Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness

Science News,  Sept 23, 2006  

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QUANTUM ENIGMA: Physics Encounters Consciousness

BRUCE ROSENBLUM AND FRED KUTTNER

Quantum theory has become a cornerstone of modern physics. However, the scheme predicts seemingly impossible conditions, such as objects existing in two states at once in the way that Schrodinger's cat is both dead and alive until observed. Such situations establish a connection between physics and consciousness that authors Rosenblum and Kuttner call the quantum enigma. They explain the enigma and the controversy behind it in straightforward, nontechnical language. Physics has long presented hypotheses that are counterintuitive, note the authors. However, quantum theory introduces predictions that even Albert Einstein couldn't accept. Rosenblum and Kuttner, both physics researchers, explain what physicists and philosophers think about these predictions and the implications that they have for the idea of free will and the origins of the universe. Oxford, 2006, 211 p., b&w illus., hardcover, $29.95.

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