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Pages: 256
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2001
ISBN: 0195144082
ISBN: 978-0195144086
The latest of many attempts to link subatomic physics to broader human concerns, this brisk, uneven volume splits neatly in two: the first half explains key ideas in quantum physics, and the second makes grand claims about their worth for other fields. Classical physics rules out "action at a distance." (You can't move a billiard ball unless something--a pool cue, an air jet, lightning--contacts it.) But quantum physics permits "non-local" action, and recent experiments prove it: do certain things to one photon, and you'll affect another faster than light can travel between the two. Hence, "all of physical reality is a single quantum system that responds together to further interactions," say the authors. Nadeau (a historian of science) and Kafatos (a physicist), both professors at George Mason University, move from these cogent, compact exegeses of quantum non-locality to its purported meanings for biology, philosophy and even economics. Non-locality, Nadeau and Kafatos contend--with its attendant "complementarity" between parts and wholes--helps explain the origins of life, speaks to the evolution of consciousness, solves the dilemmas of recent social and literary thought and bridges for good the divides between mind and matter, arts and sciences. The authors bring up, but don't always keep in mind, the difference between explanation and analogy. Some arguments "prove" truths most potential readers already know (e.g., we ought to work to save the rain forests); others (about evolution and about French theory) seem facile. Nonetheless, Nadeau and Kafatos supply plenty of food for thought: the apparently recondite concept of non-locality, they suggest, has consequences everywhere. (Jan.) - Publisher's Weekle, Amazon
Non-locality and quantum entanglement are neither delicate nor rare events. Quantum non-locality is not rare and does not disappear. The Universe operates according to the principles of complementarity at all scales - Kafatos and Nadeau established the particulars of this verity with extraordinary adroitness in their watershed book "The Conscious Universe." The concept of non-locality as an implicate attribute of the material world is borne out by three pieces of impeccably documented science which are only now becoming generally known. Nicolas Gisin and his colleagues at CERN proved that Bell's predictions regarding non-locality were precisely correct. The positron-electron pairs they separated with a Potassium Niobate crystal and shunted through 15 kilometers of fiber optic cable, automatically re-oriented spin and polarity instantaneously to maintain net-spin values of zero when one of the particle-pair was accelerated through an electromagnetic field, to seven decimal points, in repeated trials. The effective rate at which the information transfer occurred between the particles is calculated to be at least 10 to the nine times faster than the speed of light. Second, Vladimir Poponin has demonstrated in his work with the DNA Phantom Effect that every molecule of DNA exerts a non-local field effect on the material locale surrounding it, which persists for up to 30 days after the DNA molecule source has been removed. The importance of Poponin's work is that it proves unequivocally that among living organisms, non-locality operates simultaneously with chemo-synaptic neuronal processes at all scales and in all living things. Finally, Donald Eigler's work at IBM's Almaden Lab's proves that non-local holographic field effects operate in all things as an intrinsic attribute of matter at atomic and sub-atomic scales, regardless of whether the materials are organic or not. In "The Non-Local Universe," Kafatos has simply opened the lid to this Pandora's box by providing an epistemological model which is carefully thought out, clearly articulated and reasonably constructed. His model is absolutely right on the mark and deserves to be read by anyone who is willing to look at this aggregation of unimpeachable evidence with clear scientific detachment. - David G. Yurth, Amazon
