WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

One firm conclusion of quantum physics is that all elementary particles and atoms, exist as potentialities or possibilities rather than as ordinary objects like billiard balls. Physicist Werner Heisenberg notes that atoms and elementary particles are not fully actual, but "form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts."[14] The assumption that electrons possess full existence like tiny, steel BBs contradicts the double-slit experiment. An electron, of course, is not completely indeterminate in every respect. An electron's mass is 9.10938356×10-31 kilograms, and its charge is −1.6021766208×10-19 coulombs. These two properties are universal constants in every branch of physics and chemistry.

Atoms and elementary particles become actual only when an experimenter makes an observation. If an experimenter measures the location of an electron, he finds the electron at a particular place. If the experimenter measures the electron's velocity, he determines its speed. But in accord with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the experimenter cannot simultaneously determine both the location and the velocity of an electron. What potentialities of the electron are actualized depends upon the observations of the physicist and thus on his or her choice of measurement strategy. Here the term "observation" always entails actualizing some aspect of the particle. Heisenberg describes how the physicist and elementary particles are related: "We can no longer talk of the behavior of the particle apart from the process of observation . . . the laws of nature which we formulate mathematically in quantum theory deal no longer with the particles themselves but with our knowledge of the elementary particles."[15]

From the double-slit experiment, we conclude that the essential feature of quantum physics is undivided wholeness, in which the experimenter and the observing instrument is not separate from what is observed.[16] The knower and the known form an indivisible whole, as concretely seen in the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, to speak of the universe in the absence of any knower is absurd.

Scientific Realism

That elementary particles exist in potentiality until actualized through measurement is in direct opposition to scientific realism, the prevailing outlook of modern science from its very beginning. Galileo, in 1623, argued that tastes, odors, and colors reside only in human consciousness, and all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated "if the living creature were removed."[17] Reality is what is left behind when the human creature is removed. The goal of science, according to this Galilean view, is to understand nature in the absence of the scientist. The senses do not report reality; "the office of the sense shall be only to judge of the experiment, and the experiment itself shall judge of the thing."[18] For an example of how the experiment touches nature, and the scientist touches the experiment, see Figure 5, the control room of the Tevatron.

Isaac Newton added the final two elements of scientific realism when he published, in 1687, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica: 1) the universe is mechanical and 2) every whole is completely understandable in terms of its smallest parts and how they interact. For the next 300 years or so, physicists, biologists, and neuroscientists attempted to prove that "the universe, including all aspects of human life, is the result of the interactions of little bits of matter."[19]

The Revolution

In the double-slit experiment, the electrons, the measuring apparatus, and the experimenter form an undivided whole. Unlike scientific realism, in quantum mechanics the experimenter is a participant in nature as well as an observer; an understanding expressed by Bohr: "In the great drama of existence, we ourselves are both actors and spectators."[20] Physicists have expressed this fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics in various ways. Eugene Wigner: "It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness."[21] Max Born: "No description of any natural phenomenon in the atomic domain is possible without referring to the observer, not only to his velocity as in relativity, but to all his activities in performing the observation, setting up instruments, and so on."[22] Freeman Dyson: "The laws of subatomic physics cannot even be formulated without some reference to the observer. The laws leave a place for mind in the description of every molecule."[23]

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