[MD] What is SOM?

[MarshaV]

Some interesting quotes:


Thomas Stapp:

"The physical world is "Not a structure built out of independently 
existing non-analysable entities, but rather a web of relationships 
between elements whose meanings arise wholly from their relationship 
to the whole" " An elementary particle is not an independently 
existing non-analysable entity. It is in essence, a set of 
relationships that reach outwards to other things."
"In conclusion there is definitely not a substantial physical world."



John Wheeler:

"May the universe in some strange sense be "brought into being" by 
the participation of those who participate?... The vital act is the 
act of participation. "Participator" is the incontrovertible new 
concept given by quantum mechanics. It strikes down the term "ob 
server" of classical theory, the man who stands safely behind the 
thick glass wall and watches what goes on without taking part. It 
can't be done, quantum mechanics says."



Werner Heisenberg:

"What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our 
method of questioning".
"...we never can know what actually goes on in the invisible 
subatomic realm, and that, therefore, we should "abandon all attempts 
to construct perceptual models of atomic processes".



Niels Bohr:

".. an independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can be 
ascribed neither to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation."
"Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties 
definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems."
"Quantum mechanics entails the necessity of a final renunciation of 
classical ideas of causality and a radical revision of our attitude 
towards the problem of physical reality."



David Bohm:

"Parts are seen to be in immediate connection in which their 
dynamical relationships depend in an irreducible way on the state of 
the whole system and the entire universe. Thus one is lead to a new 
notion of unbroken wholeness which denies the classical idea of an 
analyzability of the world into separate and independently existent parts."



Robert Oppenheimer:

"If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron 
remains the same, we must say 'No'; if we ask whether the electron's 
position changes with time, we must say 'No'; if we ask whether it is 
in motion, we must say 'No'. The Buddha has given such answers when 
interrogated as to the conditions of a man's self after death; but 
they are not familiar answers for the tradition of 17th and 18th 
century science."



Fritjof Capra (The turning point) sums up the current situation:

"In atomic physics the observed phenomena can be under stood only as 
as correlations between various processes of obser vation and 
measurement, and the end of this chain of processes lies always in 
the consciousness of the human observer. the crucial feature of 
quantum theory is that the observer is not only necessary to observe 
the properties of an atomic phenomenon, but is necessary even to 
bring about these properties. .. The electron does not have objective 
properties independent of my mind. In atomic physics the sharp 
Cartesian division between mind and matter, between the observer and 
the observed, can no longer be maintained. We can never speak about 
nature without, at the same time, speaking about ourselves."




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Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
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