'The New Physics and Cosmology Dialogues with the Dalai Lama' edited
by Arthur Zajonc.
"PIET HUT: In our picture of the house of science, we saw that
scientists normally cheat and tell you only part of the story. They
do not often tell you that they rebuilt the foundation. Another
thing you do not hear about very often is even more fundamental: The
filter that separates experience from the construction of
science. For me this is extremely important, and it is almost always
left out of academic discussions.
DALAI LAMA: By filter, do you mean exactly which aspects of general
experience we will filter out and which we include as part of science?
PIET HUT: Yes. The primary and secondary qualities are an
example. Three hundred years ago, people determined that the length
of an object is physics, but its touch and color is
subjective. Human beings can feel the object and see the color. But
in physics, we only talk about mass, length, and time. Color has not
been interesting for physicists. Now we have a much more detailed
understanding of matter, and we have modified the filter: Now we can
compute the color of materials. Our filter is getting larger, and we
can describe more.
DALAI LAMA: But even now in physics, when you speak of color, you
are talking about photons and such things. As Arthur pointed out
with his study of Goethe's color theory, you're still leaving out
what we actually experience as color or sound and so forth.
PIET HUT: Subjective experience does not go through the
filter. Beauty and responsibility and meaning do not go through, at
least not at the moment.
DALAI LAMA: Does mind go through?
PIET HUT: Not as subjective experience. When scientists talk about
experience from the standpoint of psychology and biology, they are
focusing on the body and the brain. While this "experience" comes
from the real experience, it leaves out much. Then they make an
abstract picture, using mathematics and physics. They build up a
biology, and then they reconstruct the experience. There is no
reason to believe that it works completely. It is only an approximation.
If a neuroscientist tells you that he or she knows this or that
about experience, or if a biologist claims knowledge about human
brains from evolution, specific conclusion may be right. We have a
lot of detailed knowledge. But there is no reason to believe that we
have the complete picture. Probably we do not because so much is
left out and the knowledge structure is constantly changing. But as
the filter is being modified, then hopefully our understanding of
experience is improving and getting more accurate.
What I think is most interesting abut science is the notion of
freedom from identification. In this century, we have seen that the
old picture of the world of objects that we see around us really has
to be replaced by an interplay of interactions. Every phenomenon is
an interaction. Everything we know about the photon is given as a
play of actions. The photon can sometimes play as if it is more like
a wave, and sometimes it plays more like a particle, depending on
which question we ask. We cannot identify it uniquely, saying an
electron is a wave or is a particle. It is more fluid: there are
more possibilities. Using our understanding of different roles, we
have to see that the roles are only roles and not definitive, not
absolute. Therefore, at least in physics, we can see that we really
need to give up identification.
DALAI LAMA: By identification do you mean the notion of thingness?
PIET HUT: Yes..."
(P.207-208)
I'd like to extract one sentence from the above: "The photon can
sometimes play as if it is more like a wave, and sometimes it plays
more like a particle, depending on which question we ask." To me
this is saying the same thing that the Lila character says in Chapter
14 after she says "I'm not going to answer any more of your questions."
I am nearly to the end of this book, and that makes me very, very
sad. Reading this book has been an rewarding experience.
Marsha
.
.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
.
.
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