Borealism V: Laws of Nature Series
Ep.4: Dragons and Wave-Particles | Super-positioned Curiosity
“The difficulties in the study of the infinite arise because we attempt, with our finite minds, to discuss the infinite”
- Galileo
We don’t know how the universe originated and we’re not quite clear on even some of its most basic particulars — like its age, shape or span.
We’re not sure of the organic causes behind many common mental disorders and we’re far from understanding much at all about our neurological states of function or dysfunction within our own brains; we don’t even know why we dream.
We can’t come to terms on how the pyramids had been constructed, how our forefathers migrated around the world, how the continents shuffled themselves around, or how our own evolution led us to where we are now.
In a universe of infinite wisdom to be had, our knowledge is comically finite.
Yet our navigation through space and time, coupled with our relentless progression, confirms one particularly tiring axiom: the more we learn, the less we seem to know.
But there’s an unspoken addendum to this truism: the more we learn, the less we seem to know, the more we want to know.
That we can’t know anything with any relative certainty seems to be a powerful rule behind every operative element within our reality. We can measure, we can postulate, we can deduce and triangulate, but we can’t seem to close any textbook without it requiring a revision at some future point.
It’s a good thing too because things would get pretty stale otherwise.
So we’re left chiseling away at the foundations of knowledge, etching out clue after clue, using our knacks for innovation whenever and wherever we can.
And when all things seem to be working out, we’re inevitably hit in the face with a curve ball from out of the blue.
There’s no better example of this than the quantum crossroads that abruptly appeared after a corner was turned in Newtonian physics; and no better specific instance to mention than the infamous double-slit experiment, from which sprouted the enigmatic wave-particle duality (and from whence came the frustrating delayed-choice problem) that we still can’t seem to explain.
To try and decipher this anomalous phenomenon, the delayed-choice experiment was recently recapitulated on a scale of dramatic proportion.
In 2017, an observatory nestled in the rocky outcrops of Southern Italy had fired several green laser pulses at two satellites about a thousand miles away, reflecting the photons back to itself. The results confirmed the wave-particle simultaneity (and ultimately the observer effect) at distances hundreds of times greater than any previously used.
All this done just to arrive back at a simply but powerful truth about our pursuits of knowledge in this weird reality: we’re simply chasing probabilities, riding the unrelenting tides of our curiosity.
Dungeoned Dragons
It’s not unlike falling asleep along a journey to arrive at a destination; we may know the end point — or the [current] measurement — but we’re far from being sure about how we got there.
A better analogy, one used half a century ago by the quantizing duo of William Miller and John Wheeler, likened the subatomic realm to the body of a dragon, the middle of which we can’t seem to comprehend:
“But about what the dragon does or looks like in between we have no right to speak, either in this or any delayed-choice experiment. We get a counter reading but we neither know nor have the right to say how it came.”
Charles Q. Choi, discussing the wave-particle duality of light, expressed it the same way:
“One can know much about where the light comes from (the dragon’s tail) and where it is seen (the dragon’s head), yet still know precious little about the journey in between (the dragon’s mysterious, nebulous body). As light travels from source to detection, it can behave as either a particle or a wave — or, paradoxically, both states or neither state.”
Arguably and over-optimistically, the fact that we can’t exactly know anything with a precise certainty is kind of liberating; it allows possibility to remain unconfined and free-flowing, as it perhaps should exist.
All things considered, it may be a really good thing for what it means with regards to our navigation through reality, and for our psyche — affording us the chance to see possibility as being inherently wide open; allowing us to maneuver under something of a super-positioned and hyper-hopeful state of potential.
That, in itself, may be worth more than the answers we’re after.
Super-positions of Possibility
If the double-slit experiment proves anything, it’s that our observation and our interfacing with reality is the magic variable that shifts things from the ephemeral realms of potentiality into the palpable dominions of actuality.
This says a lot about our conscious place within the whole dynamic at play.
And so a lot may be lost on the minds who assume the answers to lie exclusively outside of themselves, and who pursue objectivity with reckless disregard for the value of subjective experience.
It equates to an imbalance within the important dichotomy of wanting versus needing to know.
The irony being that all we need to know emanates from within; we simply always want to know more; more ironic is the fact that no amount of verification will ever satiate us, as we continue to zoom in closer or look out farther, always finding deeper problems to satisfy.
Practically speaking, this isn’t a good answer — but practicality itself seems unrealistically over-rated within all churning swirls of this unknowable reality.
That we have a natural curiosity about the world and a driven, imaginative desire to pursue knowledge speaks to our inherent nature as part of the creative cogwork at play.
This desire and curiosity may be more than we actually need to genuinely examine reality.
In an interview I had conducted with evolutionary cosmologist Brian Swimme — who, by the way, symbolically described the universe itself as a green dragon — the West Coast professor conveyed his unique narrative for the innate curiosity woven throughout our knowable reality:
“there’s a primordial desire to know the nature of the reality we find ourselves in….
The whole history of science and technology can be understood as this primordial desire, of basically the universe — to come to an understanding of itself.”
Swimme is of the opinion that the the universe is a creative entity, one working through every clump of organized matter to come to an understanding of itself.
His theory, constructed from the slags of discourse with some of the other most interesting minds of the last century on subjects fundamental to the core of our self-understanding as a collective organism, is one certainly worth chewing on, as it lays the foundation for a cohesive understanding into who/why/how and what we are.
Ultimately, whether the answers we drudge up are certain, worthless, correct, or frivolous, it doesn’t matter as much as the fact that we have the creative agency to chase truth in the first place.
