A Hypercosmic God?

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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French physicist/philosopher Bernard d’Espagnat won the annual science prize from the a Templeton Foundation. D’Espagnat worked with Fermi and Bohr. His most important work were tests of Bell’s theorem that “either quantum mechanics is a complete description of the world or that if there is some reality beneath quantum mechanics, it must be non-local. That is, things can influence each other instantaneously regardless of how much space there is between them, violating Einstein’s insistence that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light."

D’Espagnat writes about the implications of this theorem for the nature of ultimate reality. He concludes that quantum mechanics cannot describe the world as it really is. It merely makes predictions for the outcomes of our observations. He believes that through science we can glimpse some basic structures of reality, but much of it remains an infinite eternal mystery.

D’Espagnat writes “There must exist, beyond mere appearances…a veiled reality that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly. In turn, contrary to those who claim that matter is the only reality, the possibility that other means, including spirituality, may also provide a window on ultimate reality cannot be ruled out, even by cogent scientific arguments”

D’Espagnat refers to ultimate reality as “Being” or “Independent Reality or “a great hypercosmic God.” For him it is a holistic non-material realm that lies outside of space–time. We impose the categories of space-time and localization on reality via the Kantian categories.

D’Espagnat goes on to say “Independent Reality plays, in a way, the role of the god or substance of Spinoza.” Einstein said he could believe in Spinoza’s conception of God. Nevertheless, according to d’Espagnat, the hypercosmic God is “partially but still fundamentally unknowable."

Source:The Times Online

[size=85]I modified the title.[/size]

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In my education as an engineer I had some exposure to quantum physics where it seemed to me that it blurs what is really going on by basing itself, ultimately, in statistics…

In other words quantum theory doesn’t care so much what is really the case but what is probably the case, and it goes from there. i.e., Even though there is a probability of success, quantum physics tells us you can pretty much rest assured that you can’t throw a baseball through a wall…

Not sure I see how D’Espagnat makes the leap to a “non-material realm that lies outside of space–time” though. I don’t think Kant is sufficient for this.

And I’m not a big fan of the “unknowability” of God, or the unknowability of any reality for that matter, whether material or immaterial. From the purely religious point of view, I tend to accept the following:

“Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” (Deuteronomy 30:11-14)

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Hi alyoshka,

Something “non-local” that can influence things instantaneously regardless distance would never be “far away.”

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But this non-local something that you or D’Espagnat or Bell speak of remains a mystery… It is “far away” in terms of its enigmatic, can’t get your hands on it, nature…

It basically comes down to: We can tell this much is true about reality from what we can observe, but strange stuff is still happening, so let’s lump everything we can’t observe into a black box and say such things about the box as “its contents can influence things instantaneously regardless of spatial distance”.

Seems kind of silly. The truth of the matter is we’re ignorant. How can we possibly derive from our ignorance a “holistic non-material realm that lies outside of space–time”?

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It is my belief that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (which states that certain physical quantities, like the position and momentum, cannot both have precise values at the same time), is incorrect. Yes, I do have an alternate explanation–The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. It explains ALL quantum weirdness, but at a cost (of course). It theorizes quantum transactions occur both forward and backward in time. So, in essence, the speed-limit of light would not be violated due to this dual nature of time in quantum transactions.

Thus D’Espagnat statement that, “the possibility that other means, including spirituality, may also provide a window on ultimate reality cannot be ruled out, even by cogent scientific arguments”, may well be true. But if the Transactional Interpretation is correct, then realm of scientific reality is would be much more prevalent, at least in this universe. I think the interface between science and the “supernatural”, if it exists, does so in the Planck unit of space/time. God could well be watching from there. If nothing else, it is the barrier between our finite universe and the infinite.

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So these are his conclusions. Neat stuff. Can we have his reasoning, too?

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Paineful Truth:

You say the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP), which “states that certain physical quantities, like the position and momentum, cannot both have precise values at the same time”, is incorrect.

However isn’t your version of the HUP incorrect here? i.e., Doesn’t the principle state that certain physical quantities, like position and momentum, cannot both be measured precisely at the same time?

The addition of “measured” is hugely important. And perhaps you just left it out… (Or perhaps I need to brush up on my quantum theory!)

My sense of the HUP has been, for example, if you measure the position of a particle the act of doing so affects its momentum. Or conversely if you measure the momentum of a particule the act of doing so affects its position… Thus it’s not that a particle doesn’t have precise values for both momentum and position at any given time, but rather we can’t know both values since in measuring one we destroy the possibility of measuring the other…

Anyways, probably just attacking you for no reason here, i.e., for forgetting to add a word. But I wanted to clarify nonetheless.

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The ancients intuited the existence of a “holistic non-material realm” more than 2500 years before Einstein told us that space and time were continuum. Such is the subject of the “spirit” language of the Bible for instance. Since spiritual intuition is foreign to purely logical-mathematical intelligence, it can seem distant or silly to it. Nevertheless, your contemplation of Biblical wisdom may represent your own pursuit of a “holistic non-material realm.” The authors of that wisdom believed they were in contact with such a realm.

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If I come across it, I be sure and relay it to you.

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I appreciate that, pal.

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Intuited? Perhaps some supposed; or liked to think; or opined.

True enough; but much more needs to be said about this reality.

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This is completely my own thought with absolutely no official scientific backing to it what-so-ever.
Take it or leave it as you will:

In my mind, this thought nullifies the need for any of the “non-local” paradoxes.

A key notion of relativity is not that nothing can move faster than light, Einstien was wrong to think this was the limit of relativity. Instead, a key notion of relativity is that nothing can move faster than it’s comparative appears to be moving as it does in the relative regular state of movement because as a subject matter increases in speed for the observer, the observable length of time for the observed decreases in capacity of the observed.
This creates an optical illusion; something akin to moving a film that normally runs 24 frames per second at 12 frames per half of a second.
Ultimately, the same amount of time to observe the universe is observed that can be observed regardless of the speed at which something travels.

The only observational object that will ever appear faster than a normal measurement of it’s movement is the object that is moving faster than another observer outside of the fast moving object that is instead on a slower moving object.

This occurs at any speed, not just at the speeds of light.
If two watches were given enough time with an infinite battery source, separated by a speed of .5 miles per hour, given an infinite amount of time, they would end up eventually telling different times from each other.
The difference is the rapidity in which the separation is observable.

The larger the distance in speed, over the longer amount of time observed for comparison causes the observed level of difference between two comparative accounts of time.

So the question of whether or not something can go faster than the speed of light isn’t much of a question that threatens the speed of light or relativity, but excitingly creates a further measurement by which man can imagine and measure going faster.

The light will still travel the same speeds, and the relativity will still measure light at the same speed as it has always measured it.

The problem with something traveling faster than light isn’t whether it exists or not.
It’s whether it can be seen or not. If something travels faster than light can reach it, then it is forever unavailable to the observable universe while at those speeds.

As a side note, as a working theory, one could even suppose that the speed would be so fast that it may cause an apparent increase in gravity improper to it’s mass.
If this is the theory ran, then one could look for improper appearances of gravity for relative mass.
In such cases, if the above is accurate, then I would expect that what would be seen if in any form of collective, is an abnormal absence of light in a condensed and increased gravity of hyper-compressed mass.

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Reduction of the premodern worldview to wishful thinking is a misreading of it IMO. The ancients were in touch with a sense of mythos that gave them transcendent meaning. For them history was an external manifestation of timeless reality. For all the good things it has brought us, the success of modernity has left humanity bereft of its sense of ultimate value. If modernity is right, it’s dead right.

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Reducing premodern worldview to a worldview strikes me as the real injustice. There is no premodern worldview. There are, instead, billions of premodern human beings who each had their own view of the world, a view that itself changed, for some at least, over the course of their lives.

Sure, there is a tendency in the modern world to say things like “God is dead”. Thankfully we’re in the postmodern age which is, itself hopefully, in its waning days. Perhaps we’ll soon emerge, in the post-postmodern era, with a newfound and robust sense of value and meaning…

I don’t mean to deny that there are certain ideas that have dominated the ages, but only that it is never so cut and dry. Look at Parmenides for example. About the realm you speak of, a realm beyond our ability to know, he said we cannot speak of it and as such he didn’t. Nietzsche uses a similar argument as Parmenides in Twilight of the Idols to reject transcendent meanings.

But then again, I’m no scholar of Parmenides, Nietzsche, the premodern or modern world… So perhaps I should just keep my mouth shut!

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The possibility of the extra-natural cannot be ruled out from a 50-50 probability, because there is no evidence for or against a natural or extra-natural cause for the universe. And the fact that 100% of the evidence (so far) found within this universe indicates its natural state is in no way an indication for or against its natural genesis.

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Do you know what an argument from ignorance is?

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still an argument?

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The point is that it’s not a good argument. Just because there is nothing to say S is false does not mean the belief that S is true is justified.

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ah yes, the age old appeal to ignorance…

I think it’s still right to invoke ignorance so long as you don’t postulate something in need of reasonable proof.

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I think there enough common cross-cultural themes in pre-modern traditional thinking to justify calling it a world view. The pre-moderns usually thought of spirit as fundamental and matter as derivative. They viewed human beings as having decended from higher beings to lower. Pre-moderns looked forward to a happy ending for humanity in the cosmos. They believed that life was full of meaning. They believed they were made of the same stuff the world is, so they felt at home in the world.

Modernity turned all that on its head. Matter is all there is; spirit is a fiction. human beings descended from lower beings. Moderns look forward to extinction of life and ultimately the universe itself. Life is meaningless. We are alienated in a dead indifferent world. Hope is in human progress. Post-modernism is basically the collapse of modernism including its hope.

What exactly this might have to do with Bernard d’Espagnat’s cosmology I can only speculate at this point. But I felt the article about him was interesting because at first glance the conclusions he drew from quantum mechanic have similarities to the traditional religious worldview or what has been called the perinnial philosophy.