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"Why is Buddhism interested in the sience of elementary particles, given that studying them does not have any particular effect on our lives? Well, if questions about whether the world around us has a solid existence, it is important to study the nature of what are supposed to be its basic "building blocks". Buddhism is not alone in raising doubts about the "reality" of phenomena. The dominant explanation of quantum physics, known as the Copenhagen Interpretation, also suggests that atoms are not "things", but are "observable phenomena". This is a fascinating topic, because it places the human mind, or human perception, in the midst of what we call "matter" or "objective reality". If doubts can be raised regarding their "solidity", then many conceptual barriers will fall down as a result."
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THUAN: Before measurement, all we can talk about is a wave of probability.
MATTHIEU: If when we say "particle" we mean something with an intrinsic or even permanent reality, and if it didn't exist before it was observed, nothing would bring it to life. How could an entity that contain all the qualities we usually attribute to a particle abruptly pass from nothingness to existence? When a particle appears, either it does not exist independently as an entity, or it has been created ex nihilo.
THUAN: And yet before, there was a wave. There was something, not a complete vacuum.
MATTHIEU: Buddhism doesn't talk about complete vacuum — that would be nihilistic — but "lack of intrinsic existence." It is for this reason that, depending on the circumstances and on the experimental technique, an unreal phenomenon can appear to be either particle or a wave.
THUAN: Our debate here is precisely the one that went between Einstein and the originators of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Physics, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli. The interpretation is given this name because the institute run by Bohr, where Heisenberg and Pauli were frequent visitors, was in Copenhagen. In simple terms, it says that "atoms form a world of potentials and possibilities, rather than of things and facts." According to Heisenberg: "in quantum physics, the notion of a trajectory does not even exist." This view could not be further from Einstein's dogmatic realism.
This is how Heisenberg summed up Einstein's counterargument: "This interpretation does not describe what actually happens independently or in between the observations. But something must happen, this we cannot doubt... The physicist must postulate in his science that he is studying a world which he himself has not made and which would be present, essentially unchanged, if he were not there." We could call this position of Einstein's one of material realism.
Heisenberg's response to this objection of Einstein's is complex, but I think it is important to offer his own words:
It is easily seen that what this criticism demands is again the old materialistic ontology. but what can the answer from the point of view of the Copenhagen Interpretation be? ... The demand to "describe" what "happens in the quantum theoretical process between two successive observations is a contradiction in adjecto, since the word "describe" refers to the use of classical concepts, while these concepts cannot be applied in the space between observations... The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct "actuality" of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation is impossible, however.
MATTHIEU: A Buddhist philosopher would be in complete agreement with this answer.
THUAN: Personally, I also agree with Heisenberg. As I've already said, quantum mechanics has always been confirmed by experimentation and has never been caught out. Einstein got it wrong, and his material realism cannot be defended. According to Bohr and Heisenberg, when we speak of atoms and electrons, we shouldn't see them as real entities, with well-defined properties such as speed and position, tracing out well-defined trajectories. The "atom" concept is simply an image that helps physicists put together diverse observations of the particle world into a coherent and logical scheme. Bohr also spoke of the impossibility of going beyond the results of experiment and measurements: "In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the essence of phenomena but only to track down, so far as possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience."
MATTHIEU: His viewpoint is similar to that of my former teacher François Jacob, who said: "It thus seems clear that the physicists' description of atoms is not the exact and unchanging reflection of revealed truth. It is a model, an abstraction, the result of effort focused by physicists on a small number of phenomena in order to construct a coherent picture of the world. The description of the atom is as much a creation as it is a discovery." But this doesn't stop most people from imaging atoms as little balls they could pick up if they had tools that were small enough.
THUAN: Schrödinger warned us against such a materialistic view of atoms and their constants: "It is better not to view a particle as a permanent entity, but rather as an instantaneous event. Sometimes these events link together to create the illusion of permanent entities."
MATTHIEU: The ring of light created by a rotating flashlight isn't an "object". The world of phenomena is made up of events that can't remain stable from one moment to the next. If they did, they'd stayed frozen forever. Since such moments are transient, they have no duration, and the event concerned cannot exist independently. So we cannot assume that, one day, we'll know all of the characteristics of the event "particle." It appears to us in different forms because of interdependence, which is synonymous with the "absence of intrinsic being."
The essential point is that a phenomenon's characteristics do not belong to it intrinsically. For instance, when we say that mass can be converted into energy, this comes down to saying that mass isn't a property that we can always associate with the "particle event."
THUAN: That's right. As with light, the nature of matter isn't immutable. Energy can be converted into matter. That is often done in particle acceelerators. Energy can come from mass (as in Einstein's famous equation E=mc2) or from movement. In the latter case, this means that an object's property can be converted into an object. Inversely, matter can be converted into energy—this is what makes the sun shine, for example. By converting a tiny fraction of hydrogen (0.7 percent) into light (photons), our star allows life to exist on earth.
MATTHIEU: This implies that neither of these mutually exclusive properties really constitutes what we call a photon. If they did, then the properties should always be present. What would we make of an animal that looked like a car from one side and a dog from the other)?
So reality doesn't lie in the solid concepts we attach to things. Phenomena can appear without having any underlying, intrinsic reality. We must transcend our conceptual limitations, which make us think that things must either exist intrinsically, or not exist at all. There is a middle way, which could be expressed as a dream or mirage. A phenomenon can still function even if it is just an illusion. A reflection in a mirror can appear and disappear, be transformed in various ways, and communicate different sorts of information, even if nothing "came into existence in the mirror.
THUAN: A Platonist would tell you that the mirror world is simply a reflection of the real world. However, it is certainly true that the particle aspect is no more basic than the wave aspect. So we must say that neither light nor matter have intrinsic, immutable properties. Such properties depends on the observer and the apparatus. So, given that they are impermanent, they can be considered to be "illusory".
MATTHIEU: Is physics prepared to admit that an electron is merely a product of relationships and has no fundamental reality?
THUAN: When you say "relationships", you mean the interactions between the observer and the observed and the interactions and transformations of elementary particles (for example, a proton and an electron come together to form a neutron or neutrino), and the interaction between matter and light, then I would certainly agree.
MATTHIEU: By "relationships", I don't mean interactions between distinct , intrinsically existing objects, but a network of infinite relationships that condition each other mutually. A phenomenon's apparent properties derive from the complete set of phenomena, consciousness included.
THUAN: That reminds me of what Heisenberg said: "The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which conditions of different kinds alternate to overlap or combine, and thereby determine the texture of the whole."