1 00:00:00,520 --> 00:00:04,840 It was found that knowledge of one thing precluded knowledge of another. 2 00:00:05,560 --> 00:00:07,960 Heisenberg formulated the uncertainty principle, 3 00:00:08,300 --> 00:00:14,040 which states that you can never determine both the position and the velocity of a particle at the same time. 4 00:00:15,940 --> 00:00:22,040 This conceptual revolution was expressed in the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, 5 00:00:22,340 --> 00:00:24,400 which came to be accepted in 1927. 6 00:00:25,760 --> 00:00:29,540 But Einstein was to remain opposed to it right to the end of his life. 7 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:57,800 Heisenberg wrote, 8 00:00:57,800 --> 00:01:04,500 What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. 9 00:01:04,500 --> 00:01:17,420 I think there is a great misunderstanding among the lay public about the meaning of the uncertainty principle. 10 00:01:17,560 --> 00:01:20,280 The uncertainty principle does not mean that everything is uncertain. 11 00:01:20,280 --> 00:01:29,020 In fact, the German, the original German term, Unschärferelation, the fuzziness principle, or something like this, 12 00:01:29,120 --> 00:01:32,220 fuzziness relation, is much better. 13 00:01:32,660 --> 00:01:42,060 What Heisenberg discovered was that classical concepts have only limited validity in the realm of atomic physics, 14 00:01:42,060 --> 00:01:46,760 physics, and he determined exactly the range of validity. 15 00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:55,980 He found out that there tend to be pairs of concepts, for example, the location of an atom and its velocity. 16 00:01:55,980 --> 00:02:01,860 And you can either determine one with complete accuracy or the other, but not both. 17 00:02:02,420 --> 00:02:10,180 And the more you know about the location, the position, the fuzzier your information about the velocity will be. 18 00:02:10,440 --> 00:02:15,100 The more you measure the velocity, the fuzzier the position will be. 19 00:02:15,100 --> 00:02:23,840 So, you see, these are the limits of these classical concepts, staked out with great precision in a set of mathematical relationships. 20 00:02:29,640 --> 00:02:37,580 The problems of objective observation become clearer if we think of an observer who wants to study a colony of bacteria through a microscope. 21 00:02:38,460 --> 00:02:41,480 In order to do so, he has to illuminate the object. 22 00:02:41,480 --> 00:02:47,760 But since light consists of particles which interact with the particles of which the bacteria are made, 23 00:02:47,760 --> 00:02:50,640 the object of his studies inevitably changes. 24 00:02:55,980 --> 00:03:01,480 Or the observer can be compared to an explorer who studies a remote, isolated community, 25 00:03:01,980 --> 00:03:05,080 but who influences the people he's studying by his own behavior. 26 00:03:11,480 --> 00:03:15,840 And inside particle accelerators, the super microscopes of our time, 27 00:03:16,200 --> 00:03:19,940 the new rules are a sharp reminder that classical physics has been left behind. 28 00:03:21,020 --> 00:03:23,960 As the Copenhagen interpretation says, paradoxically, 29 00:03:24,680 --> 00:03:29,100 the observed system is required to be isolated in order to be defined, 30 00:03:29,900 --> 00:03:32,460 yet interacting in order to be observed. 31 00:03:32,460 --> 00:03:38,780 You could say, well, why not describe everything in quantum language? 32 00:03:39,160 --> 00:03:41,160 Well, you can't, because when you do an experiment, 33 00:03:41,800 --> 00:03:45,120 then you say, well, let's do an experiment Friday afternoon, 34 00:03:45,120 --> 00:03:48,200 and the whole team will meet at 3 o'clock, and so on. 35 00:03:48,240 --> 00:03:49,680 That's classical language, you see. 36 00:03:50,400 --> 00:03:57,640 And so you cannot get around the fact that our immediate experience is rooted in classical language, 37 00:03:57,640 --> 00:04:00,640 and we have to use that language to do experiments in physics. 38 00:04:00,640 --> 00:04:06,120 Yet, the described phenomenon cannot be described in classical language. 39 00:04:06,880 --> 00:04:08,020 So that is the paradox. 40 00:04:08,680 --> 00:04:16,420 Now, the solution is that the Copenhagen interpretation does not insist on a complete description. 41 00:04:17,380 --> 00:04:22,680 The classical apparatus, the instrumentation, is not described completely. 42 00:04:22,680 --> 00:04:30,060 And what physicists do is they use a pragmatic approach where they give a set of rules. 43 00:04:30,720 --> 00:04:36,920 They say, when you do things in a certain way, in terms of operative descriptions, 44 00:04:37,780 --> 00:04:44,400 then somewhere at the end of a long chain of events, you will have a needle, you know, on a scale. 45 00:04:45,060 --> 00:04:49,680 And if the needle is between 1 and 3, I will call the experiment positive. 46 00:04:49,680 --> 00:04:52,720 If it is above 3, I will call it negative. 47 00:04:53,100 --> 00:04:54,260 Something like that, you know. 48 00:04:54,580 --> 00:04:56,380 So it's an operational description. 49 00:04:57,160 --> 00:05:00,680 The apparatus is described in operational terms. 50 00:05:02,680 --> 00:05:05,440 And that is what the Copenhagen interpretation does. 51 00:05:07,100 --> 00:05:10,680 Now, if we make a jump now to a mystical tradition, a spiritual tradition, 52 00:05:11,140 --> 00:05:13,980 then we see in deep meditative experience, 53 00:05:13,980 --> 00:05:18,660 the mystics, the mystics, the mystics, also say that the observer and the observed fuse, 54 00:05:19,160 --> 00:05:21,380 they can no longer be separated, but they go further. 55 00:05:21,840 --> 00:05:24,640 They go to a point where there's no distinction, 56 00:05:25,180 --> 00:05:28,840 where the entire being dissolves into the universe, 57 00:05:29,340 --> 00:05:35,680 and there's no more distinction between you and me and, you know, the universe at large. 58 00:05:36,080 --> 00:05:40,220 We all have this experience to some extent at certain moments. 59 00:05:40,220 --> 00:05:45,340 For instance, in a sexual experience, if you have a really deep sexual experience, 60 00:05:45,560 --> 00:05:49,060 there's really no distinction between your lover and yourself, you know, 61 00:05:49,100 --> 00:05:54,620 the two fuse, you know, emotionally and physically and spiritually and in every other way. 62 00:05:55,200 --> 00:06:00,380 And this is actually a parallel that is often drawn in spiritual traditions, 63 00:06:00,580 --> 00:06:04,700 especially in India, the deep sexual experience and the deep mystical experience. 64 00:06:04,700 --> 00:06:11,140 But the distinction dissolves, whereas in science, the distinction is still there. 65 00:06:11,240 --> 00:06:14,240 The separation is no longer there, but the distinction is still there. 66 00:06:22,980 --> 00:06:29,100 Although quantum theory indicates that the material world is ultimately far less predictable than we believed, 67 00:06:29,540 --> 00:06:33,280 it has given rise to ever finer instruments for controlling that world. 68 00:06:34,700 --> 00:06:40,320 Developments in microchip technology have been made possible by quantum theory. 69 00:06:49,040 --> 00:06:53,960 The same is true for the communications industry and its new laser technology 70 00:06:53,960 --> 00:06:59,600 and the arsenals of the superpowers. 71 00:06:59,600 --> 00:07:02,880 This system has a more advanced tracking and targeting ability, 72 00:07:03,380 --> 00:07:07,700 which allows conventionally armed rockets to destroy a missile's multiple warheads. 73 00:07:08,440 --> 00:07:11,440 It could also use advanced technologies such as lasers 74 00:07:11,440 --> 00:07:14,980 to destroy multiple warheads as they coast through space. 75 00:07:14,980 --> 00:07:20,340 Finally, if any enemy warheads survive the space-borne systems, 76 00:07:20,840 --> 00:07:25,900 the ground-based missile defense fires a high-velocity salvo of small projectiles 77 00:07:25,900 --> 00:07:30,840 that destroy the warheads at a distance sufficient to protect our minute-man silos. 78 00:07:31,320 --> 00:07:34,760 The current generation of scientists has grown up with quantum theory. 79 00:07:35,260 --> 00:07:38,140 They have not been subjected to the profound shock of discovery 80 00:07:38,140 --> 00:07:40,220 experienced by Bohr and his colleagues, 81 00:07:40,220 --> 00:07:44,520 nor on the whole sought its parallels in the spiritual traditions of the East. 82 00:07:45,640 --> 00:07:49,080 And even if quantum physics is in line with mystical traditions, 83 00:07:49,320 --> 00:07:52,120 that has not influenced the worldview of modern physicists. 84 00:07:52,120 --> 00:07:59,560 Our Western science, ever since the 17th century, 85 00:08:00,160 --> 00:08:04,140 has been obsessed with the notion of control, 86 00:08:04,780 --> 00:08:06,800 of man dominating nature. 87 00:08:07,320 --> 00:08:10,920 And I use the word man on purpose because it's a patriarchal attitude. 88 00:08:11,820 --> 00:08:15,180 And this obsession has led to disaster. 89 00:08:15,560 --> 00:08:17,120 It has led to disaster politically, 90 00:08:17,120 --> 00:08:21,760 when you think about the situation of the third world, the exploitation. 91 00:08:22,240 --> 00:08:24,860 You see, exploitation is not very far from control. 92 00:08:25,460 --> 00:08:30,840 And so the industrialized world is based on this notion of control and exploitation. 93 00:08:31,580 --> 00:08:33,760 And we have pursued this also in science, 94 00:08:34,120 --> 00:08:36,060 that in physics, in my own field, 95 00:08:36,120 --> 00:08:39,460 we talk about controlled experiments and controlling nature. 96 00:08:39,920 --> 00:08:42,580 Now, you see, this is a very profound difference 97 00:08:42,580 --> 00:08:46,560 between the worldview of science and the worldview of spiritual traditions. 98 00:08:46,560 --> 00:08:48,560 Because in spiritual traditions, 99 00:08:48,980 --> 00:08:52,360 and especially in Taoism, to which I am especially attracted, 100 00:08:52,880 --> 00:08:54,940 there's no talk about controlling. 101 00:08:55,380 --> 00:08:58,380 There's talk about harmonizing with nature, 102 00:08:58,840 --> 00:09:01,620 about flowing in the current of the Tao, 103 00:09:01,960 --> 00:09:02,940 as the Taoists say, 104 00:09:03,040 --> 00:09:04,560 flowing in this reality, 105 00:09:04,960 --> 00:09:09,420 about being embedded in the cyclical processes of nature, 106 00:09:09,800 --> 00:09:13,120 the sense of embeddedness in larger systems 107 00:09:13,120 --> 00:09:15,540 in the cyclical processes of nature. 108 00:09:15,540 --> 00:09:22,240 And I think we have to adopt this attitude of cooperation with nature. 109 00:09:22,700 --> 00:09:25,080 And there's no way we can control her. 110 00:09:26,360 --> 00:09:28,860 You see, nature is a living environment 111 00:09:28,860 --> 00:09:32,300 with whom we have to communicate and cooperate 112 00:09:32,300 --> 00:09:33,860 if we want to survive. 113 00:09:33,860 --> 00:09:35,420 You see here, nature is an important thing. 114 00:09:35,440 --> 00:09:36,580 So, I think we, we can centralize with nature, 115 00:09:36,680 --> 00:09:38,300 meaning there's no way you can maybe do it when you are exposed to карels, 116 00:09:38,420 --> 00:09:39,860 there's no way we know it does anything for this world, 117 00:09:39,940 --> 00:09:40,740 with nature is a living environment. 118 00:09:40,840 --> 00:09:41,900 There's no way you can control it with nature asyas, 119 00:09:41,940 --> 00:09:42,940 because there's no way it looks like it in level 120 00:09:42,940 --> 00:09:50,340 and withoutsecond 121 00:09:50,660 --> 00:09:52,080 there's no way I go with nature.