Fringe-ology (14 page)

Churchland is herself renowned. But in this instance, her emotions seem to have got the better of her. She tried a twin-barreled, microtubule/anesthesia-based argument on Hameroff, an expert on microtubules and anesthesia. Perhaps predictably, Hameroff's response demonstrated the errors she and coauthor Rick Grush made in their haste to object to Orch-OR. Still, I can't help but admire Tegmark and Churchland (and anyone who has bothered to do any research in association with shooting down Hameroff's idea). More often his critics do . . . nothing.

As a kind of pushback to the more whacky ideas in
What the Bleep Do We Know?,
a lot of popular science journals and a lot of popular scien
tists
argue that there really isn't anything crazy about quantum mechanics—and all arguments that QM plays a role in consciousness are de facto bunk. All this stuff going on at the micro-level of reality is only going on there, anyway, so in effect,
Who the bleep cares?

Quantum mechanics is the science of the small. How small, you ask? Well, as physicist Brian Greene writes in
The Fabric of the Cosmos,
at the infinitesimal level of the Planck Scale, where the weirdest aspects of the quantum take hold, “there would be no such thing as a distance shorter than the Planck length.” So you take the skeptics' point. Quantum effects may underlie our physical world, but they are too small to influence what we perceive.

As we scale up from the quantum micro-world of subatomic particles to the macroworld of people and things, all the weirdness of the quantum literally disappears and has no effect on the reality we interact with every day.

This wall, between the big and the small, has for a long time seemed particularly high and sound. But as I stated earlier, the authority of science is its method—not its current base of knowledge. And the fact is, the “too small” argument no longer works so well.

The micro-scale of the quantum interacts with the macroworld of you and me far more than we knew just three years ago. These new findings may not have made the Penrose-Hameroff model
likely,
but they do render the idea that quantum effects play a significant role in consciousness more plausible. Biologists are in fact finding that quantum processes may underlie the migratory habits of birds, the human sense of smell, and photosynthesis in plants. Quantum processes are proving far more stable and resistant to warm, wet biological environments than anyone ever thought possible.

Experiments are also seeking quantum processes in human visual perception, which should perhaps not come as such a great surprise. Experts in art, architecture, and music have long known about the golden ratio—a precise mathematical formulation that holds mysterious aesthetic appeal. Why is the Mona Lisa such a compelling figure? After all,
M'lady's forehead is so wide!
But the
Mona Lisa
is so appealing because her proportions are equal to the golden ratio, which can be expressed in a variety of forms or as a mathematical figure, 1.6180339887. Mona's mischievous eye and the corner of her playfully curled lip are lined up in so-called golden sections within the painting. And what does this have to do with quantum mechanics?

Well, in early 2010, experimenters at Oxford University found that quantum particles in a resonant state reflected the same ratio: 1.618. The lead investigator, Radu Coldea, claimed the ratio is too precise for its appearance in quantum physics, and art, to be a coincidence. “It reflects a beautiful property of the quantum system—a hidden symmetry. Actually quite a special one called E8 by mathematicians, and this is its first observation in a material.”

Was Hameroff's Beyond Belief presentation exactly right when he talked, years before this experiment, about perfect forms being embedded as a fundamental property of the universe? Is this, in fact, another sign of an intimate relationship between the macro- and micro-scales? As Penrose noted in
Emperor's New Mind,
two experiments, including one conducted in 1941, demonstrated that the human retina can react to a single photon. This is a direct example of a physical interaction between the micro- and macro-scales, known for sixty-eight years, which raises a question I think we can answer: if that discovery about the retina being sensitive to a single photon was known in 1941 (and reconfirmed in 1979), how had this wall between micro- and macro-scales ever stood so high for so long in the first place?

Well, because we wanted it to, we
needed
it to.

Give the wall some credit. Maintaining a strict dividing line between these two worlds was and is convenient. There is a real difference between what we observe at these two scales of reality. None of us goes winking out of existence in one place and appearing in another, for instance, like quantum particles. But it's also the case that we don't know precisely where to draw the line between the micro- and macro-worlds at all—and never really did.

In a 2008
Seed
magazine article, which I suspect will go down as one of the most important pieces of popular science journalism ever written, author Joshua Roebke captures experimental physicist Anton Zeilinger's long, dark, and productive night of the scientific soul. Zeilinger has been finding more and more quantum processes going on in
macro-
scale objects, suggesting these strange quantum occurrences are going on all the time, in objects large and small, and are simply out of the range of our ability to perceive them. Zeilinger admitted to Roebke that he was in fact so thrown by what these experiments were showing him that he felt he had no choice other than to give in to the mystery, and hire, of all things, a philosopher.

In fact, Roebke's article ends with Zeilinger placing just such an employment ad. (Can you imagine how that must have read?
Wanted: World-renowned experimental physicist seeks philosopher. Someone who can take long walks on the beach with him in consideration of what his experiments suggest about the nature of reality.
)

I also, of course, felt compelled to call Zeilinger for this book, at the lab where he works in Vienna. His press rep got back to me almost immediately. When a phone call was hastily arranged, however, it quickly became apparent that neither Zeilinger nor his press rep understood what I meant by “I am a journalist and I would like to talk to Dr. Zeilinger about what he has learned from the philosopher he hired.”

“Are you a philosopher?” Zeilinger asked me. I could hear what sounded like traffic on his end of the line. And even though there was a language barrier in effect, I attempted a lame joke. “Well,” I said, “we're all philosophers to some extent. But no, I'm a journalist.”

“A journalist?”

“Yes,” I said. “I got in touch to interview you. Did you succeed in hiring a philosopher?”

“Yes,” he said. “In fact, I have consulted with a great many philosophers. But . . . you are a journalist?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, I am busy,” said Zeilinger. “I am driving. I will call you later.”

I knew what that meant. And here at the macro-scale my predictions are pretty good: I never did hear from Zeilinger again. Neither he nor his press aide responded to any more of my emails. But there is enough of Zeilinger out there, on the record, for us to gain some meaningful traction. The reductionistic practice of science has in fact led Zeilinger to a strange conclusion: in short, while most of mainstream science and all the hardcore skeptics spend their time arguing that the world ultimately reduces down to physical matter, Zeilinger claims his research has demonstrated exactly the opposite. What really exists, and what seems to have properties like nonlocality, are the properties, or information, contained in the atom. This information can, in a quantum state, even be sent from one particle to another and is the basis of quantum cryptography—an end the U.S. military pursues to send super-secret messages. As Zeilinger puts it, “Matter itself is completely irrelevant. If I swap all my carbon atoms for other carbon atoms, I am still Anton Zeilinger.”

This is big, important stuff, suggesting that the reductionistic practice of science has found that, at bottom, this isn't a classically material universe after all. Tough news, I should think, for materialists to take. But perhaps the most appealing thing about Zeilinger, in all his public remarks, is that he acknowledges these mysteries, notes our current inability to understand what they mean about the nature of reality, and then refuses to say more.

It isn't that Zeilinger is a shrinking violet. He met publicly with the Dalai Lama, discussing the common ground shared by Buddhism and experimental physics. And he has given a few interviews in which he seems happy to acknowledge that quantum conundrums raise profound questions about the nature of reality. He is also not alone; other modern physicists are pointing toward the quantum as being far more integral to any true picture of the world than mainstream scientists and philosophers have cared to admit.

In
My Big TOE,
or Theory of Everything, Tom Campbell, a nuclear physicist and consultant to NASA, argues that quantum mechanics forces us toward an entirely new understanding of physics, in which consciousness plays a central role. And physicists Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner make the case in
Quantum Enigma
for a physics that at least acknowledges and addresses the mysteries raised by quantum experiments. While openly deriding and mocking more outlandish theories like those in
What the Bleep?,
they bravely accuse their brethren of hiding the real mysteries raised by the quantum away—the skeleton in physics's closet. Like them, Zeilinger generally stops short of giving statements so much as illuminating the relevant questions.

I can't say I blame him. There is a point, after all, at which we drift into mere speculation, in which we are simply giving voice to our own biases, conceits, and wishes—and at that point we are certainly revealing ourselves, while quite possibly saying absolutely nothing about the world. It is this inability some of us have to shut up and admit our lack of knowledge that dominates far too much of our conversation and creates such a massive verbal train wreck out of our discussions of the paranormal. Consider this: if we again take the word
paranormal
as referring to that which science hasn't yet explained, then Anton Zeilinger's experience would suggest the ultimate nature of
reality
qualifies as paranormal.

There is nothing outrageous contained there—no reason for celebration or grief. The mystery of the world exists apart from our judgment of it. Reading the physics-specific journals and message boards, in fact, gives a clue to this. The questions they're asking are fundamental:
Does time as we know it really exist, or is our experience of it just a product of our perception? Are we living in one of many parallel worlds—or a multiverse? Do we live in a hologram? Is consciousness a fundamental property of the universe?

These are questions that make a statement in their asking—a statement about our own status as a species just out of the trees, trapped on a dusty rock, floating through space . . . but to acknowledge what this means, that in essence we
do
live in mystery, we
do
live in a paranormal world—is verboten. The
P
word is the bearer, after all, of that unholy Taint.

At this time, I should point out there is nothing here to offend materialist and atheist readers: Even if consciousness could have a quantum explanation, and even if this role might open the door to the validation of
some
paranormal claims, it certainly doesn't mean there is a God. The two are not necessarily linked. And yes, even if we all already own the New Age holy grail of quantum consciousness, we could all still be no more significant or eternal than meat.

All this uncertainty might be cold comfort, particularly to the materialist tribe that thinks of
might
and
could
and what's
possible
as the sketchy province of believers. But cold comfort, it seems, is all we have—skeptics and believers alike. Up close, in fact, all Hameroff has is cold comfort for those who look to him for a scientifically plausible vision of an afterlife.

I
N THE YEARS SINCE
Penrose and Hameroff first foisted their theory of consciousness on an unsuspecting world, Roger Penrose has in essence absented himself from the ongoing debate. Though Hameroff thought it unlikely, Penrose did respond to my emails and said the following: yes, he has moved on to other things, but he has kept an eye on his Orch-OR theory. And he thinks Hameroff has done an excellent job of defending it. Penrose himself is almost eighty, but he says that, in a couple of years, he plans on diving back into quantum consciousness head first.

He also said he finds some of Hameroff's paranormal musings a bit . . . unhelpful. This shouldn't be surprising. Penrose is a committed humanist, though the British Humanist Association notes, with evident disappointment, that he “is more sympathetic to mystery and uncertainty than some atheists and humanists.” (Reading this, one wonders if the British Humanist Association understands that mystery does not require our sympathy, but it does accept acknowledgment.) What might be more surprising is that Hameroff isn't a believer either. “I don't follow any organized religion,” he says. “I find some of the Buddhist concepts appealing, but I'm not a Buddhist, either.”

In
What the Bleep?,
Hameroff comes off as so happy and chatty, so willing to engage in the more out-there ideas associated with his theory, that I expected a weekend with him to include some incense-burning. But Hameroff is himself beset by people engaged in their own autodidactic vision quests. While I was with him, at the University of Arizona hospital, we went upstairs to check on his mail. There were a few envelopes stuffed with pages of hand-scrawled writings, equations, and predictions about the nature of the world. He even received a fax that looked like a page torn from a mad physicist's graphic novel. The writer, or artist, broke the page up into panels like a comic book, with equations in some squares and crystalline drawings in others, including one of a solitary figure—looking out from its cube into what I guessed was a holographic universe.