Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

by Brian Greene

As far back as the 1930s, physicists Fritz London and Edmond Bauer,38 and a few decades later Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner,39 suggested that consciousness might be the key. After all, the puzzle becomes puzzling only when you report on your conscious experience of a definite reality, yielding a mismatch between what you say and what the mathematics of quantum mechanics predicts. Imagine, then, that the rules of quantum mechanics apply all along the chain, from the electron that’s being measured, to the particles in the equipment performing the measurement, to the particles constituting the readout on the equipment’s display. But when you look at the readout and the sensory data flows into your brain something changes: the standard quantum laws cease to apply. Instead, when conscious awareness is brought to bear, some other process takes over—a process that ensures you become cognizant of a single definite result. Consciousness would thus be an intimate participant in quantum physics, dictating that as the world evolves all but one of the many possible futures are eliminated, either from reality itself or at least from our cognitive awareness.