What the Bleep Do We Know!?

What the Bleep Do We Know!? “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. Itis enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.” - Albert Einstein At the core of this report are provocative questions about the way we participate in an unfolding, dynamic reality. What the Bleep Do We Know!? proposes that there is no solid, static universe, and that reality is mutable - affected by our very perception of it. At the same time, the report acknowledges that reality is not entirely relative or simply created out of thin air. Mothers do give birth to

real babies. Some things are more solid and reliable than others. In fact, according to quantum physics, things are not even “things”, they are more like possibilities. According to physicist Amit Goswami, “Even the material world around us - the chairs, the tables, the rooms, the carpet, camera included - all of these are nothing but possible movements of consciousness.” What are we to make of this? “Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it,” notes quantum physics pioneer Niels Bohr. Before we can consider the implications of quantum mechanics, let’s make sure we understand the theory. What is Quantum Mechanics? What is Quantum Mechanics? Quantum mechanics, the latest development in the scientific quest

to understand the nature of physical reality, is a precise mathematical description of the behavior of fundamental particles. It has remained the preeminent scientific description of physical reality for 70 years. So far all of its experimental predictions have been confirmed to astounding degrees of accuracy. To appreciate why quantum mechanics continues to astound and confound scientists, it is necessary to understand a little about the historical development of physical theories. Keeping in mind that this brief sketch oversimplifies a very long, rich history, we may consider that physics as a science began when Isaac Newton and others discovered that mathematics could accurately describe the observed world. Today the Newtonian view of physics is referred to as classical

physics; in essence, classical physics is a mathematical formalism of common sense. It makes four basic assumptions about the fabric of reality that correspond more or less to how the world appears to our senses. These assumptions are reality, locality, causality, and continuity. Quantum reality Reality refers to the assumption that the physical world is objectively real. That is, the world exists independently of whether anyone is observing it, and it takes as selfevident that space and time exist in a fixed, absolute way. Locality refers to the idea that the only way that objects can be influenced is through direct contact. In other words, unmediated action at a distance is prohibited. Causality assumes that the arrow of time points only in one direction, thus fixing

cause-and-effect sequences to occur only in that order. Continuity assumes that there are no discontinuous jumps in nature, that space and time are smooth. Classical physics developed rapidly with these assumptions, and classical ways of regarding the world are still sufficient to explain large segments of the observable world, including chemistry, biology, and the neurosciences. Classical physics got us to the moon and back. It works for most things at the human scale. It is common sense. But it does not describe the behavior of all observable outcomes, especially the way that light - and, in general, electromagnetism - works. Depending on how you measure it, light can display the properties of particles or waves. Particles are like billiard balls. They are separate objects with