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The Idealist Interpretation

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The Physicists’ View of Nature
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Abstract

Quantum mechanics had idealist leanings from the beginning. If quantum objects are both wave and particle, but with a given experimental arrangement, we can measure either the wave aspect or the particle aspect, then clearly we are choosing how the object manifests. By choosing the experimental arrangement, we are choosing whether the object will manifest as a wave or as a particle this time around. Also, since the quantum wave function represents a wave of possibility, and since when we observe we never see the electron smeared about but only as a localized actuality, the question lurks behind these realizations, Is it our observation, us, that is collapsing the quantum object‘s possibility wave into an actual particle?

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Bibliography

  • Goswami, A. The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World. NY: Putnam/Tarcher, 1993.

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  • Goswami, A. The Visionary Window: A Quantum Physicists’ Guide to Enlightenment. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 2000.

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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Goswami, A. (2001). The Idealist Interpretation. In: The Physicists’ View of Nature. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0527-3_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0527-3_18

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-46509-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-0527-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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