The Conscious Universe

Imagine that two people have been chosen to be observers in a scien tific experiment involving two photons, or quanta of light. These pho tons originate from a single source and travel in opposite directions an equal distance halfway across the known universe to points where each will be measured or observed. Now suppose that before the pho tons are released, one observer is magically transported to a point of observation halfway across the known universe and the second ob server is magically transported to another point an equal distance in the opposite direction. ·The task of the observers is to record or meas ure a certain property of each photon with detectors located at the two points so that the data gathered at each can later be compared. Even though the photons are traveling from the source at the speed of light, each observer would have to wait billions of years for one of the photons to arrive at his observation point. Suppose, how ever, that the observers are willing to endure this wait because they hope to test the predictions of a mathematical theorem. This theorem not only allows for the prospect that there could be a correlation be tween the observed properties of the two photons but also indicates that this correlation could occur instantly, or in no time, in spite of the fact that the distance between the observers and their measuring instruments is billions of light years.

This book discusses the implications for philosophy of recent experimental results that confirm some counterintuitive aspects of the way matter behaves. The authors suggest that consciousness can no longer be divorced from the problem of the way science operates, and the book concludes by making the case that this entails a new way of understanding the universe that could obviate much of the current conflict between science and religion while providing at the same time a basis for valuation that is better suited for coordinating all human experience.

1. Two Small Clouds: The Emergence of a New Physics.- 2. The Strange New World of the Quantum: Wave-Particle Dualism.- 3. Confronting a New Fact of Nature: Bell's Theorem and the Aspect and Gisin Experiments.- 4. Changing the Rules: A New Epistemology of Science.- 5. The Logic of Nature: Complementarity and the New Biology.- 6. Ancient Whispers: The Expanding Universe.- 7. The Emergence of a New Vision: The Unfolding Universe.- 8. Quantum Ontologies: Metaphysics in Modern Physics.- 9. The Ceremony of Innocence: Physics, Metaphysics, and the Dialog between Science and Religion.- Appendix. Horizons of Knowledge in Cosmological Models.- Hypothesis of Large-Scale Complementarities.- Quantum Resolution of Cosmological Measurement Problems.- Notes.- 1.- 2.- 3.- 4.- 5.- 6.- 7.- 8.- 9.