The following is an excerpt from my latest non-fiction book, The Psi Connection, which will be published soon. Here I discuss the way in which scientists steer attention away from acceptance of quantum mechanics as a universal truth. They use words to deflect attention.
Bullfighters perform what is called a veronica to guide the bull away with their cape. Many scientists do something similar by dismissively declaring that quantum mechanics operates only at the nano level of quarks and pions, and does not apply in the macro world, and that thus for all practical purposes, quantum mechanics can be ignored.
Faced with Schrodinger’s famous analogy about a cat they might point out that what he described could not apply to a real cat, here in the real world, and thus they need not take quantum effects into account. They falsely dismiss the argument by declaring that an analogy is not literally true. Well, here’s a news flash: Analogies are not meant to be literally true; they are a means of enhancing knowledge about underlying truths.
This view that quantum mechanics can be ignored at the macro level does not provide a clear picture of our Universe, for if we accept that psi is real, and that it may derive from a universal field that connects all things, can we deny that quantum physics is involved? If we and everything in existence are made of energy, it goes without saying that at its root everything must exist in a quantum state.
In this way and in their secret hearts, many if not most scientists continue to view our Universe as a clockwork machine and thus they are surprised and puzzled to discover that that Universe is not only continuing to expand, but that the rate of expansion is actually increasing rather than slowing as Newton would have predicted. They are equally at a loss as to why we cannot identify the mass they think should be required to hold galaxies together.
I have discussed how energy and mass are not separate things as it would be convenient to think, but two flavors of the same thing, energy. If we accept quantum mechanics we must realize that everything that we assume to have mass in fact consists of energy. This is true because every object consists at its root of quantum particles, of mostly empty space (whatever that is) and energy posing as a perhaps imaginary thing we call matter. Thus, all that we know or suspect to exist is subject to the laws of quantum mechanics. That includes the smallest microbe but also the greatest galaxy.
It includes we humans, existing in our complex bodies made up of particles/waves of energy posing as matter, plus vast amounts of empty space, perhaps infused with mysterious energy fields that scientists label dark energy or affected by gravitational anomalies they say are due to invisible dark matter.
These terminologies have the smell of desperation about them, suggesting scientists are at a loss and grasping at straws to hold together their models of existence. In the process that George Orwell described in 1984, they replace truth with words. No one has any idea what dark energy or dark matter are, but by golly we have words for them!
Just such invisible forces or objects were invoked in ancient times to explain the observed Universe as seen through primitive eyes. Those explanations usually involved gods and goddesses, conveniently evoked to explain that which could not be understood. The deities were worshipped and made sacrifice to in order to gain their pleasure.
Today, words such as “dark energy” and “dark matter” have taken the place of gods. Just as gods such as Zeus, Kali, and Anubis had their personal names, so do the new objects of worship. By naming them we make them real, or at least so it might seem. Now in the 21st Century vast treasure is sacrificed to these new deities in the form of research grants, publishing royalties, and even a form of human sacrifice known as the career track.