Abstract
Quantum Theory, developed in the first quarter of the 20th century, has become the most widely applicable, successfully predictive theory of physics, but has long remained mysterious as a description of reality. What has been obstructing our understanding are deeply ingrained presuppositions about the nature of reality. Freed from these presuppositions, a new world view is emerging in which connectedness and consciousness play a fundamental role. Quantum Theory offers us glimpses of different ways of dealing with each other and with our world. Voss-Andreae’s ‘Quantum Sculptures’ give expression to these emerging insights in their evolution from a literal analog to physics toward freely capturing key facets of the lessons learned through quantum physics. This article discusses this body of work in relation to Weissmann’s work on an emerging ‘quantum paradigm’ in the hopes of inspiring new ways to transcend our current paradigm and helping to get these embryonic ideas out into the cultural mainstream.
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- 1.
David Mermin: “If I were forced to sum up in one sentence what the Copenhagen interpretation says to me, it would be 'Shut up and calculate!'”.
- 2.
Kaiser (2011).
- 3.
Gary Zukav: “Dancing Wu Li Masters”, Fritjof Capra: “The Tao of Physics”, Nick Herbert: “Quantum Reality”, Fred A. Wolf: “The Spiritual Universe”, “The Dreaming Universe”, Michael Talbot: “Mysticism and the New Physics” and “The Holographic Universe”, Heinz Pagels: “The Cosmic Code—Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature”, Itzhak Bentov: “Stalking the Wild Pendulum”, Bohm and Hiley: “Implicate Order”, Victor Mansfield: “Synchronicity, Science, Soulmaking”, Carlo Rovelli: “Reality is not what it seems”, Philip Ball: “Beyond Weird”, Henry Stapp: “The mindful Universe” and “Quantum Theory and Free Will”.
- 4.
The basic assumption of behaviorism.
- 5.
Kuhn (1962).
- 6.
However, when scientific paradigms are adopted, internalized, believed and embodied, they may, and frequently do, have experiential implications.
- 7.
Cortona Week was an annual seminar taking place in Cortona, Italy, during the years 1985–2017. Created to foster transdisciplinary and intercultural competence in natural scientists and engineers, the seminar extended their expertise to a much broader scope of other domains such as spirituality, literature, psychology, fine arts, bodywork, and intercultural knowledge.
- 8.
Arndt et al. (1999).
- 9.
Markus Arndt, private communication.
- 10.
One nanometer is 10−9 m or one billionth (=1/1,000,000,000) or 0.000000001 m.
- 11.
The slits in our experiment are for technical reasons not just two, but a “diffraction grating” with many slits. The concept of the double-slit can be expanded in a straightforward fashion to a series of slits, not changing any of the reasoning above that leads to the interference pattern.
- 12.
Typical velocities of about 600–800 km/h corresponding to de Broglie wavelengths of about 3 pm (3 × 10−12 m).
- 13.
The detected buckyballs are separated by a typical distance of 0.1 mm or 100,000 times their diameter.
- 14.
Luca Pacioli “Divina proportione” (Divine proportion), composed around 1498 in Milan and first printed in 1509.
- 15.
E = mc2.
- 16.
ω = E/ℏ from E = ℏω.
- 17.
λ = ℎ/(mv) from p = ℏk = ℎ/λ.
- 18.
A very small distance (1.6 × 10−35 m) generally assumed to be of fundamental importance in physics.
- 19.
Frank Grotelüschen: “Die Quantenwelt wird sichtbar. Anton Zeilingers physikalische Experimente stoßen an die Grenzen des Vorstellbaren” Berliner Zeitung (Wissenschaft—Seite W01) December 6, 2000. https://julianvossandreae.com/wp-content/uploads/2000/12/2000_12_6_BZ.pdf.
- 20.
Voss-Andreae (2005).
- 21.
Voss-Andreae (2013).
- 22.
Ball (2009).
- 23.
“Dual Nature,” Science 313 (2006) p. 913. https://julianvossandreae.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/2006_08_18_Science.pdf.
- 24.
This effect even allows to clearly discern faces and facial expressions despite the drastic reduction of visual information this approach entails.
- 25.
A good visual introduction can be found at https://www.facebook.com/thisisinsiderart/videos/719258618244705/.
- 26.
Voss-Andreae (2011).
- 27.
The German title of the installation originated in physics but is used in contemporary German almost exclusively in a metaphorical sense, implying a dynamic tension, often between opposites, that permeates everything in its vicinity.
- 28.
“Elective Affinities” (German: “Die Wahlverwandtschaften”) is a novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, published in 1809. The title is taken from a scientific term once used to describe the tendency of chemical substances to combine with certain other substances in preference to others. The novel is based on the metaphor of human passions being governed or regulated by the laws of chemical affinity.
- 29.
The general term is ‘state vector’.
- 30.
Or ‘her’. Let us assume, for the sake of brevity and without loss of generality, that this and the other hypothetical observers we use in this article, identify as male.
- 31.
Representing its position, the so-called “center-of-mass-wavefunction”.
- 32.
Real, or factual existence.
- 33.
Weissmann and Larson (2017).
- 34.
Also known as the “second observer” paradox.
- 35.
For a time at which O has already observed S but O’ has not yet, only the wavefunction belonging to O has yielded measurement results for S that are definite.
- 36.
Other than conserved ones.
- 37.
A term introduced by John A. Wheeler.
- 38.
The whole observable universe is ultimately one large quantum system.
- 39.
And cannot even be thought of as determined at all, a property of QT called contextuality.
- 40.
Causal influences cannot spread faster than the speed of light.
- 41.
A good starting point to explore this interesting topic outside the current scientific mainstream are the books of Dean Radin. “Entangled Minds” and “The Conscious Universe”, for example, present exhaustive meta-analyses of the existing literature.
- 42.
The phenomenon of such “non-causal co-occurrences” was studied in a collaborative research by one of the great founders of QT, Wolfgang Pauli, and the renowned psychologist Carl G. Jung, who named them “synchronicity”—meaningful coincidences.
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Voss-Andreae, J., Weissmann, G. (2019). Finally Fresh Air: Towards a Quantum Paradigm for Artists and Other Observers. In: Wuppuluri, S., Wu, D. (eds) On Art and Science. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27577-8_11
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