Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness | 
| Authors: Bruce Rosenblum, Fred Kuttner
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 177544
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1
ISBN: 019517559X
Dewey Decimal Number: 530.12
EAN: 9780195175592
ASIN: 019517559X
Publication Date: June 29, 2006
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Product Description
The most successful theory in all of science--and the basis of one third of our economy--says the strangest things about the world and about us. Can you believe that physical reality is created by our observation of it? Physicists were forced to this conclusion, the quantum enigma, by what they observed in their laboratories.
Trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics and found, to their embarrassment, that their theory intimately connects consciousness with the physical world. Quantum Enigma explores what that implies and why some founders of the theory became the foremost objectors to it. Schrodinger showed that it "absurdly" allowed a cat to be in a "superposition" simultaneously dead and alive. Einstein derided the theory's "spooky interactions." With Bell's Theorem, we now know Schrodinger's superpositions and Einstein's spooky interactions indeed exist.
Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all of this in non-technical terms with help from some fanciful stories and bits about the theory's developers. They present the quantum mystery honestly, with an emphasis on what is and what is not speculation.
Physics' encounter with consciousness is its skeleton in the closet. Because the authors open the closet and examine the skeleton, theirs is a controversial book. Quantum Enigma's description of the experimental quantum facts, and the quantum theory explaining them, is undisputed. Interpreting what it all means, however, is controversial.
Every interpretation of quantum physics encounters consciousness. Rosenblum and Kuttner therefore turn to exploring consciousness itself--and encounter quantum physics. Free will and anthropic principles become crucial issues, and the connection of consciousness with the cosmos suggested by some leading quantum cosmologists is mind-blowing.
Readers are brought to a boundary where the particular expertise of physicists is no longer a sure guide. They will find, instead, the facts and hints provided by quantum mechanics and the ability to speculate for themselves.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 NEXT LESSON - STRING THEORIES.... July 20, 2008
It takes a little while to grasp its concepts and I am not completely convinced of all arguments. However, its a very interesting read and I'm naturally a "doubting Jane" when science is involved. I question everything beyond the norm. What this has done is spiked my interest in String Theory so as well as recommending this book as a good starter, I would then recommend you read The Elegant Universe. Better to read this one first.
Happy enlightenment!
Has science found God? July 14, 2008
Quantum Enigma goes where few science books dare to go: right up to the border that separates physics from philosophy. And there it stops. The implication though is strong that something, a field of consciousness (?), is behind the universe and everything in it.
 Unobserved actuality - oxymoron? July 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book on interpreting the quantum facts is one of the best I've read. It is one of the best, I think, in its understandability of the enigma one is faced with in trying to go beyond the Copenhagen interpretation.
This book presents the measurement problem of quantum physics and explains why conscious observation must have some role in influencing reality, if you choose to go beyond CI. The way the authors explain Bell's Theorem and how it became a testable theory that answered the EPR challenge to quantum theory is succinct and comprehensible to the layman, for which it was writen.
 Free will & the Quantum Enigma April 1, 2008
19 out of 23 found this review helpful
This book is by far one of the most concise and simplest elucidations of various quantum phenomena... treating Copenhagen interpretation, the famous EPR paradox, Bell's theorem & inequality and more. Since I am not a physicist or physics major, I found their approach welcoming and I cannot critique the physics of the book, but I do have some major qualms with Quantum Enigma.
My prime objection to this book is that the authors implicitly believe in the reality & truth of free will throughout the text. I was a student in Bruce Rosenblum's class at UC Santa Cruz so I was able to ask questions to one of the authors of the book. The issue of free will was one that Rosenblum was not a fan of discussing, often dismissing the nearly uniform proclamation of the natural sciences that free will (i.e. our conscious control of choices) is an illusion.
This is may not seem like a profound objection to a book about physics, but Rosenblum & Kuttner insist themselves on the importance of free will to their book: "the existence of a quantum enigma depends crucially on free will." (p.168) If this is true, one would expect a substantial discussion of this concept yet the authors devote less than 2 pages to it. In these 2 pages, the authors admit, "Though it is hard to fit free will into a scientific worldview, we cannot ourselves, with any seriousness, doubt it. J.A. Hobson's comment seems apt to us: `Those of us with common sense are amazed at the resistance put up by psychologists, physiologists, and philosophers to the obvious reality of free will.'"
This quotation is essentially saying that Rosenblum and Kuttner cannot accept the notion that free will is an illusion because of "common sense." Physicists of all people should know that our so-called "common sense" and our intuitions are often skewed and sometimes totally incorrect. Quantum mechanics is a perfect example of this - as is Copernicus' discovery that we live in a heliocentric system - yet this notion of not trusting our "common sense" seems to not occur to Rosenblum and Kuttner in relation to free will. Often in the Quantum Enigma course (Physics 75), Bruce Rosenblum would simply say, "I know I have free will" - a statement that should make any philosopher, physicist, or biologist cringe - and presumably anyone who values empirical data over subjective "intuitions." Why should we trust our intuitions and "common sense" over the empirical data in this one case of our apparent free will?
The quotation above also belies a major problem with Quantum Enigma, where physics supposedly meets consciousness. The views of those fields named in the quotation above - psychologists, physiologists, and philosophers - are notably absent from Rosenblum and Kuttner's book. In Quantum Enigma where "physics meets consciousness," David Chalmers' book from the 80s is invoked often; they also mention Libet's studies from the 1980s. The problem with this is that an immense amount of research has been done since the 1980s in the blossoming field of neuroscience, which relate directly to our notions of intention, free will, consciousness, and self-representations. None of these findings are even mentioned even in passing in Quantum Enigma.
Patricia Churchland, a philosopher and neuroscientist, states in her book Brain-Wise, "So far, there is no evidence at all that some neuronal events happen without any cause... Importantly, even were uncaused neuronal events to be discovered, it is a further, substantial matter to show that precisely those events constitute choice." From a biological perspective, there appears to be no room for free will. Rosenblum and Kuttner even admit as much when they begin the quotation above with the phrase, "Though it is hard to fit free will into a scientific worldview..." If free will is hard to fit into a scientific worldview, and "the existence of a quantum enigma depends crucially on free will," would it not seem practical to devote a little more than two pages to the discussion of free will? Wouldn't it be necessary to understand the views of biologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers on these issues of consciousness and free will to have a full, accurate, scientific picture of the situation?
Certainly physics can expect to "encounter" consciousness because physics intends to find a holistic explanation of the universe, and consciousness is obviously part of the universe physics intends to explain. In our search to understand both quantum mechanics and consciousness, we must be honest and open to all sides of the story. Unfortunately, Rosenblum and Kuttner leave out the arguments from biology, psychology, neurology, and some physicists when discussing the quantum enigma where "physics encounters consciousness." This is an overwhelming handicap, especially because of the authors' supposedly "common sense" presupposition that humans have free will. I admit that there is certainly a quantum enigma that presents itself in what we know as the "measurement problem," and Rosenblum and Kuttner should be congratulated to attempt to bring this to light to combat pseudoscience. But to understand the Quantum Enigma, we cannot start with presupposed truths, especially including the notion that we have free will.
With this in mind, I give the book 3 stars for its extraordinary conciseness with which it explains the phenomena of physics but the lack of biology, philosophy, neuroscience, etc. severely handicaps their interpretations and conclusions.
If there is a review but no one reads it, does it exist? March 29, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Implications of two different results regarding an experiment in quantum physics is pretty disconcerting when first discovered in the physics community, but when you understand that the reason there is a difference in experimental results is due to a conscious observation, it can really mess with your mind! This great book tries to sum up all the ideas/ theories out there to try and makes sense of all this.
Although they explain the basics of the expleriments, I would have liked a more in depth step by step of the experiment that shows two different results, the wave for no observation and the determined point with observation. It could be that it just isn't in the physics 101 lab reproducibility but requires more extensive equipment to show.
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