A Social Responsibility in Teaching Physics
By Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner
Authors of Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness
Physicists properly join today's arguments involving the teaching of
Darwinian evolution. There is, however, a social issue even closer to the
responsibility of physicists: quantum physics is increasingly invoked to
promote pseudoscience.
Such pseudoscience promotions often start correctly stating some intriguing
implications of quantum mechanics, move on to legitimate hyperbole, and then
go off into complete hype. Take a recent "international hit" movie as our
case in point. It's strangely titled: "What tHe #$*! Do wE (k)now!?" (It's
sometimes called "What the Bleep?") Time magazine describes it as "an odd
hybrid of science documentary and spiritual revelation featuring a Greek
chorus of Ph.D.s and mystics talking about quantum physics." Early on, the
movie illustrates the uncertainty principle with a bouncing basketball being
in several places at once. There's nothing wrong with that. It's recognized
as pedagogical exaggeration. But the movie gradually blends to quantum
"insights" leading a woman to toss away her anti-depressant medication, to
the quantum channeling of the 35,000 year-old Atlantis god, Ramtha, and on
to even greater nonsense.
A layperson cannot tell where the quantum physics ends and the quantum
nonsense begins. And many are susceptible to being misguided. According to
polls, well over half of Americans (and English) have significant belief in
the reality of supernatural phenomena. Robert Park in his book, Voodoo
Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, puts the problem well. "Many
people . . . seek a certainty that science cannot offer. For these people
the unchanging dictates of ancient religious beliefs, or the absolute
assurances of zealots, have a more powerful appeal. Paradoxically, however,
their yearning for certainty is often mixed with a respect for science. They
long to be told that modern science validates the teachings of some ancient
scripture or New Age guru. The purveyors of pseudoscience have been quick to
exploit their ambivalence." We should not underestimate how persuasively the
imprimatur of physics can be used to buttress mystical notions. We
physicists bear some responsibility for the way our discipline is invoked.
The human implications of quantum mechanics that fuel popular discussion
arise in the "measurement problem" and "entanglement." That's at least how
we refer to these topics in a physics class, where we rarely go much beyond
their mathematical formulation. These same issues are also legitimately
discussed more broadly in terms of the nature of reality, universal
connectedness, and consciousness. But we don't distract physics students
with excursions into issues that extend embarrassingly beyond the boundaries
we define for our discipline. Science historian Jed Buchwald notes:
"Physicists . . . have long had a special loathing for admitting questions
with the slightest emotional content into their professional work."
Accordingly, unlike the biology student able to defend evolution against
Intelligent Design, a physics student may be unable to convincingly confront
unjustified extrapolations of quantum mechanics.
It's not the student's fault. For the most part, in our teaching of quantum
mechanics, we tacitly deny the mystery physics has encountered. We hardly
mention Bohr's grappling with physics' encounter with the observer and von
Neumann's demonstration that the encounter is, in principle, inevitable. We
largely avoid the still-unresolved issues raised by Einstein, Schrödinger,
Wigner, Bohm, and Bell. Outside the physics classroom, physicists
increasingly address these issues and often go beyond the purely "physical."
Consciousness, for example, comes up explicitly in almost every one of today's
proliferating interpretations of quantum mechanics, if only to show why
physics itself need not deal with it. The many worlds interpretation, for
example, is also referred to as the "many minds" interpretation, and a major
treatment of decoherence concludes that an ultimate understanding would
involve a model of consciousness.
The Copenhagen interpretation is, of course, all we need to describe the
world, for all practical purposes. And for a physics class, practical
purposes are generally all that matter. But a physics student confronting
someone inclined to take the implications of quantum mechanics to
unjustified places will find Copenhagen's for-all-practical-purposes
treatment an ineffective argument.
Our physics discipline is unable to present a reasonable-seeming picture of
what's going on in the physical world, one that goes beyond merely practical
purposes. But a lecture or two can succinctly expose the mystery physics has
encountered, admit the limits of our understanding, and identify as
speculation whatever goes beyond those limits. It would enable students to
effectively confront the quantum nonsense. Such a presentation is possible
even in a "physics for poets" class, where it may even be most crucial.
Physics' encounter with the observer and consciousness can be embarrassing,
but that's not a good reason for avoiding it. The analogy with sex education
comes to mind.
Copyright © 2006 Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner
Author
Bruce Rosenblum is Professor of Physics and former Chairperson of the
Physics Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has also
consulted extensively for government and industry on technical and policy
issues. His research has moved from molecular physics to condensed matter
physics and, after a foray into biophysics, has focused on fundamental
issues in quantum mechanics.
After a career in industry that included two technology startups, and
following a second career in academic administration, Fred Kuttner now
devotes most of his time to teaching physics at the University of
California, Santa Cruz. His research interests have centered on the
low-temperature properties of solids and the thermal properties of magnets.
For the last several years, Kuttner has worked on the foundations of quantum
mechanics and the implications of the quantum theory.
They are the authors of Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness,
Published by Oxford University Press; August 2006; $29.95US; 0-19-517559-X.
For more information, please visit www.quantumenigma.com
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