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Buddhism
Buddhism and Quantum Physics
A Strange Parallel of Two Concepts of Reality
by Christian Thomas Kohl
Abstract
There is a
surprising parallel between the philosophical concept of Nagarjuna and
the physical concept of reality of quantum physics. The fundamental
reality has no firm core but consists of systems of interacting objects.
These concepts of reality are inconsistent with the substantial,
subjective, holistic and instrumentalistic concepts of reality which are
forming the base of modern modes of thought.
Nagarjuna's Concept of
Reality
 Nagarjuna
had been the most important Buddhist philosopher of India. According to
Etienne Lamotte his lifetime was in the second part of the 3rd century
after Christ. His philosophy is of topical interest. Till this day it
determines the modes of thought of all Tibetan Buddhist traditions.
About his life we have no assured knowledge but various legends which I
won't go into detail about. But the authenticity of 13 of his works is
assured by scientific research. The Dane Chr. Lindtner endeavored to
analyze and to translate these 13 works.
Nagarjuna's
main work, Mulamadhyamaka-karika [MMK] is translated into German,
English, French and other European languages. Nagarjuna is the founder
of the philosophical school called Madhyamaka, middle way. The
middle way represents a spiritual and philosophical way that tries to
avoid extreme metaphysical concepts, in particular the concepts of
substantial and subjective mindsets in their different modes. These two
extremes are sometimes called 'eternalism' and 'nihilism'.
In his main work [MMK] the middle way is expressed as follows:
[Pratityasamutpada]
the dependent arising is what we call [sunyata]
substancelessness. But this is nothing but a dependent concept [prajnapti].
[sunyata] Substance-less-ness constitutes the middle way.
Nagarjuna's
philosophy consists mainly of two aspects. On the one hand of a
demonstration of his own concept of reality [sunyata,
pratityasamutpada]. According to this concept the fundamental
reality has no firm core and consists not of independent substantial
components but of two-body-systems. Their material and immaterial bodies
interact with each other. This concept of reality is opposed to one of
the key words of traditional Indian metaphysics in a dichotomous way: [svabhava]
own being. On the other hand it consists of indications of inner
contradictions of four extreme concepts of reality, which are presented
in principle only. But it is facile to realize to which modes of thought
these principles refer to and this is important because it specially
deals with our extreme metaphysical modes of thought. They do not let us
know reality. This is not only a discussion about the traditional
metaphysics of India. These four extreme approaches I put in relation to
substantial, subjective, holistic and instrumentalistic modes of thought
in modern world. In order to undermine these modes of thought
effectively we have to recognize them firstly. Without a claim of
completeness I will give a brief outline of these four extreme concepts:
Substantialism
In Europe,
the substantial modes of thoughts are in the center of traditional
metaphysics, beginning with pre-Socratic philosophers [like Parmenides
and Heraclitus] and Plato, up to Immanuel Kant. According to traditional
metaphysics, substance or own being is something immobile, eternal,
independent, and existing by itself. Substance is the justification for
the existence of all things, the immaterial foundation of the world we
are living in. In traditional metaphysics the highest substance can be
understood as God or as a divine being. Since Kant's so called
'Copernican revolution' the ambition of philosophy is not any longer to
know things. Rationality as a media of cognition has become the ambition
of philosophy and by that, the traditional metaphysic has lost ground in
the modern world. The central concepts of traditional metaphysics like
being, substance, reality etc. are replaced by reduced mindsets: From
now on, atoms, elementary particles, energy, fields of force, laws of
nature, symmetries, etc. are considered to be the justification of the
existence for anything.
Subjectivism
By
subjectivist modes of thought, I understand the turning point to the
subject that had been introduced by Ren' Descartes. According to this
doctrine, mind is the primary substance and everything else is nothing
but contents, form or creation of consciousness. The height of this kind
of subjectivism is described by the idealism of Berkeley. The ideas of
Kant can be considered as a moderated subjectivism or idealism. Since Ren' Descartes, the primary substance is the center of modern
philosophical thought. It give evidence and certainty. Modern sciences
had doubts about this, however, these doubts did not lead to a new and
complementary concept of reality but to a calamitous separation between
philosophy and natural sciences. It has sharpened the dualism and keeps
it very busy.
Holism
The third
approach tries to avoid the calamitous either-or-scheme of the first two
approaches by consolidating both bodies, subject and object, into a
whole. From now on, there are no longer parts but only one identity, all
is one [Parmenides]. The whole is an absolute and mysterious one; it
becomes an independent unity that exists independently from its parts.
The ensemble is understood as something concrete as if it was a concept
of experience. As a philosophical tenor of all great periods in European
history of philosophy, this approach is connected with names like
Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz, Schelling and perhaps Hegel. In
quantum physics holism is represented by David Bohm.
Instrumentalism
The 4th
approach consists in a refusal or ignorance of the existence of subject
and object. Instead of favoring one or the other or both ones, this
metaphysical approach refuses both. The question about reality is
insignificant or meaningless. Instrumentalism is very modern,
intelligent [for example in the person of Ernst Cassirer], and sometimes
captious. It is not easy to get free from it. It consists as a
continuation of the so called 'Copernican turn' to consider thinking as
thinking in models or as an information process, and it does not bother
about which phenomena the information is given. That is a problem,
instrumentalism has inherited from subjectivism. The philosopher Donald
Davidson wrote about it: "If the decision for the Cartesian approach
is made, it seems as if you are unable to indicate of which evidence
your proofs are".
Instrumentalism is a collective term of concepts. It denotes different
scientific approaches that agree with considering all human knowledge or
general conceptions, phrases, and theories not as a realistic
reproduction of the structure of reality, but as a result of human
interactions with nature. The successful theoretical and practical
orientation is the aim of the interaction. For instrumentalism, theories
are not a description of the world but an instrument for a systematic
order and explanation of observations and predictions of facts. The
instrumentalist approach is outlined by the physician Anton Zeilinger.
Zeilinger states in an interview: "In classical physics we speak of a
world of things that exists somewhere outside and we make a description
of this nature. In quantum physics we have learned to be very careful.
Ultimately physical sciences are not sciences of nature but sciences of
statements about nature. Nature itself is always a construction of mind.
Niels Bohr puts it like this: There is no world of quantum, there is
only a quantum mechanical description".
Nagarjuna
presents these four extreme concepts of reality in a scheme that is
called in Sanskrit: catuscoti and in Greek: tetralemma.
These are four assumptions which Nagarjuna does not accept. In a very
short form they could be expressed in the following way:
Things do not arise substantially: Neither out of themselves, nor
out of something else, nor out of both, nor without a cause. Behind
this scheme there are, as mentioned before, four extreme concepts of
reality that can be related to substantial, subjective, holistic,
and instrumentalist modes of thoughts.
It is
difficult to find a modern human being that does not agree to some
extend with one of these 4 approaches. This shows that Nagarjuna's
philosophy is up-to-date. Nagarjuna did not only decline (1) the
substantial mode of thought in order to end up in (2) subjectivism,
though it is often claimed against him. He did not decline the scheme of
either-or modes of thought in order to end up at the approach of (3)
holism, identity, or wholeness - how benevolent interpreters use to
criticize him. He did not decline holism in order to end up at (4)
instrumentalism, as assumed by many modern interpreters who succeed the
philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Why not?, because exactly these
metaphysical concepts had systematically been declined by Nagarjuna.
Already the
first verse of the MMK points out not only the whole dilemma but the
whole tetralemma of our modes of thought: "Neither from itself nor
from another, nor from both, nor without a cause does anything whatever
anywhere arises". [Garfield's translation].
This verse
can be understood as the main statement of the lamadhyamaka-karika [MMK]:
The refusal of four extreme metaphysical approaches that cannot agree
upon the idea of the dependent existing of things. In this case the
remaining of the MMK would be nothing but a commentary about this first
verse. Therefore a careful examination is appropriate.
What is the
statement of the verse? That nothing can be found, that there is
nothing, or that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna a nihilist? Did he deny
the world that we are living in? Did he deny what is evident? Did he
deny that everywhere there were things to be found that came into
existence? We are obliged to argue: If a thing did not arise out of
itself, it must have arisen out of something else, if we understand by
the notion 'to arise' the empiric arising of things. What is the meaning
of 'to arise'? In another text Nagarjuna himself gives some indications
for the understanding of this concept. He writes in his work
Yuktisastika (YS):
"(That
which has arisen dependently on this and that has not arisen
substantially [svabhavatah].) What has not arisen
substantially, how can it literally [nama] be called
'arisen'?. What originates due to a cause and does not abide without
[certain] conditions but disappears when the conditions are absent,
how can it be understood as 'to exist'?"
By the
concepts of 'emergence', 'arising' or 'existence' Nagarjuna has not
meant the empiric but the substantial emergence, arising or existence.
When in many passages of his book Mulamadhyamaka-karika [MMK
7.29] Nagarjuna tells that things do not arise, that they do not exist [MMK
3.7, MMK 5.8, MMK 14.6], that they are not to be found [MMK 2.25, MMK
9.11], that they are not [MMK 15.10], that they are unreal [MMK 13.1],
the obvious meaning is: Things do not arise substantially, they do not
exist out of themselves, their independence cannot be found and in this
sense they are substantially unreal. Only the idea of substantial
arising of things, only an absolute and independent existence, not the
empirical existence of things is refused by Nagarjuna. He is explaining
this in MMK 15.10 where he states: "'It exists' implies grasping
after eternity: 'It does not exist' implies the philosophy of
annihilation. Therefore, a discerning person should not decide on either
existence or non-existence."
For Nagarjuna
the expression -to exist- has the meaning 'to exist substantially'. His
issue is not the empirical existence of things but the metaphysical idea
of a permanent duration and of a substance of circumstances: Only the
idea of an own being, without participation to something else, is
disapproved by Nagarjuna. Objects do not arise out of themselves, they
do not exist absolutely, their permanent being is not to be found, they
are not independent but they are dependently arising.
If many interpretations make the assertion that Nagarjuna is refusing
the empirical existence of objects, they make an inadmissible
generalization that moves Nagarjuna near to subjectivism, nihilism or
instrumentalism. Such interpretations originate from metaphysical
approaches that have difficulties to recognize the empirical existence
of objects in the world we are living in. That does not at all apply to
Nagarjuna.
How does
Nagarjuna prove the dependent arising of things? The starting point of
the MMK is the duality of things, their double-side-nature. These
fundamental two-body-systems cannot be taken apart; they constitute a
system of two material or immaterial components that complement each
other. One component does not exist without the other one; one forms the
counterpart to the other one. In the MMK, Nagarjuna is dealing with such
concrete two-body-systems as for instance: a thing and its conditions, a
walking person and the way to be walked, a seeing person and the seen
object, cause and effect, existence and its characteristics, a passion
and a passionate person, arising and conditions of arising, actor and
action, fire an fuel.
In this way, we are conducted to the centre of Nagarjuna's philosophy
that consists in his concept of reality. In the just mentioned first ten
chapters of his Mulamadhyamaka-karika [MMK], but also in the
other chapters, Nagarjuna highlights mainly one single idea: Both,
material or immaterial bodies of a two-body-system are not one identical
but they do not break up into parts.
The most
important characteristic of a thing is its dependence of others and the
absence of substance that results from it, the impossibility to exist
individually and independently. This is the meaning of sunyata:
things are without an own being and without independence, the
fundamental reality does not consists of single, isolated material or
immaterial components, things arise only in dependence of other things,
they do not arise substantially because an independent thing cannot be
dependent.
A thing is
not independent of the conditions and a thing and its conditions are not
one. A walking person does not exist without the way to be walked and
both are not one. A seeing person is not identical with the seen object.
There is no cause without an effect and vice versa. The concept 'cause'
has no meaning without the counterpart: the concept of an 'effect'.
Both, cause and effect are not one but they do not break up into two
independent and separated concepts. Without a characteristic we cannot
speak about an existence and vice versa. How could there be a passionate
person without passion? When there are no conditions of arising there is
no arising, none of it is existing out of itself, and none is subsisting
through itself. Without an action there is no actor, without fuel there
is no fire. The components of a two-body-system do not exist by
themselves, they are not one and they are not independent from each
other, therefore they are not 'real'. For such two bodies and for double
concepts the consistence and the existence are dependent of the other
component. One arises with the other one and one disappears just as the
other. That is why a thing arises substantially, neither out of itself,
nor out of another one, nor out of both, nor without a cause. The
fundamental reality has no firm core but consists of systems of
interacting bodies.
This concept
of reality is initially an idea; only a reference to the reality that
cannot be described with words. Whoever can speak about reality as it
is, without concepts, does not know the reality. Referring to Nagarjuna,
the yogic realization of reality without substance, the realization of
dependent arising, the experience of reality as it is, requires for the
Buddhist tradition a high spiritual realization; it requires giving up
extreme approaches, the dissolution of the whole dualistic modes of
thought. It is initially the dichotomous mode of thought, our way to
think in dualistic contradictions, which hinders us to realize reality
as it is. To realize sunyata means to become free from all
entanglements to this world. Nirvana simply is another word for this.
Interpretations
The first
question for the philosophy of Nagarjuna was about reality, it was not
the question about mind or about the origin of knowledge. This kind of
subjectivism might apply rather to the philosophical school of
Yogacara. But the interpretations of the most important works of
Yogacara are controversial because they can be understood in an
ontological sense that is denying the external world and is adopting the
view of idealism or in an epistemic sense for the study of the nature of
knowledge where perception is a projection of mind. What is named in
Yogacara 'alayavijna', the fundamental mind, or in Tantric
Buddhism 'clear light' or 'Mahamudra' is referring to the
knowledge of reality, not to reality itself. Nagarjuna's philosophy is
referring to reality itself. An all embracing position of this question
is presented by Tarab Tulku Rinpoche in 2003. He says: "So we can
call this basic 'energy' for a fundamental underlying 'mind-field'. This
means, in accordance with Ancient Inner Science that everything existing
partakes in a fundamental 'mind-field', which is the basic 'substance'
from which basis mind in a more individual way and the individual body
develop".
In order to
show that Nagarjuna does not speak just about concepts without substance
but also about objects without substance, I compare his concept of
reality to the physical concept of reality in quantum physics. Physics
is not only about concepts but also about the conditions of physical
reality. Directly physics creates nothing but models of reality, it
examines only realities that are created by human mind but we should not
go so far to consider all our perceptions and models of thought to be
pure coincidence. The constructions of our mind are not directly
identical with reality but normally they are no pure coincidence and not
deceptive (Irvin Rock). Behind our models are empirical objects and
approximately there is a structural similarity between a good physical
model and the physical reality that corresponds to it.
The Metaphysical Foundations
of Quantum Physics
This is no
presentation or criticism of quantum physics but a discussion of the
metaphysical mindsets that underlie quantum physics. The concept of
reality in quantum physics can be expressed by the key words:
complementarity, four interactions, and entanglements
[entanglements will not be explained in this paper. According to Roger
Penrose "Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is
somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with
each other" (Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human
Mind, Cambridge University Press 2000, p.66)].
In the long
prehistory of Quantum Physics it could not be proved experimentally
whether the smallest elements of light are particles or waves. Many
experiments argued in favor of one or the other assumption. Photons are
sometimes acting as waves and sometimes as particles. This behavior was
named a wave-particle-dualism. The idea of dualism used to be understood
as a logic contradiction: only one or the other could apply but
paradoxically both appeared. Photons cannot be both. These are the
expectations according to atomism. According to atomism a scientific
explanation consists in a reduction of a contradictory object into its
permanent components or its mathematical laws. This is the fundamental
dualistic concept that modern atomism and modern physics have adopted
from ancient Greek philosophy of nature: substance and permanence can
not to be found in objects of perception in the world we are living in,
but in the elementary elements of objects and in mathematical order.
These material and immaterial foundations keep the world together; they
do not change while everything else is changing.
According to
atomism it should be possible to reduce an object to its independent
elements or to its mathematical laws or to its simple and fundamental
principles and according to these the fundamental elements should be
either particles or waves, not both.
What is to be
understood by independent elements? Plato made the difference between
two forms of being. In the second part of his 'Parmenides' he
distinguished between single objects, which exist exclusively by
partaking and insofar they have no own being and ideas, that have an own
being. Traditional metaphysics adopted this dualism from Plato. An
independent own being is characterized in traditional metaphysics as
something that, as an existing thing, is not dependent from anything
else (Descartes), existing by itself, subsisting through itself (More),
which is completely unlimited by others and free from any kind of
foreign command (Spinoza), and exists by itself without anything else
(Schelling). Albert Einstein was following this metaphysical tradition
when he wrote: For the classification of things that are introduced in
physics, it is essential that these things require for a certain time an
independent existence, as far as these things lay 'in different parts of
space'. Without the assumption of such an independent existence [of 'So-seins'
as Einstein called it, this expression can be translated by a word like
'likeness' or 'to be like this'] of things being distant from each other
in space, physical thought in the usual sense would not be possible.
This idea of
an independent reality was projected to the fundamental elements of the
material world by atomism. For atomism, a scientific explanation means
to reduce the vicissitude and variety of objects and conditions to its
permanent, stable, independent, undividable elements, or mathematical
laws. According to the expectations of atomism all changes of nature can
be explained as separation, connection and movements of unchanged and
independent atoms or still more elementary components. They and their
mathematical laws are the core or fundamental reality of objects. They
keep the world together. The question whether the fundamental objects
are particles or waves was an explosive issue: the traditional concepts
of reality, that had been made available by metaphysics, were at stake.
Maybe the fundamental reality could not be grasped by traditional
concepts of reality. Of which value of explanation was atomism, if it
should turn out that there are no independent atoms or elementary
particles and that objects have no stable core? Are quantum objects
objective, subjective, both, or none of both? What is reality? Is there
a difference between the quantum world and the world we are living in?
Niels Bohr.
In 1927, the physicist Niels Bohr introduced the concept of
complementarity into quantum physics. According to this concept the
picture of wave and the picture of particle are not two pictures that
contradict and exclude each other but two (contradictory) pictures that
complete each other, only concertedly they can give a complete
description of physical phenomena. According to Bohr, complementarity
meant that in the quantum world it is impossible to speak about
independent and objective quantum objects because they are in an
interactive relation with each other, as well as with the instrument of
measurement. Bohr considered the interaction between the object and the
instrument of measurement as an inseparable element of quantum objects,
because the interaction itself is important for the existence of some
features of these objects: some measurements set photons as particles
and destruct the interference that characterizes objects as waves. Other
measurements set objects as waves. That was the new concept of reality
by Niels Bohr. Bohr did not transform the concept of complementarity
into the instrumentalist conclusion: there were no quantum objects [at
least when his argumentation was one of a physician's view. However,
when he talked on a metaphysical level about quantum physics, he took
the position of an instrumentalist approach]. In a physical sense the
fundamental physical reality consists for Niels Bohr of interacting
complementary quantum objects.
Interaction
in the standard quantum model. In the meantime the concept of the four
interactions was introduced to the standard quantum model. These four
elementary interactions do not permit the reduction of quantum objects
to their elements as Democritus proposed. Interactions, the forces
that act between the quantum objects, cropped up to the elementary
particles. As elementary objects, not single independent objects were
being established, but two-body-systems, multi-body-systems or complete
assembles of elementary particles. Between its components, forces of
interaction are effective which keep the components together. They are
parts of the components. Mostly they are forces of attraction. In the
case of electro-magnetic forces they are also repulsive. It is possible
to think of the interactions between the elementary particles as an
exchange of elementary particles. The physicist Steven Weinberg writes
about this: "Today we come within reach of a standardized view of
nature, if we think in concepts of elementary particles and interactions
between them. (...) Best known are gravitation and electro-magnetism
that belong to the daily world of experience because of their range.
Gravitation keeps our feet on earth and planets on their path. The
electro-magnetic interactions between electrons and atomic nucleus are
responsible for all well known chemical and physical qualities of usual
solid bodies, liquids, and gases. The two nucleus powers belong to a
different category in respect to reach and familiarity. The 'strong'
interaction that keeps protons and neutrons inside the nucleus together
has a reach of about 10-13 centimeters. So it goes down in daily life
and even in the realm of an atom [10-8 centimeters]. The 'weak'
interaction is the least familiar. It has such a short reach [less that
10-15 centimeters] and is so weak, that it probably does not keep
anything together". Sometimes explanations go very far into difficult
and subtle details. How does an electron interact with another quantum
object if it exists of one part only? Which part it should emit if it
exists of one part only? There is an answer to these questions by the
concept of interactions. An electron does not exist of one single part
only, because the interaction is a part of the electron. In an article
about super gravitation of 1978 the two physicians Daniel Z. Freedman
and Pieter von Nieuwenhuizen write about it: "The observed mass of
electrons can be described as the sum of a 'naked mass' and the
'self-energy' that is based on the interaction of the electron with its
own electro-magnetic field. Individually none of these parts are
observable".
The knowledge
of quantum physics about the particles that carry the interactions,
shall be mentioned here in the words of the physicist Gerhard't Hooft.
He writes, "that an electron is surrounded by a cloud of virtual
particles, which are permanently emitted and absorbed. This cloud does
not exist of photons only, but of pairs of charged particles, for
example electrons and their anti-particles, the positrons. (...) "Even
a quark is surrounded by a cloud of gluons and pairs of
quark-anti-quark." Individual, isolated, independent quarks were never
been observed. This phenomenon is named confinement. This means quarks
are captives, they cannot appear as a single quark but as a pair or a
trio only. If you try to separate quarks by force, there will appear new
quarks between them, which unify into pairs and trios. Claudio Rebbi and
other physicists reported: "Between quarks and gluons inside an
elementary particle, permanently additional quarks and gluons appear
which disappear again after a short time". These clouds of virtual
particles represent or produce interactions.
We now
arrived at the centre of quantum physics. It consists of a new physical
concept of reality, that does no more consider single and independent
elements as the fundamental reality but two-body-systems or two states
of quantum objects or two concepts like earth & moon, proton & electron,
proton & neutron, quark & anti-quark, wave & instrument of measurement,
particle & instrument of measurement, twin photons, superposition,
spin-up & spin-down, matter & anti-matter, elementary particle & field
of force, law of nature & matter, symmetry & anti-symmetry etc. These
systems do not break up into independent parts. They cannot be reduced
into two separated independent bodies or states with one part being
fundamental and the other one deduced, as it is the case with
substantialism's and subjectivism's either-or-scheme. Together they are
not a mysterious unity, they are not 'one' and identical as holism tries
to convince us. Furthermore, we cannot claim that they are nothing but
constructed mathematical models and that no physical reality corresponds
to them, what has been claimed by instrumentalism. Exactly the latter is
claimed by Stephen Hawking who does not consider himself as an
instrumentalist but as a positivist. In a discussion with the
mathematician Roger Penrose, Hawking said: "I am a positivist who
believes that physical theories are just mathematical models we
construct; and that it is meaningless to ask if they correspond to
reality, just whether they predict observations".
It is not
meaningless to ask for the correspondence between model & object. If a
model of thought is accurate it has a structural similarity with the
phenomenon that it constructs, otherwise it can lead to calculations
without any meaningful physical explanation, because they cannot
correspond to any reality. Physically, Physically, a
fundamental reality is not a one-body-system but a two-body-system or an
assemble of bodies that surrounds the central or the 'naked' body.
Between quantum particles there is an interaction that is part of these
particles. That's the way it is but all our metaphysical schemes put up
a real struggle. This 'cloud' does not correspond to our traditional
metaphysical expectation of everything that should represent order and
should be fundamental. How can 'clouds' be that which we are used to
call the basic elements of matter? How can this little vibrating thing
be what generations of philosophers and physicists were looking for? Is
this supposed to be all? From the little 'cloud' we try to filter with
metaphysical interpretations what has substance and what maintains.
Completely for the purpose of Plato's substance metaphysics Werner
Heisenberg called elementary particles 'the idea of matter'. The
philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizs'cker named
mathematics 'the essence of nature'. According to the physicist Herwig
Schopper, fields of force are the ultimate reality. Some of us like to
consider the fundamental reality as a whole [holism] and according to
others all is nothing but a construction and no reality correspond to
this construction [instrumentalism]. Why all these extreme metaphysical
positions? Just because we cannot easily admit that complex interactions
of the world we are living in, have a foundation that is a complex
reality by itself. It is impossible to get out of the entanglement of
this world by quantum physics. It is impossible to find an elemental
quantum object that is independent from other quantum objects or from
its own parts. It is impossible to dissolve the double-sided character
of quantum objects. The fundamental physical reality consists of
'clouds' of interacting quantum objects.
4. Results.
Reality is nothing static, firm or independent. It does not consist of
single, isolated material or immaterial factors, but of systems of
dependent bodies. Most of the systems consist of more than two bodies
but there are no systems that consist of less than those two bodies. In
quantum physics we call such fundamental two-body-systems earth & moon,
electron & positron, quark & anti-quark, elementary particle & field of
force. his systems walking person & way to be walked,
fire & fuel, action & actor, seer & object of seeing. Both of these
models describe two body-systems which have objects that are separate
and at the same time in communication with each other. They are neither
identical with each other, nor do they break up into parts. The bodies
are not independent and individually none of these parts are observable
because in their state of existence they are dependent from each other
and cannot exist independently. They are entangled by interactions, even
in a far distance. One body cannot be reduced to the other. The systems
have a fragile stability that is based upon four well known, sometimes
not completely known and sometimes completely unknown interactions [in
the case of entangled and separated photons] and mutual dependencies of
their components.
What is
reality? We are used to being on our feet on terra firma and to see
fugacious clouds in the sky. The concept of reality in the philosophy of
Nagarjuna and the physical concepts of complementarities and
interactions in quantum physics, tell us something different that could
be expressed as follows: all is build upon sand and even not the grains
of sand have a solid core or nucleus. Their stability is based on
instable interactions of their components.
Notes
(1) See: Chr. Lindtner, Nagarjuniana, Copenhagen 1982
(2) See: David J. Kalupahana, Nagarjuna. The philosophy of the Middle
Way, New York 1986. See: The Fundamental Wisdom of the Madhyamakakarika.
Translation and Commentary by Jay L. Garfield, New York, Oxford 1995
(3) Donald Davidson, Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1933, p. 90.
English: The Myth of the Subjective.
(4) Anton Zeilinger in an interview, 'Tagesspiegel', December 20th, 1999
(5) See: Chr. Lindtner, op.cit., p. 31
(6) Tarab T(6) Tarab Tulku Rinpoche, UD-Newsletter No 4, January 2006. See: Geshe
Rabten, Mahamudra, Le Mont Pelerin 2002, p. 255. See: Damien Keown, A
Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press 2003
(7) Albert Einstein, anik und Wirklichkeit, Dialectica 2,
1948, p. 320-324
(8) Niels Bohr, Collected Works, Volume 6, North-Holland, Amsterdam, New
York, Oxford, Tokyo 1985, p. 103: "I do not know what quantum mechanic
is. I think we are dealing with some mathematical methods which are
adequate for description of our experiments"(1927).
(9) Elliot D. Bloom/Gary J. Feldman, Quarkonium, in: Teilchen, Felder
und Symmetrien, Spektrum, Heidelberg 1995, p. 102
(10) Steven Weinberg, Vereinheitlichte Theorie der elektroschwachen
Wechselwirkung, in Teilchen, Felder und Symmetrien, Spektrum, Heidelberg
1995, p. 14
(11) Daniel Z. Freedman/Pieter Niuwenhuizen, Supergravitation und die
Einheit der Naturgesetze, in: Teilchen, Felder und Symmetrien, Spektrum,
Heidelberg 1995, p. 154
(12) Gerhard 't Hooft, Symmetrien in der Physik der Elementarteilchen,
in: Teilchen, Felder und Symmetrien, Spektrum, Heidelberg 1995, p. 42,
46
(13) Claudio Rabbi, quoted in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September
5th, 2001
(14) Stephen Hawking, The Objections of an Unashamed Reductionist, in:
Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge
University Press 1999, p. 169
November 12, 2006
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