Wave-Particle Duality

No futurology would be complete without the input from the prophets of old. The Book of Isaiah is famous for its foreshadowing of a future that will be radically better than the past, and for charging us with the contemplation of the future from out of subtle illusions in the past as the prophet enjoins us (46:10) “…declaring the end from the beginning.” Here, ‘the end’ is the historical singularity that all of world history converges upon and ‘the beginning’ is the story of Creation in the opening of Genesis. From its inception, the world is pregnant with a potential that will take millennia to unfold but which hides the clues to the nature of this final phase or end state from early on, just like an ultrasound might detect many of the qualities of a fetus and even give us a crude image of what is about to be born. Since we have already addressed some of the general symbolism of the gathering of the waters and the emergence of dry land in the ‘establishing shots’ in Creation the motion picture, we can continue to mine these images for hints of a future process that adds a whole new dimension to the drama of life.

The promise of the future envelopes all levels of reality including the building blocks of our physical world. Given that we have evaluated water as the wave-form of our quantum reality and dry land as the particle-form equivalent, we may now pepper this recipe with a more psychological take in an effort to help us internalize its message. For starters, the water, as ‘waves of probability’ (loosely speaking), conjures up a sense-perception of ‘the indefinite’ or ‘ambiguous’ and ‘undefined’ character of our world. To tap into the ayin or no-thingness of existence is tantamount to sampling a pre-wave collapsed quantum system. This comes in stark contrast to the resolute and definitive behavior of the particle whose singular status dries out the blurs, smears and streaks of a water world. Particles concretize our sense-perception in the crystalized yesh or some-thing (a specific and identifiable thing).

Expanding upon this line of thinking, the Tzemach Tzedek (the 3rd of the Chabad Rebbes) offers a penetrating perspective on this passage and the mystical-scientific implications packed within it (Or HaTorah Bereishis Volume 7 p.1158). This Chassidic master reminds us that the endless light of the Creator (ayin sof)–which could itself be likening to the virtually infinite number of photons or particles of light in the universe–generates our world through a process of Creation–something from nothing–at each and every moment. Something from nothing, he maintains, is registered in our consciousness as the spontaneous production of an definite object (a thing that can be grasped as an object of knowledge) from a previous indefinite object (a no-thing or a non-object which cannot be targeted through perception, reflection or any other intention act of the intellect). At best, this no-thing (which cannot even be said to exist properly in that it cannot be discovered or isolated, just as the particle cannot be found prior to observation/measurement) acts as a kind of pre-conscious protoplasmic reality on the verge of becoming real through our interaction with it.

The Tzemach Tzedek goes on to restate the well known description of intuition (chochmah) with ‘grasps without grasping’ or senses the fleeting quality of flashes of potential reality that slip through the netting of the mind just as water would. Intuition (chochmah or koach mah: ‘the potential of what is’) then, plays the part of recording transitions: specifically transitions from no-thing to some-thing, from water-waves to dry land-particles).

Citing Job once more (28:12) “Intuition (chochmah)–from where is it found….” has a history of being read within the esoteric tradition as “intuition from no-thingness is found.” The word ‘mei’ayin’ (from where) is read ‘m’ayin’ (from no-thing). Blasts of insight or bursts of intuition are shots in the dark. They are non-local phenomenon, which means that they cannot be ‘placed’ or localized. All locality is a function of comprehension (measured apprehension or grasping) which is the signature of binah or ‘understanding’. As this verse finishes in fine counterpoint to the first half (28:12) “…and where is the place of understanding?” must find that the question effectively problematizes locality. Place is under interrogation.

The ability to understand something means that I can isolate it as a definite thing or object of consciousness, and then that I can compute it as some-thing conceptualized or situated (like a thing among other things) which permits me to compare and contrast it further and steer it into position within all that I already know. In short, I place it. If I can’t place it then it is not a definite object (but rather a no-thing or non-object). Finally, my pre-existing knowledge that anchors my newly acquired understanding works as a ‘prepositional’ (pre-position) framing in the grammar of thought in the grandest sense. The ‘grab and drop’ of this new concept into a ready-in-wait architecture of competing and collaborating ideas amounts to using those preexisting conditions in an indexical fashion as the standard of measurement for each new datum scavenged by the mind.

To repeat once more: the wave-particle divide pops up again within the working of consciousness itself. Our understanding is ‘classical’ in the sense of classical physics. Our understanding works with the dry land or particle reality (definite objects that can be apprehended–qualities that be measured or rather coalesce as a result of measurement) while our intuition picks up on the pre-measured probabilistic nature of ‘deep’ reality which is likened to water/wave mechanics (just as a myriad of kabbalistic sources equate chochmah or intuition with water) and therefore, has distributed and non-local properties (like the wave which is found from nowhere or no specific place). Intuition thus concurs with the quantum realm (quantum physics) and all of weirdness that resides therein.

The regeneration of reality as an alternating process of dry land surfacing from water, and water flooding dry land, will be the continued subject of our investigation in Part Four as we pave the road to present and future expanded applications of these teachings.

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