‘Because the fundamental concepts at our disposal—both the descriptive and the explanatory ones—owe their meanings to the spatiotemporal structure of human sensory perception and to the logical or grammatical structure of human thought or language’ - rather Kantian, yes?
Kantian, Bohrian, Qbist—as explained in considerable detail in several recently published papers and several posts on this substack. For the papers see:
The space of information about what is quantum physics and how it affects our life is filled with a great number of partially correct affirmations. When authors claim that they are "true" you can be sure that they are unaware of what truth means. This is the sign of an unaccepted ignorance at a certain level of consciousness that characterizes most professional scientists. Bruce Lipton's attitude still expresses the scientific ego although he had problems with the general scientific belief structure.
As Richard Feynman expressed it: "those who claim understanding quantum mechanics prove that they do not understand it".
Instead of spending time on criticizing literature that may be useful at a certain level of consciousness but is inadequate when viewed from a higher standpoint, I recommend reading the book by Sean Carroll entitled "Something deeply hidden" (2019) that I enjoyed quite a lot.
I agree with you that even the worst drivel may be useful at a certain level of consciousness—but then so may be exposing the drivel for what it is.
I also agree with you that when authors claim that their affirmations are "true," they are unaware of what truth means. Here is an example:
Quote: Quantum mechanics isn’t magic. It is the deepest, most comprehensive view of reality we have. As far as we currently know, quantum mechanics isn’t just an approximation of the truth; it is the truth.
This is from the Prologue to *Something Deeply Hidden* by Sean Carroll. I went through the first ten or so pages. Here are a few further quotes with my comments.
Quote: We use quantum mechanics to design new technologies and predict the outcomes of experiments. But honest physicists admit that we don’t truly understand quantum mechanics. We have a recipe that we can safely apply in certain prescribed situations, and which returns mind-bogglingly precise predictions that have been triumphantly vindicated by the data. But if you want to dig deeper and ask what is really going on, we simply don’t know.
Comment: In light of the first quote, this means that Carroll isn’t an honest physicist.
Quote: Not only is the quest to make sense of quantum mechanics not considered a high-status specialty within modern physics; in many quarters it’s considered barely respectable at all, if not actively disparaged. Most physics departments have nobody working on the problem, and those who choose to do so are looked upon with suspicion.
Comment: This is correct, and books like Carroll's suggest why this is so.
Quote: This book has three main messages. The first is that quantum mechanics should be understandable—even if we’re not there yet—and achieving such understanding should be a high-priority goal of modern science.
Comment: Here Carroll is conflating science with philosophy. Most philosophers are insufficiently trained in physics, and most physicists are insufficiently trained in philosophy. In such cases philosopher C.D. Broad’s observation holds: “The nonsense written by philosophers on scientific matters is exceeded only by the nonsense written by scientists on philosophy.” Also, the following quote by Richard Feynman: “I believe that a scientist looking at non-scientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy—and when he talks about a non-scientific matter, he sounds as naive as anyone untrained in the matter.” Carroll is obviously untrained with regard to the philosophical expertise required to make quantum mechanics understandable. And yes, making sense of a scientific theory isn’t a scientific problem.
Quote: Many-Worlds is the purest way of making sense of quantum mechanics—it’s where we end up if we just follow the path of least resistance in taking quantum phenomena seriously. In particular, the multiple worlds are predictions of the formalism that is already in place, not something added in by hand.
Comment: The path of least resistance is the path that requires the least thinking. Bryce DeWitt—co-editor with Neill Graham of *The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics* (1973)—put this succinctly when he wrote: “We use mathematics in physics so that we won’t have to think.” The MWI delegates the formidable task of making *physical* sense of quantum theory’s *mathematical* formalism to the mathematical formalism itself, absolving its proponents from the need to think. Many worlds instead of many words!
As mentioned in this post, there are at least nine distinct *formulations* of quantum mechanics (which must not be confused with *interpretations* of quantum mechanics). There is matrix mechanics, which originally was synonymous with quantum mechanics. There is Schrödinger’s wave mechanics, which now is the standard textbook formulation. There is Feynman’s path-integral formulation, which I have always preferred, for apart from being relativistic from the start, it gives expression to what is common to *all* formulations of quantum mechanics—namely, that they provide us with tools for calculating conditional probabilities. This is the formulation from which I derive Schrödinger’s in my textbook. The latter has become the standard textbook formulation not only for historical reasons but also because the wave function is the easiest calculational tool to reify. To do this one only has to turn its dependence on the time of the measurement to which it serves to assign probabilities, into the time dependence of an evolving physical state.
As a probability algorithm, the wave function has two obvious dependences. It depends continuously on the time of measurement: if you change this by a small amount, the probabilities it serves to assign change by small amounts. And it depends discontinuously on the “preparation” or the outcomes that constitute the assignment basis: if you include information that was not previously taken into account, the assignment basis changes discontinuously. But if you transmogrify the wave function into (the description of) an evolving physical state, you are faced with the mother of all quantum-mechanical pseudo-problems: why two modes of evolution instead of just one? Please note that I don’t support the view that quantum mechanics is about knowledge. The quantum-mechanical correlation laws are as objective as any physical law can be. Knowledge only comes in when we use these laws to assign probabilities to possible measurement outcomes on the basis of the data available to us.
My answer to the above question is that the correct number of modes of evolution is neither two nor one but zero. The most simplistic and lazy answer is that the correct number is one. This is the MWI. And I haven’t even addressed the absurd claim that the multiple worlds are predictions of the formalism, not something added in by hand.
By the way, I like Carroll’s list of books with “quantum” in their titles. But isn't his own quantum drivel part of the problem?
Quote: Quantum mechanics ... describes the whole world, from you and me to stars and galaxies, from the centers of black holes to the beginning of the universe.
Comment: No, Sir. A calculus of correlations does not *describe* anything. If one has the philosophical know-how to come up with a smart description of the world, one has to take the quantum-mechanical correlation laws into account. That’s all.
Quote: Physics is one of the most basic sciences, indeed one of the most basic human endeavors. We look around the world, we see it is full of stuff. What is that stuff, and how does it behave?
Comment: Contrast the arrogance of a physicist referring to his on field of employment as one of the most basic human endeavors, with the naivety of believing that the central question of physics concerns stuff. As I pointed out in this post, what quantum mechanics is trying to tell us (with scant success) is the notion that the world is made of stuff has passed its expiration date.
Quote: “Interpretations” are things that we might apply to a work of literature or art, where people might have different ways of thinking about the same basic object. What’s going on in quantum mechanics is something else: a competition between truly distinct scientific theories, incompatible ways of making sense of the physical world.
Comment: The philosopher of science Michael Redhead distinguished between the *minimal instrumentalist* interpretation and interpretations *in a broader sense of the term*. The former tells us how the formalism is related to the possible results of measurements and the statistical frequencies with which these results turn up when a measurement is repeated many times (in principle an infinite number of times) on systems prepared in identical quantum states. Without this interpretation, quantum mechanics would be nothing but mathematics. The latter is “some account of the nature of the external world and/or our epistemological relation to it that serves to explain how it is that the statistical regularities predicted by the formalism with the minimal instrumentalist interpretation come out the way they do.” It is the height of sophistry to claim that what’s going on in quantum mechanics is *not* a clash between different ways of thinking about the same basic object. Incompatible ways of making sense of the physical world are *not* within the purview of science. Claiming that they are, and then claiming that the MWI is superior to other interpretation is preposterous, to say the least.
Many thanks for your ample comments on Carroll's book. I appreciated reading the book because it illustrates once again the difficulties when trying to understand what is quantum mechanics by projecting science on the screen of philosophy (without being trained in philosophy...) and how we end up with contradictions and inconsistencies.
For me one of the major results of quantum physics is the fact that object and observer cannot be considered as being independent. Our way of experiencing the world around us depends on the way we look at it - we are the cocreators of the reality we live in. If this is so, our philosophical concept of the world and its functioning appear according to the light (science) that we project. This light is the result of our past experience and our expectations (or wishful thinking). So it seems to me that science (the study of the structure and behaviour of nature) and philosophy (the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge) cannot be considered as independent; they are entangled in some way. In other words, the way I perform scientific studies depends on my philosophical approach and my scientific experience feeds back into the philosophical attitude. This is not "conflating science with philosophy"; the process describes a kind of evolving lemniscates.
Yes, "making sense of a scientific theory isn't a scientific problem", except if we define "science" in terms of a more global or even integral approach to reality.
I mostly agree with you. The fact that, as you write, “object and observer cannot be considered as being independent.... —we are the cocreators of the reality we live in” has been well known since times immemorial in the East. I have written about this many times in this substack. In the West it took the greatest modern philosopher (Kant) to bring it home, and it took Niels Bohr (whose views must not be confused with the Copenhagen interpretation, which means different things to different people) to adapt Kant’s insight to the quantum theory. (See my paper “Niels Bohr, objectivity, and the irreversibility of measurements” in *Quantum Studies: Mathematics and Foundations* https://doi.org/10.1007/s40509-019-00213-6; https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.12959.) There are, however, right and wrong ways to understand the relation between the perceiving and thinking subject and the world “out there.” In my textbook this is reflected in two chapters, one titled “Quantum mechanics and consciousness” (presenting mainly some of the wrong ways), the other titled “Consciousness and the physical world” (discussing the right way), which is followed by the final chapter, titled “Quanta and Vedanta.”
I disagree with your definitions of science (as the study of the structure and behavior of nature) and of philosophy (the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge). Historically, science branched off from philosophy as “natural philosophy,” but today the term "science" is tied to a particular methodology for acquiring knowledge. Your suggestion that “science” could or should be redefined “in terms of a more global or even integral approach to reality” doesn’t wash. Communication would break down (more than it already has) if anyone could define any term any way he or she likes. Also, I would refrain from using the word “entangled” since it has come to be strongly associated with the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. And philosophy isn’t just epistemology; it also includes metaphysics and ontology.
I know that I belong to the category of scientists that are not trained enough in philosophy. But I am willing to learn. By the way: the definitions of science and philosophy you don't agree with were taken from Wikipedia. I understand that there are different ways to define words we use in our models to describe what we call reality. Therefore, the first step to discuss various approaches is a clear definition of the meaning of the terms we use, if this is possible at all. My aim is to find a practical way to integrate complex philosophy into daily life. Therefore I need to find a language that can be understood by laypersons. To proceed on my learning curve I would be grateful for receiving a copy of the three chapters of your textbook you cited.
Andreas, there is a good reason why the majority of scientists know next to nothing about philosophy—either can take up most of your time.
The Wikipedia definition of science (as the study of the structure and behavior of nature) is probably one of the most common. It raises the question of what actually is meant by “nature.” It also suggests that nature exists in itself, studied by scientists without being affected by them. The Indian concept of nature (Prakriti) includes not only physical nature but also the mind, the point being that there is a self or pure consciousness (Purusha). But this is part of a yoga by which the self can be discovered as independent of nature, by standing back from nature (including the activities of the mind).
You write: “the first step to discuss various approaches is a clear definition of the meaning of the terms we use, if this is possible at all.” It actually isn’t possible. This sentence from a voluminous book on Gravitation has remained stuck in my mind: "Here and elsewhere in science, as emphasized not least by Henri Poincaré, that view is out of date which used to say, ‘Define your terms before you proceed’.” It’s by using terms that one comes to understand their meanings. And by studying various approaches, you will often find that they define the same terms in different ways. (You’ve been warned.)
Also, what’s the point of integrating complex philosophy into daily life? I’m not saying that it’s pointless, only that there has to be a point to it. A meaningful life needs a meaningful aim. As the Mother wrote in a short essay titled “The science of living”: “Do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.” I don’t think that studying quantum physics will be of much help there. Personally, I got a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do with my life during my first year in Pondicherry, *after* which I decided to study quantum physics in order to find out how it fits in with the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo.
Not only is the need to deal with over three dimensions a problem, but two entire undergraduate courses (eg Cohen) have to be dedicated to “solve” the two-body problem, just to end up with a succinct note to refer that for the rest, a suitable “approximation” would be needed. This would be very well if the entire universe were made of just one hydrogen atom but, unfortunately for us, it is not. And someone still pretends to explain (explain away!) consciousness from that?
Physics should say to the rest of science what the West might one day say to the World: sorry for the rough ride, we were just tinkering a bit here and there, it didn’t work out well, you shouldn’t have paid us so much attention, good luck!
Things that only function once you are forced to ignore or abandon everything else are not truthful, and you might do so at your own risk.
Btw, regarding the epistemology of the modern scientific enterprise, of which whole libraries have been written, I haven’t found a better critical account of first hand sources than EA Burtt’s “The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science”.
“All I would claim is that those who in the search for truth start from consciousness as a seat of self-knowledge with interests and responsibilities not confined to the material plane, are just as much facing the hard facts of experince as those who start from consciousness as a device for reading the indications of spectroscopes and micrometers.” (AS Eddington, The Nature of The Physical World, 1928, p.288)
To your first paragraph, a passage from “A guide to Feynman diagrams in the many-body problem” by Richard D. Mattuck:
“In eighteenth-century Newtonian mechanics, the three-body problem was insoluble. With the birth of general relativity around 1910 and quantum electrodynamics in 1930, the two- and one-body problems became insoluble. And within modern quantum field theory, the problem of zero bodies (vacuum) is insoluble. So, if we are out after exact solutions, no bodies at all is already too many!”
“In order to have a religion, a man must have religion. He must once at least in his life have looked beyond the horizon of this world, and carried away in his mind an impression of the Infinite, which will never leave him again.
Only when the finite character of all human knowledge has been perceived, is it possible for the human mind to conceive that which is beyond the Finite, call it what you like, the Beyond, the Unseen, the Infinite, the Supernatural, or the Divine. That step must have been taken before religion of any kind becomes possible. What kind of religion it will be, depends on the character of the race which elaborates it, its surroundings in nature, and its experience in history.” (Max Müller, India: What Can It Teach Us?, 1882, p. 77)
That is the desperation and the ultimate trap of this World: unable to point beyond itself, it can only gobble itself up, emptying itself. Here any form of materialism or reductionism are ultimately self-defeating, and THEY know it.
‘Because the fundamental concepts at our disposal—both the descriptive and the explanatory ones—owe their meanings to the spatiotemporal structure of human sensory perception and to the logical or grammatical structure of human thought or language’ - rather Kantian, yes?
Kantian, Bohrian, Qbist—as explained in considerable detail in several recently published papers and several posts on this substack. For the papers see:
https://thisquantumworld.wordpress.com/papers-and-presentations-on-foundations-of-physics/
The space of information about what is quantum physics and how it affects our life is filled with a great number of partially correct affirmations. When authors claim that they are "true" you can be sure that they are unaware of what truth means. This is the sign of an unaccepted ignorance at a certain level of consciousness that characterizes most professional scientists. Bruce Lipton's attitude still expresses the scientific ego although he had problems with the general scientific belief structure.
As Richard Feynman expressed it: "those who claim understanding quantum mechanics prove that they do not understand it".
Instead of spending time on criticizing literature that may be useful at a certain level of consciousness but is inadequate when viewed from a higher standpoint, I recommend reading the book by Sean Carroll entitled "Something deeply hidden" (2019) that I enjoyed quite a lot.
I agree with you that even the worst drivel may be useful at a certain level of consciousness—but then so may be exposing the drivel for what it is.
I also agree with you that when authors claim that their affirmations are "true," they are unaware of what truth means. Here is an example:
Quote: Quantum mechanics isn’t magic. It is the deepest, most comprehensive view of reality we have. As far as we currently know, quantum mechanics isn’t just an approximation of the truth; it is the truth.
This is from the Prologue to *Something Deeply Hidden* by Sean Carroll. I went through the first ten or so pages. Here are a few further quotes with my comments.
Quote: We use quantum mechanics to design new technologies and predict the outcomes of experiments. But honest physicists admit that we don’t truly understand quantum mechanics. We have a recipe that we can safely apply in certain prescribed situations, and which returns mind-bogglingly precise predictions that have been triumphantly vindicated by the data. But if you want to dig deeper and ask what is really going on, we simply don’t know.
Comment: In light of the first quote, this means that Carroll isn’t an honest physicist.
Quote: Not only is the quest to make sense of quantum mechanics not considered a high-status specialty within modern physics; in many quarters it’s considered barely respectable at all, if not actively disparaged. Most physics departments have nobody working on the problem, and those who choose to do so are looked upon with suspicion.
Comment: This is correct, and books like Carroll's suggest why this is so.
Quote: This book has three main messages. The first is that quantum mechanics should be understandable—even if we’re not there yet—and achieving such understanding should be a high-priority goal of modern science.
Comment: Here Carroll is conflating science with philosophy. Most philosophers are insufficiently trained in physics, and most physicists are insufficiently trained in philosophy. In such cases philosopher C.D. Broad’s observation holds: “The nonsense written by philosophers on scientific matters is exceeded only by the nonsense written by scientists on philosophy.” Also, the following quote by Richard Feynman: “I believe that a scientist looking at non-scientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy—and when he talks about a non-scientific matter, he sounds as naive as anyone untrained in the matter.” Carroll is obviously untrained with regard to the philosophical expertise required to make quantum mechanics understandable. And yes, making sense of a scientific theory isn’t a scientific problem.
Quote: Many-Worlds is the purest way of making sense of quantum mechanics—it’s where we end up if we just follow the path of least resistance in taking quantum phenomena seriously. In particular, the multiple worlds are predictions of the formalism that is already in place, not something added in by hand.
Comment: The path of least resistance is the path that requires the least thinking. Bryce DeWitt—co-editor with Neill Graham of *The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics* (1973)—put this succinctly when he wrote: “We use mathematics in physics so that we won’t have to think.” The MWI delegates the formidable task of making *physical* sense of quantum theory’s *mathematical* formalism to the mathematical formalism itself, absolving its proponents from the need to think. Many worlds instead of many words!
See my post https://aurocafe.substack.com/p/many-words-or-many-worlds
As mentioned in this post, there are at least nine distinct *formulations* of quantum mechanics (which must not be confused with *interpretations* of quantum mechanics). There is matrix mechanics, which originally was synonymous with quantum mechanics. There is Schrödinger’s wave mechanics, which now is the standard textbook formulation. There is Feynman’s path-integral formulation, which I have always preferred, for apart from being relativistic from the start, it gives expression to what is common to *all* formulations of quantum mechanics—namely, that they provide us with tools for calculating conditional probabilities. This is the formulation from which I derive Schrödinger’s in my textbook. The latter has become the standard textbook formulation not only for historical reasons but also because the wave function is the easiest calculational tool to reify. To do this one only has to turn its dependence on the time of the measurement to which it serves to assign probabilities, into the time dependence of an evolving physical state.
As a probability algorithm, the wave function has two obvious dependences. It depends continuously on the time of measurement: if you change this by a small amount, the probabilities it serves to assign change by small amounts. And it depends discontinuously on the “preparation” or the outcomes that constitute the assignment basis: if you include information that was not previously taken into account, the assignment basis changes discontinuously. But if you transmogrify the wave function into (the description of) an evolving physical state, you are faced with the mother of all quantum-mechanical pseudo-problems: why two modes of evolution instead of just one? Please note that I don’t support the view that quantum mechanics is about knowledge. The quantum-mechanical correlation laws are as objective as any physical law can be. Knowledge only comes in when we use these laws to assign probabilities to possible measurement outcomes on the basis of the data available to us.
My answer to the above question is that the correct number of modes of evolution is neither two nor one but zero. The most simplistic and lazy answer is that the correct number is one. This is the MWI. And I haven’t even addressed the absurd claim that the multiple worlds are predictions of the formalism, not something added in by hand.
By the way, I like Carroll’s list of books with “quantum” in their titles. But isn't his own quantum drivel part of the problem?
Quote: Quantum mechanics ... describes the whole world, from you and me to stars and galaxies, from the centers of black holes to the beginning of the universe.
Comment: No, Sir. A calculus of correlations does not *describe* anything. If one has the philosophical know-how to come up with a smart description of the world, one has to take the quantum-mechanical correlation laws into account. That’s all.
Quote: Physics is one of the most basic sciences, indeed one of the most basic human endeavors. We look around the world, we see it is full of stuff. What is that stuff, and how does it behave?
Comment: Contrast the arrogance of a physicist referring to his on field of employment as one of the most basic human endeavors, with the naivety of believing that the central question of physics concerns stuff. As I pointed out in this post, what quantum mechanics is trying to tell us (with scant success) is the notion that the world is made of stuff has passed its expiration date.
Quote: “Interpretations” are things that we might apply to a work of literature or art, where people might have different ways of thinking about the same basic object. What’s going on in quantum mechanics is something else: a competition between truly distinct scientific theories, incompatible ways of making sense of the physical world.
Comment: The philosopher of science Michael Redhead distinguished between the *minimal instrumentalist* interpretation and interpretations *in a broader sense of the term*. The former tells us how the formalism is related to the possible results of measurements and the statistical frequencies with which these results turn up when a measurement is repeated many times (in principle an infinite number of times) on systems prepared in identical quantum states. Without this interpretation, quantum mechanics would be nothing but mathematics. The latter is “some account of the nature of the external world and/or our epistemological relation to it that serves to explain how it is that the statistical regularities predicted by the formalism with the minimal instrumentalist interpretation come out the way they do.” It is the height of sophistry to claim that what’s going on in quantum mechanics is *not* a clash between different ways of thinking about the same basic object. Incompatible ways of making sense of the physical world are *not* within the purview of science. Claiming that they are, and then claiming that the MWI is superior to other interpretation is preposterous, to say the least.
Many thanks for your ample comments on Carroll's book. I appreciated reading the book because it illustrates once again the difficulties when trying to understand what is quantum mechanics by projecting science on the screen of philosophy (without being trained in philosophy...) and how we end up with contradictions and inconsistencies.
For me one of the major results of quantum physics is the fact that object and observer cannot be considered as being independent. Our way of experiencing the world around us depends on the way we look at it - we are the cocreators of the reality we live in. If this is so, our philosophical concept of the world and its functioning appear according to the light (science) that we project. This light is the result of our past experience and our expectations (or wishful thinking). So it seems to me that science (the study of the structure and behaviour of nature) and philosophy (the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge) cannot be considered as independent; they are entangled in some way. In other words, the way I perform scientific studies depends on my philosophical approach and my scientific experience feeds back into the philosophical attitude. This is not "conflating science with philosophy"; the process describes a kind of evolving lemniscates.
Yes, "making sense of a scientific theory isn't a scientific problem", except if we define "science" in terms of a more global or even integral approach to reality.
I mostly agree with you. The fact that, as you write, “object and observer cannot be considered as being independent.... —we are the cocreators of the reality we live in” has been well known since times immemorial in the East. I have written about this many times in this substack. In the West it took the greatest modern philosopher (Kant) to bring it home, and it took Niels Bohr (whose views must not be confused with the Copenhagen interpretation, which means different things to different people) to adapt Kant’s insight to the quantum theory. (See my paper “Niels Bohr, objectivity, and the irreversibility of measurements” in *Quantum Studies: Mathematics and Foundations* https://doi.org/10.1007/s40509-019-00213-6; https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.12959.) There are, however, right and wrong ways to understand the relation between the perceiving and thinking subject and the world “out there.” In my textbook this is reflected in two chapters, one titled “Quantum mechanics and consciousness” (presenting mainly some of the wrong ways), the other titled “Consciousness and the physical world” (discussing the right way), which is followed by the final chapter, titled “Quanta and Vedanta.”
I disagree with your definitions of science (as the study of the structure and behavior of nature) and of philosophy (the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge). Historically, science branched off from philosophy as “natural philosophy,” but today the term "science" is tied to a particular methodology for acquiring knowledge. Your suggestion that “science” could or should be redefined “in terms of a more global or even integral approach to reality” doesn’t wash. Communication would break down (more than it already has) if anyone could define any term any way he or she likes. Also, I would refrain from using the word “entangled” since it has come to be strongly associated with the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. And philosophy isn’t just epistemology; it also includes metaphysics and ontology.
Thanks, Ulrich.
I know that I belong to the category of scientists that are not trained enough in philosophy. But I am willing to learn. By the way: the definitions of science and philosophy you don't agree with were taken from Wikipedia. I understand that there are different ways to define words we use in our models to describe what we call reality. Therefore, the first step to discuss various approaches is a clear definition of the meaning of the terms we use, if this is possible at all. My aim is to find a practical way to integrate complex philosophy into daily life. Therefore I need to find a language that can be understood by laypersons. To proceed on my learning curve I would be grateful for receiving a copy of the three chapters of your textbook you cited.
Andreas, there is a good reason why the majority of scientists know next to nothing about philosophy—either can take up most of your time.
The Wikipedia definition of science (as the study of the structure and behavior of nature) is probably one of the most common. It raises the question of what actually is meant by “nature.” It also suggests that nature exists in itself, studied by scientists without being affected by them. The Indian concept of nature (Prakriti) includes not only physical nature but also the mind, the point being that there is a self or pure consciousness (Purusha). But this is part of a yoga by which the self can be discovered as independent of nature, by standing back from nature (including the activities of the mind).
You write: “the first step to discuss various approaches is a clear definition of the meaning of the terms we use, if this is possible at all.” It actually isn’t possible. This sentence from a voluminous book on Gravitation has remained stuck in my mind: "Here and elsewhere in science, as emphasized not least by Henri Poincaré, that view is out of date which used to say, ‘Define your terms before you proceed’.” It’s by using terms that one comes to understand their meanings. And by studying various approaches, you will often find that they define the same terms in different ways. (You’ve been warned.)
Also, what’s the point of integrating complex philosophy into daily life? I’m not saying that it’s pointless, only that there has to be a point to it. A meaningful life needs a meaningful aim. As the Mother wrote in a short essay titled “The science of living”: “Do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.” I don’t think that studying quantum physics will be of much help there. Personally, I got a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do with my life during my first year in Pondicherry, *after* which I decided to study quantum physics in order to find out how it fits in with the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo.
Not only is the need to deal with over three dimensions a problem, but two entire undergraduate courses (eg Cohen) have to be dedicated to “solve” the two-body problem, just to end up with a succinct note to refer that for the rest, a suitable “approximation” would be needed. This would be very well if the entire universe were made of just one hydrogen atom but, unfortunately for us, it is not. And someone still pretends to explain (explain away!) consciousness from that?
Physics should say to the rest of science what the West might one day say to the World: sorry for the rough ride, we were just tinkering a bit here and there, it didn’t work out well, you shouldn’t have paid us so much attention, good luck!
Things that only function once you are forced to ignore or abandon everything else are not truthful, and you might do so at your own risk.
Btw, regarding the epistemology of the modern scientific enterprise, of which whole libraries have been written, I haven’t found a better critical account of first hand sources than EA Burtt’s “The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science”.
“All I would claim is that those who in the search for truth start from consciousness as a seat of self-knowledge with interests and responsibilities not confined to the material plane, are just as much facing the hard facts of experince as those who start from consciousness as a device for reading the indications of spectroscopes and micrometers.” (AS Eddington, The Nature of The Physical World, 1928, p.288)
To your first paragraph, a passage from “A guide to Feynman diagrams in the many-body problem” by Richard D. Mattuck:
“In eighteenth-century Newtonian mechanics, the three-body problem was insoluble. With the birth of general relativity around 1910 and quantum electrodynamics in 1930, the two- and one-body problems became insoluble. And within modern quantum field theory, the problem of zero bodies (vacuum) is insoluble. So, if we are out after exact solutions, no bodies at all is already too many!”
Going back to what really matters:
“In order to have a religion, a man must have religion. He must once at least in his life have looked beyond the horizon of this world, and carried away in his mind an impression of the Infinite, which will never leave him again.
Only when the finite character of all human knowledge has been perceived, is it possible for the human mind to conceive that which is beyond the Finite, call it what you like, the Beyond, the Unseen, the Infinite, the Supernatural, or the Divine. That step must have been taken before religion of any kind becomes possible. What kind of religion it will be, depends on the character of the race which elaborates it, its surroundings in nature, and its experience in history.” (Max Müller, India: What Can It Teach Us?, 1882, p. 77)
That is the desperation and the ultimate trap of this World: unable to point beyond itself, it can only gobble itself up, emptying itself. Here any form of materialism or reductionism are ultimately self-defeating, and THEY know it.