1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,980
Most of Capra's colleagues have resisted his matchmaking between science and mystical traditions,

2
00:00:05,500 --> 00:00:08,580
but he's not the first modern scientist to have made such a connection.

3
00:00:11,640 --> 00:00:14,340
That distinction belongs to a Danish physicist

4
00:00:14,340 --> 00:00:18,300
whose centenary was celebrated in Copenhagen in October last year

5
00:00:18,300 --> 00:00:22,960
at a symposium attended by 400 leading physicists from all over the world.

6
00:00:22,960 --> 00:00:31,500
The institute he founded in 1920 is an international meeting place for physicists.

7
00:00:32,300 --> 00:00:33,920
His name was Niels Bohr.

8
00:00:37,760 --> 00:00:42,560
Together with other physicists, Niels Bohr opened up the world of subatomic particles,

9
00:00:43,460 --> 00:00:49,980
a world in which all sorts of familiar concepts such as location, velocity, mass, and cause and effect

10
00:00:49,980 --> 00:00:52,180
were found to lose their established validity.

11
00:00:52,960 --> 00:01:01,200
To make sense of such a conceptual upheaval, Bohr turned to other ways of looking at nature.

12
00:01:02,040 --> 00:01:06,160
He arrived at a view similar to that of a Hindu, a Taoist, or a Buddhist.

13
00:01:08,740 --> 00:01:09,500
He wrote,

14
00:01:09,500 --> 00:01:13,060
If we look for a parallel to the lessons of atomic theory,

15
00:01:13,520 --> 00:01:16,420
we must turn to those kinds of epistemological problems

16
00:01:16,420 --> 00:01:19,860
with which the Buddha and Lao Tzu have already been confronted.

17
00:01:22,960 --> 00:01:27,620
In 1947, Niels Bohr was raised to the Danish peerage.

18
00:01:28,440 --> 00:01:31,600
For his coat of arms, he chose the Chinese yin-yang symbol

19
00:01:31,600 --> 00:01:36,020
because it embodies a complementary relationship between two opposites.

20
00:01:36,020 --> 00:01:41,400
He wanted to express his sense of the harmony between Eastern wisdom and modern physics.

21
00:01:41,400 --> 00:01:48,280
But as a young physicist, Bohr had followed his predecessors

22
00:01:48,280 --> 00:01:50,840
in trying to bring the description of the atomic world

23
00:01:50,840 --> 00:01:53,540
into line with the classical laws of Newtonian physics.

24
00:01:56,840 --> 00:02:00,780
In one publication, he illustrated the movement of atomic particles

25
00:02:00,780 --> 00:02:04,580
by means of the most popular analogy ever devised for Newtonian motion,

26
00:02:05,240 --> 00:02:05,940
billiard balls.

27
00:02:12,600 --> 00:02:17,020
Newton was the point of reference for the generations up to the time of Niels Bohr.

28
00:02:17,820 --> 00:02:20,220
Technological success, scientific progress,

29
00:02:20,660 --> 00:02:24,120
even the understanding of everyday life had grown from his laws.

30
00:02:24,120 --> 00:02:28,320
Influenced by his contemporary, the philosopher René Descartes,

31
00:02:28,700 --> 00:02:31,360
Newton had compared all moving objects in nature

32
00:02:31,360 --> 00:02:34,260
to the movement of cogs in a mechanical clock.

33
00:02:35,440 --> 00:02:38,760
Everything that moved was both the cause of a clear-cut effect

34
00:02:38,760 --> 00:02:41,720
and the effect of a clear-cut cause.

35
00:02:41,720 --> 00:02:51,280
Newton's laws provided people with a sense of security

36
00:02:51,280 --> 00:02:52,960
about their place in the universe.

37
00:02:53,740 --> 00:02:56,420
They suggested that the universe was a hard fact,

38
00:02:56,880 --> 00:02:58,360
independent of the human will.

39
00:02:59,560 --> 00:03:02,420
In a similar way, Descartes had made the definite distinction

40
00:03:02,420 --> 00:03:03,760
between mind and matter

41
00:03:03,760 --> 00:03:07,100
and saw nature as a vast, mindless machine.

42
00:03:07,100 --> 00:03:14,140
Now, it's quite interesting to go a little deeper

43
00:03:14,140 --> 00:03:18,260
into this Cartesian system of thought.

44
00:03:18,720 --> 00:03:20,860
When Descartes spoke about a machine,

45
00:03:21,060 --> 00:03:23,460
he very specifically meant a clockwork.

46
00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:26,720
You see, clocks had reached a high degree of perfection

47
00:03:26,720 --> 00:03:27,860
in the 17th century,

48
00:03:28,260 --> 00:03:32,040
and all of Europe delighted in mechanical toys,

49
00:03:32,380 --> 00:03:33,860
ballerinas, automata.

50
00:03:33,860 --> 00:03:37,620
And so, when Descartes spoke about the human body,

51
00:03:37,720 --> 00:03:40,040
for instance, he compared it to a clock.

52
00:03:40,440 --> 00:03:41,200
And he said,

53
00:03:41,660 --> 00:03:46,020
I compare a healthy man to a well-functioning clock

54
00:03:46,020 --> 00:03:48,620
and a sick man to a clock

55
00:03:48,620 --> 00:03:50,820
which is not in perfect mechanical condition.

56
00:03:51,380 --> 00:03:52,240
And it's very interesting

57
00:03:52,240 --> 00:03:54,980
that this metaphor of the clock

58
00:03:54,980 --> 00:03:58,560
still dominates modern scientific medicine.

59
00:03:59,240 --> 00:04:01,700
You see, when a clock doesn't function,

60
00:04:01,700 --> 00:04:03,240
when there's something wrong with a clock,

61
00:04:03,240 --> 00:04:05,820
there's usually, or any other kind of machine,

62
00:04:06,160 --> 00:04:08,360
there's usually one specific part

63
00:04:08,360 --> 00:04:10,780
that is either broken or doesn't work properly.

64
00:04:11,280 --> 00:04:14,560
And so, the watchmaker will look for that specific part,

65
00:04:14,880 --> 00:04:17,820
will interfere and replace it, or repair it.

66
00:04:21,040 --> 00:04:23,460
Through the influence of Cartesian thinking,

67
00:04:24,040 --> 00:04:25,760
nature, whether living or dead,

68
00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:26,900
became unified

69
00:04:26,900 --> 00:04:29,960
within a single mechanistic vision of the universe.

70
00:04:29,960 --> 00:04:32,380
By understanding the mechanism,

71
00:04:32,500 --> 00:04:32,880
it was thought,

72
00:04:33,280 --> 00:04:34,680
nothing would be out of reach.

73
00:04:37,980 --> 00:04:39,660
Well, that's an interesting example.

74
00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:42,080
NASA, the way NASA put a man on the moon,

75
00:04:42,420 --> 00:04:44,480
NASA actually followed exactly

76
00:04:44,480 --> 00:04:47,340
the prescription given by Descartes

77
00:04:47,340 --> 00:04:48,840
about analytic thinking.

78
00:04:48,840 --> 00:04:51,800
You see, the Cartesian method of analytic thinking

79
00:04:51,800 --> 00:04:55,080
consists in taking a complex problem

80
00:04:55,080 --> 00:04:56,600
and breaking it into pieces,

81
00:04:57,080 --> 00:04:57,940
solving the pieces,

82
00:04:58,160 --> 00:04:59,460
and then putting it together again.

83
00:04:59,740 --> 00:05:00,740
Now, what did NASA do?

84
00:05:01,060 --> 00:05:03,840
They simulated everything in laboratories.

85
00:05:04,420 --> 00:05:06,080
They first circled around the Earth,

86
00:05:06,340 --> 00:05:08,040
then around the Earth and the moon,

87
00:05:08,320 --> 00:05:09,380
then around the moon,

88
00:05:09,500 --> 00:05:10,420
and then they landed.

89
00:05:10,680 --> 00:05:12,620
And those were all distinct steps

90
00:05:12,620 --> 00:05:13,960
in the Apollo program.

91
00:05:13,960 --> 00:05:19,720
So, Newtonian physics

92
00:05:19,720 --> 00:05:21,340
or classical science

93
00:05:21,340 --> 00:05:23,220
or, in a broader sense,

94
00:05:23,340 --> 00:05:24,760
the Cartesian worldview

95
00:05:24,760 --> 00:05:25,640
is not wrong.

96
00:05:26,680 --> 00:05:27,480
You see, it's limited.

97
00:05:27,820 --> 00:05:28,560
It's not wrong.

98
00:05:28,980 --> 00:05:30,080
If you build a car

99
00:05:30,080 --> 00:05:31,000
or, you know, a clock

100
00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:32,700
or a sewing machine

101
00:05:32,700 --> 00:05:33,340
or anything,

102
00:05:33,700 --> 00:05:35,120
you use implicitly

103
00:05:35,120 --> 00:05:36,960
the principles of Newtonian physics.

104
00:05:37,900 --> 00:05:39,640
And it's the best physics we have

105
00:05:39,640 --> 00:05:40,640
for that domain.

106
00:05:40,640 --> 00:05:42,860
But if you go beyond that domain,

107
00:05:43,500 --> 00:05:44,580
then, you know,

108
00:05:44,640 --> 00:05:45,820
you have to change your models

109
00:05:45,820 --> 00:05:46,600
and your theories.

110
00:05:49,480 --> 00:05:51,640
The collapse of the classical worldview

111
00:05:51,640 --> 00:05:52,800
began in 1900

112
00:05:52,800 --> 00:05:54,620
when Max Planck proposed

113
00:05:54,620 --> 00:05:55,740
that the mechanical energy

114
00:05:55,740 --> 00:05:57,440
of an atom came in steps

115
00:05:57,440 --> 00:05:58,980
and, when transformed

116
00:05:58,980 --> 00:06:00,460
into electromagnetic energy,

117
00:06:00,880 --> 00:06:02,240
appeared in little packets

118
00:06:02,240 --> 00:06:03,300
or quanta.

119
00:06:06,460 --> 00:06:07,860
More imperfections

120
00:06:07,860 --> 00:06:08,920
in the Newtonian scheme

121
00:06:08,920 --> 00:06:09,400
were revealed

122
00:06:09,400 --> 00:06:10,420
by experimental work

123
00:06:10,420 --> 00:06:11,180
on the electron,

124
00:06:11,720 --> 00:06:12,620
an atomic particle

125
00:06:12,620 --> 00:06:13,940
whose behavior refused

126
00:06:13,940 --> 00:06:14,660
to be predictable,

127
00:06:15,100 --> 00:06:16,120
causing some scientists

128
00:06:16,120 --> 00:06:17,080
to compare the order

129
00:06:17,080 --> 00:06:17,620
in nature

130
00:06:17,620 --> 00:06:18,720
with the probabilities

131
00:06:18,720 --> 00:06:19,880
in a game of roulette.

132
00:06:26,620 --> 00:06:27,620
Worse still,

133
00:06:27,920 --> 00:06:29,000
electrons appeared only

134
00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:30,680
sometimes to be particles.

135
00:06:31,440 --> 00:06:32,080
At other times,

136
00:06:32,320 --> 00:06:33,040
depending on the way

137
00:06:33,040 --> 00:06:34,020
in which you observe them,

138
00:06:34,300 --> 00:06:35,080
they seemed to behave

139
00:06:35,080 --> 00:06:36,060
like waves

140
00:06:36,060 --> 00:06:37,260
or shapes

141
00:06:37,260 --> 00:06:38,680
describing the probability

142
00:06:38,680 --> 00:06:39,720
of their being found

143
00:06:39,720 --> 00:06:40,860
in a particular place.

144
00:06:43,860 --> 00:06:45,280
At the subatomic level,

145
00:06:45,680 --> 00:06:46,760
the common sense world

146
00:06:46,760 --> 00:06:47,800
of cause and effect

147
00:06:47,800 --> 00:06:48,860
no longer applied.

148
00:06:49,400 --> 00:06:50,360
The smallest teeth

149
00:06:50,360 --> 00:06:51,460
in the cosmic clockwork

150
00:06:51,460 --> 00:06:52,360
yielded no more

151
00:06:52,360 --> 00:06:53,660
than a probability curve.

152
00:06:53,660 --> 00:06:56,240
And then the next step

153
00:06:56,240 --> 00:06:57,080
was to ask,

154
00:06:57,480 --> 00:06:57,680
well,

155
00:06:58,120 --> 00:07:00,080
what are these probabilities of?

156
00:07:00,860 --> 00:07:02,040
And the big surprise

157
00:07:02,040 --> 00:07:03,860
was the discovery

158
00:07:03,860 --> 00:07:04,820
that there were not

159
00:07:04,820 --> 00:07:06,740
probabilities of things,

160
00:07:07,460 --> 00:07:08,300
but probabilities

161
00:07:08,300 --> 00:07:09,740
of interconnections

162
00:07:09,740 --> 00:07:10,620
between things.

163
00:07:10,620 --> 00:07:12,820
So a particle for a physicist

164
00:07:12,820 --> 00:07:13,940
is not a thing,

165
00:07:14,180 --> 00:07:15,720
it's not a small grain of sand

166
00:07:15,720 --> 00:07:16,740
or a billiard ball

167
00:07:16,740 --> 00:07:17,720
or anything like this.

168
00:07:17,940 --> 00:07:19,200
It's an interconnection

169
00:07:19,200 --> 00:07:20,340
between things.

170
00:07:20,860 --> 00:07:21,500
And then you ask,

171
00:07:21,620 --> 00:07:21,700
well,

172
00:07:21,760 --> 00:07:22,640
what are these things?

173
00:07:22,940 --> 00:07:23,700
And you find out

174
00:07:23,700 --> 00:07:25,180
that they are interconnections

175
00:07:25,180 --> 00:07:25,680
in turn.

176
00:07:26,200 --> 00:07:27,360
And the more you look,

177
00:07:27,360 --> 00:07:28,640
the more you find out

178
00:07:28,640 --> 00:07:30,140
that, in fact,

179
00:07:30,300 --> 00:07:31,400
there are no things

180
00:07:31,400 --> 00:07:32,700
at all in the atomic

181
00:07:32,700 --> 00:07:33,760
and subatomic world.

182
00:07:34,760 --> 00:07:35,240
Reality,

183
00:07:35,580 --> 00:07:36,500
physical reality,

184
00:07:37,700 --> 00:07:39,260
reveals itself to us

185
00:07:39,260 --> 00:07:40,600
in this atomic experiment

186
00:07:40,600 --> 00:07:43,620
as a web of interrelations,

187
00:07:43,820 --> 00:07:45,100
a web of relationships,

188
00:07:45,540 --> 00:07:46,300
a network

189
00:07:46,300 --> 00:07:48,420
of interconnected events.

190
00:07:48,920 --> 00:07:49,720
And that, I think,

191
00:07:49,820 --> 00:07:50,860
was very hard

192
00:07:50,860 --> 00:07:52,120
to accept for physicists

193
00:07:52,120 --> 00:07:53,900
because they were used

194
00:07:53,900 --> 00:07:54,680
to dealing with

195
00:07:54,680 --> 00:07:56,020
hard and solid things.

196
00:07:56,020 --> 00:07:56,560
In fact,

197
00:07:57,240 --> 00:07:58,220
physics, as you know,

198
00:07:58,260 --> 00:07:59,840
is called the hard science

199
00:07:59,840 --> 00:08:00,560
or the queen

200
00:08:00,560 --> 00:08:01,540
of the hard sciences.

201
00:08:02,080 --> 00:08:02,620
And that came

202
00:08:02,620 --> 00:08:03,820
from the classical

203
00:08:03,820 --> 00:08:05,160
Newtonian image

204
00:08:05,160 --> 00:08:06,620
of billiard balls.

205
00:08:07,020 --> 00:08:07,860
The world is made

206
00:08:07,860 --> 00:08:09,800
of hard and solid objects,

207
00:08:09,940 --> 00:08:10,980
the material universe.

208
00:08:11,460 --> 00:08:11,880
And now,

209
00:08:12,080 --> 00:08:12,980
these objects

210
00:08:12,980 --> 00:08:15,000
sort of dissipated

211
00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:16,040
and dissolved

212
00:08:16,040 --> 00:08:17,460
into patterns

213
00:08:17,460 --> 00:08:18,360
of probabilities.

214
00:08:26,540 --> 00:08:27,800
One giant

215
00:08:27,800 --> 00:08:28,960
of the physics community

216
00:08:28,960 --> 00:08:29,600
who argued

217
00:08:29,600 --> 00:08:30,620
against a probability

218
00:08:30,620 --> 00:08:31,300
interpretation

219
00:08:31,300 --> 00:08:31,940
of the universe

220
00:08:31,940 --> 00:08:33,300
was Albert Einstein.

221
00:08:34,260 --> 00:08:35,320
God does not

222
00:08:35,320 --> 00:08:36,060
play dice,

223
00:08:36,320 --> 00:08:36,680
he said.

224
00:08:37,520 --> 00:08:38,320
But Niels Bohr

225
00:08:38,320 --> 00:08:39,060
and other physicists

226
00:08:39,060 --> 00:08:40,140
like Max Planck

227
00:08:40,140 --> 00:08:41,120
came to embrace

228
00:08:41,120 --> 00:08:42,200
such an interpretation.

229
00:08:42,900 --> 00:08:43,620
It became known

230
00:08:43,620 --> 00:08:44,840
as the quantum theory.

231
00:08:48,560 --> 00:08:49,780
In the lecture hall

232
00:08:49,780 --> 00:08:50,860
at the Niels Bohr Institute,

233
00:08:51,260 --> 00:08:52,560
the revolutionary new theory

234
00:08:52,560 --> 00:08:53,260
was the subject

235
00:08:53,260 --> 00:08:54,420
of passionate debate.

236
00:08:55,320 --> 00:08:56,280
Bohr gathered a circle

237
00:08:56,280 --> 00:08:57,540
of brilliant young scientists

238
00:08:57,540 --> 00:08:58,300
around himself,

239
00:08:58,820 --> 00:09:00,000
the elite of the twenties.

240
00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:03,380
among them

241
00:09:03,380 --> 00:09:04,480
was the German physicist

242
00:09:04,480 --> 00:09:05,640
Werner Heisenberg,

243
00:09:06,080 --> 00:09:06,840
pictured on the right.

244
00:09:07,780 --> 00:09:08,300
He pondered

245
00:09:08,300 --> 00:09:08,880
the question

246
00:09:08,880 --> 00:09:09,920
of whether an atom

247
00:09:09,920 --> 00:09:11,440
was an object at all

248
00:09:11,440 --> 00:09:12,900
or just an abstraction

249
00:09:12,900 --> 00:09:13,840
of our imagination.

250
00:09:16,800 --> 00:09:17,960
In Copenhagen,

251
00:09:18,100 --> 00:09:19,220
under Niels Bohr's leadership,

252
00:09:19,680 --> 00:09:20,560
the science of physics

253
00:09:20,560 --> 00:09:21,900
was acquiring new rules

254
00:09:21,900 --> 00:09:22,640
for understanding

255
00:09:22,640 --> 00:09:23,620
the natural world.

256
00:09:24,760 --> 00:09:25,580
According to Bohr,

257
00:09:25,920 --> 00:09:26,880
an atomic particle

258
00:09:26,880 --> 00:09:28,040
can only be described

259
00:09:28,040 --> 00:09:29,560
in terms of its relationship

260
00:09:29,560 --> 00:09:30,420
to the whole.

261
00:09:31,520 --> 00:09:32,460
Bohr thus introduced

262
00:09:32,460 --> 00:09:33,040
the concept

263
00:09:33,040 --> 00:09:34,380
of complementarity.

264
00:09:35,460 --> 00:09:36,540
If you're close enough

265
00:09:36,540 --> 00:09:37,860
to the individual lines

266
00:09:37,860 --> 00:09:38,480
of a drawing

267
00:09:38,480 --> 00:09:39,800
to know them in detail,

268
00:09:40,500 --> 00:09:41,820
you cannot be removed enough

269
00:09:41,820 --> 00:09:42,320
from the drawing

270
00:09:42,320 --> 00:09:43,000
as a whole

271
00:09:43,000 --> 00:09:44,240
to know what it is,

272
00:09:44,840 --> 00:09:45,900
and vice versa.

273
00:09:45,900 --> 00:09:47,740
Let's go.

274
00:09:47,740 --> 00:10:17,720
Thank you.