‘The Cosmic Code’, one of the most brilliant books I have ever read. The book explains for the layman in a beautiful manner the weirdness of quantum theory.
Quantum theory and the microworld is weird, non-objective, acausal, random, illogical, non-deterministic, but supremely fitting into experiment, proof, and application. It is completely antagonistic to the workings of the macroworld and the regular Boolean logic of the human brain cannot be simply applied to understand its workings. Terms such as ‘either’ or ‘or’ have no meaning sometimes. It can be either of the options, depending on whether an observer decides to look at it, and also how he decides to look at it. That is pretty shocking. The observer has a great role in creating a reality.
Einstein’s view is what I subscribe to, probably. He resisted the quantum theory initially with the vigor of a zealot, but later amended his views with a huge load of experimental verification of the theory. But, till the end he maintained that the quantum theory is not the final word on explaining reality. There is something more which is awaiting a discovery where determinism and objectivity would come back into fray. That the world exists without our observation was the basic and fundamental assertion of Einstein.
But again, if one goes by the Vedantic viewpoint, the world is a creation of our mind. We create it all the time. This is what Sri Ramana always insisted on. There is no reality as such. All reality is a fluff of illusion, says Advaita. So, quantum theory has a lot of parallels in Vedantic thought. The author mentions this aspect also in passing but does not stress too much on it. Nature at the basic level is very, very fluffy.
The book is simply brilliant in highlighting all this. The microworld organizes into the macroworld, but both have their own set of rules. This is a huge paradox and hence reductionism is something we cannot indulge in. Reductionism is the study at the most basic level to understand the working at the complex macro level. This book had inspired Bruce Lipton in his research; and his theory of applying quantum mechanics to the microworld of cells and genes rather than Newtonian mechanisms in those realms. Such an approach has given him new insights into the workings of genes and the cell membranes.
SOLIPSISM is a new word I learnt from the book. Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. (From Wikipedia).
The book then goes on to describe an exciting world of matter from the molecules down. We are taken on a breathless journey of molecules, atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons, hadrons, and finally the smallest particles called quarks, leptons, and gluons. Quarks and leptons are the basic building blocks and gluons are the interacting force particles.
The relativity theory and the quantum theory were the major breakthroughs of the 20th century. Both seemed mutually exclusive as applied to the microworld and the microworld respectively. Apparently, trying to join them was one of the frustrating endeavors of many a lifetime of top class scientists, including Einstein.
Ultimately, the efforts of a relativistic quantum field theory said that all reality is a set of fields, but its manifestation is the particles. The central dogmas of this combined theory states that (in the words of the author Heinz Pagels):
1. The essential material reality is a set of fields.
2. The fields obey the principles of special relativity and quantum theory.
3. The intensity of a field at a point gives the probability for finding its associated quanta-the fundamental particles that are observed by experimentalists.
4. The fields interact and imply interaction of the associated quanta. These interactions are mediated by the quanta themselves.
5. There is nothing else.
The interacting force quantas are the gravitons for gravity, photons for electromagnetic force and there are two others for the weak and the strong nuclear force.
The author then goes on to mention that vacuum is no longer considered a vacuum as we would like to think. It is a place of a ceaseless, infinite amount of activity where particles and anti-particles are created all the time. The energy of such processes is almost infinite.
The universe is indeed a strange place. Still, it is difficult to reconcile that the microworld is ruled by a different set of rules as the macroworld, but individually both the rules have enjoyed the greatest of successes by way of experimentation and application. The attempts to unify are a wonderful effort on the part of physics. The book looks a bit dated because I think it was written in the 80’s. Unfortunately, the author died in a freak accident when he slipped during a mountain climbing adventure. Eerily, in another book by the author, he describes the feelings of a free fall. The style of writing is brilliant and the author makes physics as exciting as a murder mystery of Agatha Christie. It is a fantastic book and a must read for all science lovers. I have to protect this book with the ferocity of a lion so that it is not digested by the world. It goes into the secret shelf in my library away from the prying eyes of hungry book lovers.
ISBN-13: 978-0486485065
ISBN-10: 0486485064
RANDOM MUSINGS 