The Quantum Self

The Quantum Self. Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics by Danah Zohar. Quill/William Morrow 1990. ISBN 0688107362

It's hard to summarize this book adequately but I'll try. It covers a vast range of subjects, based on the thesis that quantum theory is going to affect humanity's view of the world, our selves, our intimate relationships and our communities, just as Newton and Descartes once did. I found it hard to tell where metaphor and philosophy ended and speculation about the way people and things "really work" scientifically began. But I enjoyed it a lot. It made me put time into RogerPenrose's two longer, narrower and more rigorous treatments of some of the same issues. But if Penrose and other physicists are right, somebody ought to be doing some thinking about the implications for humanity of the new physics. At least this unusual married couple in Oxford is brave enough to have a go.

Zohar was trained in physics, philosophy and religion at MIT and Harvard. Her husband, Dr Ninian Marshall, is a distinguished psychiatrist and practicing psychotherapist who has also written papers on the relevance of Bose-Einstein condensates to human self-awareness (following Frohlich and Prigogine's pioneering work in this area). It's interesting to see that he is now credited as co-author of the book by Amazon, unlike the copy I bought a few years ago while browsing in a BookshopInBurlington. My cynical side wonders if the marketing people needed a male, anglo-saxon name with "Dr" in front of it to help sales. Although her husband obviously profoundly influenced the book, it's definitely Zohar's own voice and style.

A reader yesterday of my earlier attempt at summarizing the book, from memory, objected to "sexism" that time around. This stung me to dip into the book again, so thanks. Here are two quotes from it, that I guess you would not find in the average male scientific paperback:

There is something deeply feminine about seeing the self as part of a quantum process, about feeling in one's whole being that I and you overlap and are interwoven, both now and in the future ... my own insight into the truth of the process came through the experience of pregnancy and early motherhood

Our psychotherapeutic literature has contained precious little on the redemptive power of suffering, acceptance of one's lot in life, filial piety, adherence to tradition, self-restraint and moderation.

I'm sure some Wiki reader will have looked much deeper into this or related areas of thinking. I'm very willing to contribute whatever ignorance I have.

-- RichardDrake

I've read this book and found it to be very wooly. My impression after finishing it was that it was a load of new-age nonsense, dressed up in scientific mumbo-jumbo. Not being a physicist I could not really judge the likelihood of her hypothesis being correct. However, I was greatly put off by the poor level of argument and the lack of scientific method in the book.

I would agree that in asking a really big question - how will quantum theory affect all of human culture and thinking? - in a small book it covers far too vast a range of subjects for the scientific method to be very visible. But for me Zohar is reasonably good (not perfect) in separating speculation and analogy from science. And the question, though liable to make anyone look stupid, is well worth asking.

For example, the book does not describe any experiments to prove/disprove the hypothesis that consciousness is a Bose-Einstein condensate - as far as I understand, a "super-particle" created when the quantum wave forms of multiple particles are synchronized into a coherent form like laser light.

Coherence is used of a laser and Bose-Einstein condensate, that's right. Nobody (in their right mind!) yet claims that there's proof that consciousness is a Bose-Einstein condensate. Various people though, from the distinguished physicist Frohlich in the 1930s onwards, have speculated about the possibility of coherence having some relationship to consciousness. Such things are not so easy to test.

Instead, the book uses arguments based on language tricks to try to convince the user. For example, one argument goes that laser light is made up of coherent light waves, and when someone is conscious we call them coherent, therefore intelligence could possibly be caused by coherent waves of quantum probability, therefore consciousness is a Bose-Einsten condensate!

No, that's a travesty. I don't remember anything that sloppy presented as proof. I would say that you've used a "language trick" yourself when you call this "new-age nonsense" above. It's not anything like most new age material that I've come across.

EliminativeMaterialism claims that all the high level perceptions of thought - hope, fear, love, hate, the colour red, sounds, language, pain - are deeply confused notions, as confused as witchhunts, and will be supplanted with a baser theory based on neurophysiology.

I do hope that EliminativeMaterialism is itself deeply confused

MarvinMinsky has written something on the matter-mind relation, that could enrich our discussion. He introduces his annotatable online contribution [1] with "This chapter attempts to explain why people become confused by questions about the relation between mental and physical events" -- fp''

: [1] http://crit.org/http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/minsky/papers/MatterMindModels.html