to bring into focus. This means, in reference to “moving particles” anyway, that we can never see them the way they “really are,” but only the way we choose to see them! As Heisenberg wrote: What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.11
“Nonsense” is that which does not fit into the prearranged patterns which we have superimposed on reality.
Nonsense is nonsense only when we have not yet found that point of view from which it makes sense.
Baker Roshi, the American Zen Master, wrote: The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities….1
A “constant velocity of light” is exactly what would result if moving measuring rods became shorter and moving clocks ran more slowly because a moving observer would measure the speed of light with a shorter measuring rod (less distance for the light to travel) and a slower clock (more time to do it in) than an observer at rest. Each observer, however, would consider his own rod and clock to be quite normal and unimpaired. Therefore, both observers would find the speed of light to be 186,000 miles per second and both of them would be puzzled by this fact if they were still bound by the
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the fact that moving clocks change their rhythm led Einstein to the inescapable conclusion that “now,” “sooner,” “later,” and “simultaneous” are relative terms. They all depend upon the state of motion of the observer.
The concept of yin-yang, which is really a very old law of symmetry, is yet another way of saying that the physical universe is a whole which seeks balance within itself.
The assumptions of Newtonian physics correspond to the clothes we always thought that the Emperor was wearing: a universal time whose uniform passage equally affects every part of the universe; a separate space, independent though empty; and the belief that there exists somewhere in the universe a place which stands absolutely still, quiet and unmoving. Every one of these assumptions has been proven untrue (not useful) by the special theory of relativity. The Emperor wasn’t wearing them at all. The only motion in the physical universe is motion relative to something else. There is no separate
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As an object travels through the space-time continuum, it takes the easiest path between two points. The easiest path between two points in the space-time continuum is called a geodesic (geo dee’ sic).
There is nothing but space-time and motion and they, in effect, are the same thing. Here is an exquisite presentation, in completely western terms, of the most fundamental aspect of Taoist and Buddhist philosophies.
One of the most profound by-products of the general theory of relativity is the discovery that gravitational “force,” which we had so long taken to be a real and independently existing thing, is actually our mental creation. There is no such thing in the real world. The planets do not orbit the sun because the sun exerts an invisible gravitational force on them, they follow the paths that they do because those paths are the easiest ways for them to traverse the terrain of the space-time continuum in which they find themselves.
atoms have turned out to be patterns of subatomic particles. In other words, “matter” is actually a series of patterns out of focus. The search for the ultimate stuff of the universe ends with the discovery that there isn’t any. If there is any ultimate stuff of the universe, it is pure energy, but subatomic particles are not “made of” energy, they are energy. This is what Einstein theorized in 1905. Subatomic interactions, therefore, are interactions of energy with energy. At the subatomic level there is no longer a clear distinction between what is and what happens, between the actor and the
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The world view of particle physics is a picture of chaos beneath order. At the fundamental level is a confusion of continual creation, annihilation and transformation. Above this confusion, limiting the forms that it can take, are a set of conservation laws. They do not specify what must happen, as ordinary laws of physics do, rather they specify what cannot happen. They are permissive laws. At the subatomic level, absolutely everything that is not forbidden by the conservation laws actually happens.
The world view of particle physics is that of a world without “stuff,” where what is = what happens, and where an unending tumultuous dance of creation, annihilation, and transformation runs unabated within a framework of conservation laws and probability.
Mass is only one particular form of energy, the energy of being. If a particle is moving it not only has energy of being (its mass) but it also has energy of motion (kinetic energy). Both types of energy can be used to create new particles in a particle collision.
time “flows” in the direction of high probability, which is the direction of increasing entropy.
The difference between experience and symbol is the difference between mythos and logos. Logos imitates, but can never replace, experience. It is a substitute for experience. Logos is the artificial construction of dead symbols which mimics experience on a one-to-one basis. Classical physical theory is an example of a one-to-one correspondence between theory and reality.
Theologically speaking, logos is the original sin, the eating of the fruit of knowledge, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Historically speaking, logos is the growth of the literary revolution, the birth of the written tradition out of the oral tradition. From any point of view, logos (literally) is a dead letter. “Knowledge,” wrote e. e. cummings, “is a polite word for / dead but not buried imagination.” He was talking about logos.
Every quantum mechanical experiment has an observed system. Every observed system has an associated wave function. The wave function of a particular observed system (like a photon) is the coherent superposition of all the possible results of an interaction between the observed system and a measuring system (like a photographic plate). The development in time of this coherent superposition of possibilities is described by Schrödinger’s wave equation. Using this equation, we can calculate the form of this thing-in-itself, this coherent superposition of possibilities which we call a wave
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A scientific theory is “true” if it is self-consistent and correctly correlates experience (predicts events). In short, when a scientist says that a theory is true, he means that it correctly correlates experience and, therefore, it is useful. If we substitute the word “useful” whenever we encounter the word “true,” physics appears in its proper perspective.
The most fundamental difference between Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics is the fact that quantum mechanics is based upon observations (“measurements”). Without a measurement of some kind, quantum mechanics is mute. Quantum mechanics says nothing about what happens between measurements. In Heisenberg’s words: “The term ‘happens’ is restricted to the observation.”15 This is very important, for it constitutes a philosophy of science unlike any before it.
Bohr’s principle of complementarity also addresses the underlying relation of physics to consciousness. The experimenter’s choice of experiment determines which mutually exclusive aspect of the same phenomenon (wave or particle) will manifest itself. Likewise, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle demonstrates that we cannot observe a phenomenon without changing it. The physical properties which we observe in the “eternal” world are enmeshed in our own perceptions not only psychologically, but ontologically as well.
The second most fundamental difference between Newtonian physics and quantum theory is that Newtonian physics predicts events and quantum mechanics predicts the probability of events. According to quantum mechanics, the only determinable relation between events is statistical—that is, a matter of probability.
The function of eastern religions (psychologies) is to allow the mind to escape the confines of the symbolic. According to this view, everything is a symbol, not only words and concepts, but also people and things. Beyond the confines of the symbolic lies that which is, pure awareness, the experience of the “suchness” of reality.
“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.” We at least can say that allegiance to a symbol of openness (Christ, Buddha, Krishna, “the infinite diversity of
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Max Planck, the father of quantum mechanics, wrote: Science…means unresting endeavor and continually progressing development toward an aim which the poetic intuition may apprehend, but which the intellect can never fully grasp.
