Science and religion: Ways of dialogue
The discovery of the superreduced universe has been one of the great revolutions of our century. The analysis of the behavior of the subatomic world (and therefore of control) is already a history that lasts almost a hundred years. This story is the history of quantum physics.
The first basic step that was taken to define the behavior of subatomic fractions was the invention of a mathematical function. Erwin Schrödinger is the scientist who carried out this work in 1925. Through this mathematical function, called “wave function”, one can find the location, more or less likely, of subatomic fractions during laboratory experimentation. This formula is so appropriate that it allowed through it (and other principles) to create powerful technologies of lasers, superfluids, superconductors, microscopic electrons or neutron explosives. However, this factual functioning of the theory has been accompanied by problems, since the image of the universe that this theory offers us is totally opposed to intuition.
In 1927, between Einstein and Bohr, founders of quantum theory, a profound debate began on the philosophical content of this theory. The world that describes wave functions according to Bohr is itself probabilistic. Scrödinger's function not only defines us the probabilities of finding an electron in the atom's orbit, but also defines us that the identity of the atom is dispersed in the different places of the orbit. The personality of the electron, therefore, is diluted in the different areas of the orbit. Moreover, until the electron is observed in this orbit the fraction will only have a potential existence. This means that, while scientists do not observe, the microphysical world is not determined.
Einstein, a thinker of classical formation, could not accept this view of Bohr and therefore defended that Schrödinger's function only indicated subjective probability. Subjective means that wave probability explains our ignorance of the microphysical world. On the contrary, Einstein considers that the microphysical world is completely determined (the position and speed of the electron, for example) and that if quantum physics does not explain these variables in its formulas it is an incomplete theory, although it is correct. Einstein proposed the creation of a theory that took into account these hidden variables, thus approaching classical determinist physics.
Trying to clarify these ideas, in 1935 he exposed the paradox known as EPR (symbol of the names of the scientists of Einstein-Podolsky-Ros), in which this situation is explained. In 1964 the Irish physicist John Bell managed to explain this paradox in logical terms by means of a mathematical formula. Theoretically, at least, it was already possible to know who was right in that debate, Einstein or Bohr. In 1981, Alain Aspect managed to conduct a specific laboratory experiment to verify this logical formula and its consequences were brutal: the microphysical world is indeterminate before being observed.
This has been too much for many physicists if we consider, in addition, the image that physicists have historically had of their work. The work of physicists has always been the world of objectivity and determinism, and that has been one of the milestones that they have had with meticity. Where then was physics? No wonder many physicists have fallen into pure instrumentalism. According to instrumentalists, quantum theory is very useful for creating technology and keeping nature under control, but it is not able to give a global picture of reality.
Faced with the revolution brought about by the final results, David Bohm (who was a pupil of Einstein), like his teacher, defended that the universe is real and very determined. In his opinion, universal reality is united in a deeper and more external support to the dimensions that modern science studies. The qualities that appear differentiated on our level (individual fractions, living beings, intelligence, etc...) are only a reflection of the unity of the cosmic universe at a deep level. This model was mathematically developed in 1951 and developed in 1980. This vision surpasses the indeterminism of the Aspect en experiment.
Bohm's new rationalism has not been considered among scientists. He is heterodox and also currently works with Krishnamurti, a philosopher of the highest level in India, analyzing the concepts of space and time that Eastern philosophers have. This has been too much for orthodox science and the physicist who was nominated for the Nobel Prize is trying to forget.
The core of the philosophy of science, after writing the “Tractatus”, attributed to the philosopher Wittgenstein the limitations on what can be talked about with that book and he, drawing a circle, replied:
“Yes, I have marked the limitations of what you can talk about (this circle), but the world that interests me is the one that is outside this circle, the one that science cannot talk about.” Albert Einstein said in his philosophical memoirs that “the older it is the more mystical (metaphysical) feeling, the more and more concerned he was about the questions that science did not answer, because the more important were those questions. They are just two examples of the highest thinkers we have had in the West. We all know Bohr and Schrödinger's fondness and adherence to Eastern mysticism because they believed that the interpretative gaps of quantum physics would be found in these remote mystics. What about Heisenberg's approach to Greek philosophy?
Quantum physics has opened new paths between science and religion (mysticism, metaphor) 500 years after these branches of thought moved away. The result of this interview will be seen later, but among scientists with philosophical formation there is no doubt anymore, knowledge (even if it is scientific) does not automatically generate knowledge and current Western science clearly explains this inability. Western science will have to act humbly if it wants to socialize its progressive contribution and nuclear dogmatism in the structure of science (T. S. As Kuhn has explained unequivocally) he must abandon it.
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