Excerpt from the book BACK FROM THE FUTURE
Jack
intersection of science, politics, and history. You might
actually learn something.
SUNDAY INTERVIEW -- The Universe, As Seen From North Beach
With infectious enthusiasm for his subject, Jack Sarfatti
explains how physics has replaced philosophy as an
over-arching discipline that spans the once discontinuous
worlds of science and the humanities.
Stephen Schwartz, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, August 17, 1997
=A91998 San Francisco Chronicle
Since he first came to the Bay Area in the mid-1970s,
physicist Jack Sarfatti has been a provocative presence in
local intellectual life. Leaping from North Beach cafes to
leading policy think-tanks, he has cut a broad intellectual
swath, challenging the preconceptions of poets, political
thinkers and physicists alike. With a background in quantum
theory, he claims to break new ground in scientific
understanding of the eternal questions: ``Who are we? Where
do we come from? Where are we going?'' In this interview,
he discusses the breakdown of a paradigm that, for centuries
in the West, has viewed science and humanistic thought as
irrevocably separated.
Q: Let's begin with the paradigm of the two cultures. I
think most of us who grew up in the 1950s and '60s were
taught that in the intellectual world, science and the
humanities were radically different.
A: The literary culture was thought to be more of a culture
of feeling and intuition, where science was cold and
calculated. I think that was really the basic thing. Science
was highly mathematical, linear thinking, where the artistic
and the creative side, the poetry, was all in the
nonscientific world.
Q: Intellectuals in science and in the nonscientific fields
didn't talk to each other very much?
A: Not only did they not talk to each other, as I can
remember from my own adolescence and attitude. . . . But at
Cornell in the 1950s, all these bright science kids on full
scholarship funded by the Defense Department would go on and
on about how weak-minded and un-macho the literature
students were. There was a definite sense of superiority,
involving both sides against each other. There was a real
split.
Q: Cornell had great scientific figures in the physics
department, like Hans Bethe and Philip Morrison, and in the
literature department, you had Vladimir Nabokov, one of the
greatest modern authors. So there was ground on both sides
of the divide for a certain arrogance.
A: Among the undergraduates, but even among the professors.
If you look at Richard Feynman's books, and Feynman was a
great mathematical and physics genius, he talks about the
philosophers, and he makes fun of the Cornell philosophy
department. You can see the conflict, the divide, in
Feynman's autobiography, ``Surely You're Joking, Mr.
Feynman!'' which sold millions of copies.
Q: Feynman had a somewhat snobbish and arrogant attitude,
about hard science as compared with philosophy and
literature. But at the same time you're describing books by
him that are best-sellers. So Feynman, who started out from
the position of rigid division between the scientific
intellect and the nonscientific intellect, ended up breaking
through that division?
A: Of course, Feynman's saving grace in this regard was that
he was a comedian, he was very theatrical, musical. He was
artistic himself. Feynman died of a cancer that he got
because at Alamogordo, at the test of the first atomic bomb
in 1945, he stood up when the bomb went off -- his young
wife had just died. It was very romantic -- he stood up as
the blast went off and irradiated himself. Feynman later
spent time with John Lilly experiencing psychedelic drugs at
Esalen. I have seen unpublished poetry that Feynman wrote
toward the end of his life and his accounts of mystical
experiences at Esalen while under the influence of certain
substances.
Q: Feynman, then, found a way through the gap between the
two cultures. But perhaps the gap between the two was
narrower than people thought. We define modernity, modern
ideas and the modern intellectual landscape as created by
Lenin, Freud, Marcel Duchamp and Einstein. The new physics
was originally
baffling to the world, but that very bafflement, in a way,
ended up making it part of the common store of the modernist
intellect, because it was so novel, right there with
psychoanalysis, surrealism, with 20th century radical
politics. Would you say that the ideas of a new physics
eventually became part of the general store of the ideas of
modern society?
A: Absolutely. Physicists, because of their great
intellectual honesty, were forced, kicking and screaming,
across the divide. They really had no choice.
It was not only Einstein that pushed them in that direction,
but the later discoveries of quantum physics, primarily due
to Niels Bohr. Bohr was the leader, who pushed people into
this kind of surrealist view of the world, pushed the
physicists themselves, even if they didn't want to be
there. They were very happy in the old classical,
pre-Einsteinian physics of the 17th to 19th centuries.
Q: Describe the intellectual world and the physical world
before Einstein.
A: That world was -- it's already a cliche -- a clockwork
universe, where the cosmos was a great machine, in which if
you gathered enough information at any moment in time, you
could predict with certainty every aspect of the future
history of the universe. It was a completely determined
universe, like a great clock ticking in an absolute,
immutable way. The concept of time was that there was an
absolute time and there was nothing you could do about it;
and there was empty space, and there were these hard little
particles moving around in space and there were these
fields, electromagnetic fields, force fields, everywhere in
space, which helped move these particles, helped accelerate
the particles. There was certainly no room for life and
mind as a physical phenomenon. There was no way within the
classical physics of the 17th and 19th century to account
for life itself.
You had the idea of the elan vital, the vitalist movement in
biology. It was thought that life itself must be something
beyond the physical, beyond the laws of physics; there was
some other level. And, of course, that also helped fuel the
divide between the two cultures because, certainly, on the
poetic, literary side of the two cultures, they thought they
had a monopoly on the spirit and consciousness. Because that
was the beyond. They were right in a way, because there was
nothing in the old physics that could account for
consciousness within physics. And you had an external God
and all that stuff.
Q: So then one day, a man came along and basically said the
universe was not a traditional clock at all, and his name
was Albert Einstein.
A: Einstein is a complex figure. Suddenly, when he was in
his early 20s, with his theory of relativity, he
revolutionized our ideas of time and space and matter and
energy. Or you could say Einstein saw the universe as a
clock, but it was a Salvador Dali ``soft watch,'' a kind of
surrealist cosmos, because time was stretching, because time
was not absolute anymore. For example, Einstein talked
about a moving clock. If the clock was moving very close to
the speed of light, the clock would look as though it were
running slow. If you had a meter stick that was moving past
you close to the speed of light, the meter stick would
contract, would look contracted in the direction of motion.
It will not contract perpendicular to motion, but in the
direction of motion. So, space would squeeze down, and time
would stretch out.
Q: So it's not an orderly and predictable universe, by our
standards.
A: Not in quantum theory; but all relativity does is stretch
time. There's no such thing as absolute time in relativity
anymore. Or space; time and space are relative. You can
literally travel in time, or, at least, introduce the idea
of time travel. You can time travel to the future. And
that's standard physics.
With what Einstein did in his relativity theory, there is
still a kind of determinism. So it's a machine. It's not a
rigid machine, it's a more flexible machine. But in
relativity, it's still a machine. That's the important
part. Relativity is still a machine-like theory; it is like
classical physics, but changes our notions of space and
time, and also shows the equivalence of mass to energy,
leading to things like the atomic bomb.
Q: The 1920s was a period of great cultural ferment.
Einstein in a strange sense is a sort of Lenin of science;
he's this dramatic, revolutionary figure who breaks down all
of the accepted institutions. The Nazis denounced Einstein
as Jewish science, but other reactionaries denounced
Einstein for overthrowing the universe as they knew it. Is
Niels Bohr the next figure who you feel brought forward an
idea that could also be grasped in general and intellectual
terms?
A: Bohr really introduced epistemology or idealism,
idealistic thought, into modern physics, because of the
paradoxes of the quantum theory and the breakdown of
determinism. The breakdown of the clockwork universe upset a
lot of physicists. Bohr had a very dominating personality,
like Socrates. He could talk anybody under the table. Bohr
got everyone to agree with him except one man, and that was
Albert Einstein. The Einstein/Bohr debate went on for the
rest of their lives. Einstein was an objectivist, saying
there really is a reality out there; there is something real
to talk about. Bohr would say that, basically, all
we can do with physics is predict correlations between
mental experiences, the experiences of the observer. Bohr
brought mind into center stage in the world of physics.
Even though Einstein was a revolutionary in some ways, he
was conservative at the same time.
Q: One can say that all of the great revolutionary figures
in culture have a very radical side and also a very
conservative side.
A: Let's put it this way: paradox. The idea of paradox is an
essential part of quantum theory, the new physics. But it's
only paradox relative to the old classical ideas of
either/or. If you have a world of either/or, then the new
physics, quantum physics, goes beyond the either/or and you
have to play with paradox and understand that paradox from
the either/or point of view. If you think quantum
mechanically, you just accept the paradox as part of the way
things are. Bohr introduced a certain ``necessity of
irrationality'' in the new physics. Bohr said: ``Don't even
try to conceive of certain things.'' In classical physics,
we had the idea of particles moving continuously in space
through time. In principle, you can picture every little
detail of that. Bohr said: ``At the quantum level, you can't
do that anymore. Renounce it. You can't do it. You cannot
think of a particle, little particles, moving through space
and time at the quantum level. That's only like a classical
approximation. And thou shalt not think that way at the
quantum level.'' This was amazing -- and Einstein didn't
like it, at all. This is the basis
of the Einstein/Bohr debate. Can you picture detailed
processes in space and time at the quantum level? Bohr says
no; Einstein says yes, there should be a way. What Einstein
said was, the quantum theory that Bohr and Werner Heisenberg
were developing was a statistical theory, and it cannot be a
complete theory, because there must be a deeper point of
view where you can picture individual processes in a
detailed way.
Q: That's supposed to be what science is. It's supposed to
be the naturalistic description of the universe.
A: Einstein still held to that kind of objective, detailed
picture of things.
Q: And Bohr said that the highest triumph of science is to
recognize that you can't do science in that way.
A: That debate is still going on today.
Q: An interesting intersection between the two cultures has
recently emerged. A Shakespeare scholar, Jonathan Bate, has
published an article showing that the English writer William
Empson, one of the most influential literary critics of the
20th century, began in mathematics and physics. When Empson
wrote his most famous book, ``Seven Types of Ambiguity,'' he
was attempting to translate into literary criticism the
ideas about the physical universe of the new physicists. One
of his main influences was the physicist
Paul Dirac.
A: Dirac was a very shy, rather artistic Englishman at
Cambridge. He published a book, ``Principles of Quantum
Mechanics,'' with a sparse beauty and elegance. Dirac was
like a Japanese painter, or a maker of Zen Buddhist
proverbs, or koans. When you read his book, it's like
reading a great piece of poetry, like
being in heaven and seeing all these beautiful forms. Dirac
produced the Dirac Equation, which led to the prediction of
what's called antimatter. That is, you have an electron but
you also have, like a mirror image, a positron. You have a
proton, but you also have an antiproton. Although Dirac at
first didn't realize what he had, what this equation had, it
soon became clear what it meant. With antimatter, if an
antiparticle meets a particle, like an electron meets a
positron, they totally annihilate into radiation. So, it's
complete conversion of matter into energy. You can see that
these ideas that undermined the previous conceptions of
matter and energy would lend themselves to an understanding
of the kind of
literary ambiguity I gather Empson talked about.
Q: Empson was also interested in Erwin Schrodinger.
A: Schrodinger and Werner Heisenberg preceded Dirac. He
summarized their work. Schrodinger is one of the most
interesting figures in all of science. He was a true
Renaissance man, with a deep knowledge of eastern
philosophy. He synthesized the ideas of Einstein, Bohr and
another quantum physicist, Louis de Broglie. With the
Schrodinger Wave Equation, he more or less reconciled the
phenomena of particles and waves, which had been seen as
distinct, in a theory that accounted for both. This is one
of the central quantum concepts. It was the birth of the
modern quantum theory.
Q: It's interesting that you compare Dirac with Japanese
poetry and that you mention Schrodinger's interest in
eastern mysticism, because Empson went to China and Japan to
work as an English professor, and he steeped himself in
Asian culture.
A: In the new physics, just as we see the breakdown of the
split between the two cultures, science and the humanities,
we also see the split between West and East breaking down,
with rationalism and mysticism reconciled, as well.
Q: So we see the two cultures really merging, with science
more and more expressed in general, intellectual terms that
are part of the broader modernist culture.
A: The figure with the most importance for this debate right
now is the person Einstein himself considered his heir,
David Bohm, who died in 1992. Bohm is a remarkable
personality. He started out at Berkeley with J. Robert
Oppenheimer, in the 1940s. Bohm was one of those who was
accused of being involved with the Soviets -- he was not
allowed to work at Los Alamos, where the atomic bomb was
created. But he was incredibly important for physics today
and in the future.
Q: The partial opening of the Soviet archives and
documentary disclosures by the U.S. government have revived
the debate about the Oppenheimer circle, including Philip
Morrison and Bohm. You knew Bohm in Britain?
A: Bohm took the fall for Oppenheimer, to protect
Oppenheimer, and left the country in order not to have to
testify. He went to Brazil and then to Israel for a bit and
finally to England, where I found him, at the University of
London. I believe Oppenheimer betrayed Bohm. Oppenheimer
sacrificed Bohm to protect himself.
Q: Bohm sounds like a great California figure. He begins at
Berkeley; he comes under a cloud because of his pro-Soviet
associations. According to you, he ends up as the heir to
Einstein, developing ideas that are extremely radical and
relevant to the whole culture. What are those ideas?
A: Bohm was a student of Oppenheimer's. He was hired after
the war, as a young assistant professor at Princeton. And he
was assigned to teach the course in quantum theory, very
much under the influence of Bohr. In his lectures, Bohm was
a very thorough person. He really was questing, trying to
understand the universe and quantum theory philosophically.
He always proceeded in a clear, intuitive way. He was trying
to cut through the abstract mathematics and to make contact
with reality. His lecture notes for his course at Princeton
became his book, ``Quantum Theory.'' It's beautifully
written.
Q: I understand there was a famous encounter between Bohm
and Einstein at Princeton.
A: Having finished writing his book, he was walking around
the campus, and he ran into Einstein. Einstein had read the
book, and they spent a weekend of intensive discussions.
Bohm had developed what's called the pilot wave theory,
based on Einstein's ideas. The idea was that Bohr's quantum
theory was very accurate, and you can do all kinds of
practical and important technological things with it. But
it's incomplete; it's leaving something essential out. In
classical physics, you have particles and force fields,
electromagnetic fields, in space. Bohm added something new.
He saw patterns, quantum patterns, like patterns of thought.
Bohm showed that a ``quantum pattern of active information''
is fundamental to the universe. He deals with the parts of
the universe and the whole of the universe, and he theorizes
that things that look like separate parts of the universe
emerge out of a pool, which he calls the common pool of
information. It's like the universe is a sea of information.
And here the gap between the two cultures finally collapses
altogether. Science and history, technology and intellect,
all collapse into one. Because at the threshold of the 21st
century, in what we call the information revolution, the
information age, Bohm tells us that, in the end, the whole
of reality is simply a pattern of information. Nothing
could be more revolutionary.
JACK SARFATTI
--1939: Born September 14, Brooklyn, N.Y.
--1960: B.A. in physics, Cornell University.
--1963: Publishes paper, ``Quantum-Mechanical Correlation
Theory of
Electromagnetic Fields,'' in Nuovo Cimento, Journal of the
Italian Physical
Society.
--1967: M.S. in physics, University of California at San
Diego. Publishes
paper, ``The Goldstone Theorem in the Jahn-Teller Effect,''
with Marshall
Stoneham, in Proceedings of the Physical Society of London
and ``Laser
Self-Focusing Analogue to the Landau-Ginzburg Equation of
Type II
Superconductivity,'' in Physics Letters.
--1967-71: Assistant professor of physics, San Diego State
University.
--1969: Ph.D in Physics, University of California at
Riverside.
--1970: Publishes paper, ``Beyond the Hartree-Fock Theory in
Superfluid
Helium,'' with Fred Cummings, in Physica (Switzerland).
--1971-72: Research fellow under David Bohm, Birkbeck
College, University of
London.
--1974: Publishes paper, ``The Dirac Equation and General
Relativity,'' in
Foundations of Physics.
--1975: Co-author with Fred Alan Wolf and Bob Toben,
``Space-Time and
Beyond.''
--1991: Publishes paper, ``Design for a Superluminal
Communications
Device,'' in Physics Essays (Toronto).