Quantum-Mind or Mind-Stuff?

The true scientists in spite of everything go on looking for the truth. Not long ago in Arizona University (the USA) the international scientific conference “Quantum Mind 2003” successfully took place. There a very unusual topic was discussed – “Quantum Mind”. The problem was born at the meeting-point of science and philosophy with the help of the world-famous physicist Sir Roger Penrose and the famous scientist Steward Hameroff, who studied the nervous processes in the human brain on the cell level. It can seem strange, but in Russia this problem has been long investigated, but from a different angle. For the Russian scientists quantum mind is not something, situated in the brains, but the Informational Field, covering all the Universum. So, the humanity comes back to the problems of Microcosm and Macrocosm again, and the modern physics has become very close with that sphere of knowledge, which is scornfully called “metaphysics” by some people.

The historians of the science assert that the term “metaphysics” appeared by chance – the chapter of the great Aristotle’s book was called so, it followed the chapter “physics”. Later this, at first sight, accidental coincidence became “the major question of philosophy” – what comes first and what comes second: the Matter, studied by physics, or the Mind, Spirit, Thought – the things, which are traditionally thought over by philosophers and theologists. In the modern science the analogical thing of that has become a psycho-physical problem: if the thought is not material, how can it be that the human mind can control the material body? Maybe, the thought is of some material character?

The quantum mechanics made the problem more acute, where the strange behavior of micro particles demonstrates some “freedom of will” and “coordination” of physical characteristics, beyond time and space. The strange “psy-function”, which appeared in the quantum equation of Schredinger, like some controlling power, guided the behavior of physical micro objects. The conceptions of Penrose and Hameroff lies in the development of this research work, they prove that the probable quantum processes within the cells are responsible for what is called mind. That is why it is not chance that not only physics, biology, neurology, but also psychology and philosophy and even culture studying, because in the ancient traditional beliefs we can find he proofs to the modern scientific hypotheses, are presented at the conference.

I shall not speak here of the ideas, suggested by the scientists from different countries on the given questions, the ones, who want to get acquainted with these ideas, can do it through internet, where they can find the theses of the conference Quantum Mind 2003 reports (there are also short theses of my work “Numbers in Space”). I want to tell of the supplement research work, as it appears that scientists, working on the same problem from different sides, go to meet each other. If American scientists try to explain human mind, scientists across the Atlantic – in Europe and Russia – build scientific models, which are creating new cosmology, where the fundamental meaning of information is revealed. The reasonable basis of the Universum has been getting its scientific rights.

Russian and foreign scientists have been recently trying to create in their works a synthetical theory, where the fundamental bases of algebra and geometry are united. The realization of this program is connected with the deep revaluation of such basic notions as “number”, “continuum”, “point”, “limit”, “infinitesimal”, “nought”, “infinity”, that is why the approaches are being outlined – though they can be different from each other sometimes. This is natural, because the researchers are free in the way they work, and the coming revolutionary changes in the logic of science areinevitably connected with the changes of the whole picture of the world.

The philosophical bases of the research work were laid in the 19th century already by the “founding fathers”. So, the number pairs were created by the great English mathematician Hamilton, while he was trying to define Time from the point of view of algebra, and Clifford’s algebra, which is now often used in the works of the stated approach, was realized by its creator, William Clifford, as mathematical reflection of John Berkley’s philosophy. In his philosophical essay Clifford introduced the special notion “mind-stuff”.

By the way, the leader of Russian revolutionists, Vladimir Lenin, in his book “Materialism and Empiriocriticism” put a great deal of criticism on William Clifford’s views. For the following generations of Russian students it was obligatory to read and make the abstract of the Lenin’s work, so they had a lot to think about. And it is no wonder that many of them came to the idea that “thought” can be some “objective reality“ too. But where is it situated, if in space there is enough room only for the Matter? At the turn of the Soviet period the term “nous-sphere”, introduced by Vladimir Vernadsky, was very popular, but the discussion about the metaphysical processes did not make the major points clearer.

The scientific revolution of the 20th century gave birth to the unusual tendencies in western and European science. In France and Germany the algebraic interpretations of quantum physics were developed, the geometrical conceptions, which let create the unusual models of the Universe, consisting of several interdependent worlds, also were originated there. Italian physicists tried to express mathematically laws of hypothesis world of tachyons, who lived “on the opposite side” of the velocity of light. And in the post-communist Russia the name of Pavel Florensky a physicist and philosopher, who became a priest and died in GULAG, was remembered. In his work “About Imaginary in Geometry” the existence of “the opposite side” of the spatial reality, expressed with the help of imaginary numbers, was declared.

Modern scientific notions let us make an outline of the new cosmology, based upon the joining two theoretical models. They are geometrical 4-dimensional space-time continuum and algebraic quaternion time-space (the three imaginary axes and a material one have the time difference [t], and the co-efficient of proportionality between the physical data is not velocity of light C [x/t], but a special constant S [t/x]). While quaternion time-space is “built” not with the points, but with the oriented rotating moments, it can be regarded as existing-in-the-reality mathematical variety, where objective informational processes are going on. In such a case the objective essence, now named Information, is a competent participant of the Universum, as well as those, which are called Matter and Field (then to the number of the fundamental constants Bolzman’s constant is added, it is used in expression for entropy, and can be often met in the modern information theories, but in physics it is regarded as some empirical number of no universal character). The informational processes are somewhat quickened in the basis of the Matter itself. This can be proved by the fact that electromagnetic waves are the main carrier of information. Their ability to be coded and decoded is the essential quality, which is very important for the people’s mind. But there are at least two different approaches on this question. The generally accepted notion is well-known: information is a function of complex material systems, and is of no importance for the fundamental physical science, which describes “the main laws”. The other approach was firstly formulated by Taillar de Charden. This is a hypothesis of “radial component of energy”,that is information is understood as some essence, which is transported and transformed in the material processes as easily as what physicists call energy. The modern scientific research work has a lot to do with this hypothesis.

It is a paradoxical situation: the modern civilization is based on the use of informational processes, the objectivity of information has become almost tangible, but this objectivity is still being connected only with nervous impulses and signals, and such important characteristics of information as Sense and Meaning are regarded as some subjective-psychological conventions. It is evident that it is time to admit that in new cosmology Information, Sense and Meaning have a fundamental place. If scientists could up to now abstract from that, now the scientific abstractions themselves in their development have led scientists to the necessity of changing mechanical notions. Dual algebraic-geometrical character of mathematical models of the world has become quite logically evident, it is necessary to admit the deep essence, which is hidden in it. The matter is not “in the equivalency of the languages of description”, but in the fact, that special features of equations show us the deepest structures of the Universum. As Werner Heisenberg once wrote: “Equations know more than we do”. It should be also mentioned that in his letters to W. Heisenberg his friend Pauli told him enthusiastically not long before his death of a new unusual picture of the world based on dualism. But some dim circumstances made Pauli call that way forbidden, and his death stopped the research work, begun by him. Nevertheless, the logic of science development brings scientists again to the necessity to make the further conclusions.

The most remarkable consequence of the new cosmology is a strange model, where the whole so-called “material world” appears to be the thin potential barrier, through which the informational interaction between the linked and additional parts of the Universum is realized. To speak mathematical language, we live “within” the imaginary unite, linking the opposite ends of the Universum, expressed in geometrical and algebraic-numerical continuums, and the boundaries of our world are expressed by the fundamental physical constants S=h/e2 [t/x] and C [x/t] – meaningful for micro and mega scales.

I understands that the suggested here interpretation of the mathematical models (which is not yet generally admitted) can cause accusations in mystic and pseudo-science. But it should be noted that modern science has found itself in the position, where it was at the time of its beginning, when scientists used for cognition various models, visual-artistic images, notions not adjusted logically and ambivalent terms. That is why it is necessary to suppose: in the traditional religious and mystic teachings there is something, which is called “grain of truth”. In other words, in the future scientific theory we shall be able to find the logical and successive connection between those things, which are at present beyond the modern “scientific picture of the world”. There is nothing pseudo-scientific in such setting of the problem, we can set the problem, try to solve it and finally to have solved it. The only condition is that we should be critical and careful, and we should not go into creation of words and science fiction.

In either event there is a hope that the fundamental science has not found its end at all – in the 3d millennium – scientists will find many points for thinking over.

Pavel Poluyan PRAVDA.Ru Krasnoyarsk

Read the original in Russian: https://www.pravda.ru/mysterious/33638-kwant/

Related links:

Theses on the conference Quantum Mind 2003-03-20