Quantum Musings

In Quantum Society, Danah Zohar continued her exploration of quantum perspective. In Quantum Self, she talked about, "...the seething equivalence of matter and energy..." and develops a quantum worldview which, "...integrates the sense of self, others, nature and...the environment...".

Quantum Society expanded that worldview by talking about a social reality which is holistic, synthetic, spiritual, and emergent.

These themes echo those of two books probing the commonalities of Eastern Mysticism and deep physics.

In The Dancing Wu-Li Masters, Gary Zukav talks of "...Wu Li, the Chinese word for physics means patterns of organic energy...a worldview which the founders of Western Science...simply could not comprehend, but toward which virtually every physical theory of import in the twentieth century is pointing".

In The Tao of Physics, Fritjov Capra says, "...there is an essential harmony between the spirit of Eastern wisdom and Western Science...the way-or Tao-of physics can be a path with a heart...".

What we find when we probe the meaning of findings in particle physics in the twentieth century is that at the core of the nucleus of the atom(the building block of everything, including us) is a frothing, fuzzy virtuality which probabilistically emerges as mathematical structures on computer printouts.

Not very reassuring to those of us who want simple explanations of the ultimate elements.

The mathematics needed to probe the innerworkings of the atom portrays a subatomic world which consists of metaphorical entities like quarks, fields, photons, electrons, strings, mutliple dimensions, all entangled in an interconnected web of broken symmetries.

As we follow this sea of clouds up to molecules, substances, life, consciousness and society, the patterns become incomprehensibly complex, and words like fractals, topologies, symmetries, and boolean networks start to emerge.

In Strange Beauty, George Johnson illustrates how Murray Gell-Mann did for subatomic particles what Mendeleev had done for the elements. He developed an organizational scheme for them. He called the scheme The Eightfold Way, and it reduced the complexity of the myriad of particles known at the time to a much more simple structure.

In The Quark and the Jaguar, Gell-Mann talks about how quarks, the basic building blocks of the reality around us, lead to more complex structures. He goes on to discuss how world problems from the environment and economy to the political and military establishments can benefit from the application of new methodologies being developed in places like the Santa Fe Institute.

Actuarial Universe will explore the implications of such thoughts.

For more inforamtion go to my website, paradigmactuaries.com

Lee