The Quantum Catholic: Top Down to Jesus, #2

By Robert Kurland

What does quantum mechanics have to say to Catholic teaching?  Quite a bit!  In this book, quantum mechanics and Divine action, quantum mechanics and the Real Presence, Quantum Mechanics and Free Will, and Quantum mechanics as an analogue for the Holy Trinity are discussed.

A brief historical account of how quantum developed is given, to aid in understanding as well as a qualitative account of what the theory is all about. Three interpretations of quantum mechanics that intersect with Catholic teaching are explored:  consciousness as the final agent in the measurement process; the Many Worlds/ Many Minds interpretation of quantum mechanics; Quantum Logic. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Kurland
• Release date: Mar 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524260873

Robert Kurland

Retired, cranky, old physicist.   Convert to Catholicism in 1995.   Trying to show that there is no contradiction between what science tells us about the world and our Catholic faith.   Intermittent blogs and adult education classes to achieve this end (see http://rationalcatholic.blogspot.com/   and http://home.ptd.net/~rkurland) Extraordinary Minister of Communion volunteer to federal prison and hospital; lector, EOMC. Sometime player of bass clarinet, alto clarinet, clarinet, bass, tenor bowed psaltery for parish instrumental group and local folk group. And, finally, my motivation:“It is also necessary—may God grant it!—that in providing others with books to read I myself should make progress, and that in trying to answer their questions I myself should find what I am seeking. Therefore at the command of God our Lord and with his help, I have undertaken not so much to discourse with authority on matters known to me as to know them better by discoursing devoutly of them.” St. Augustine of Hippo, The Trinity I,8. 

Book preview

PREFACE

In my blog,  Reflections of a Catholic Scientist, of the five most viewed posts, three have to do with the relation of quantum mechanics to Catholic teaching.    That tells me that there are readers who would like to hear more about this relation, and who would also like to get a qualitative understanding of what quantum mechanics is all about.   (When I say qualitative, I mean QUALITATIVE—minimal numbers and simple equations.)

I realize there are people (like my wife) whose stomach churns and whose eyes glaze over when numerical propositions are set before them.   So, I find it amazing that a Google search,Quantum Mechanics simple explanation,  shows articles with matrices (arrays of symbols), partial differential equations and so forth.

What are my qualifications for writing a book on QM and Catholic teaching?  As an MRI and NMR physicist, I’ve had to use quantum mechanics for my own work.   In fact, perhaps the best paper I’ve done is an application to NMR of the quantum mechanics learned in graduate school.  (Google Kurland-McGarvey equation—it’s nice to have a name equation that doesn’t need footnoting,)  I’ve taught classes on quantum mechanics and its applications to undergraduates, graduate students, and medical residents.

On the Catholic side, I’ve had theological training in Ecclesial Lay Ministry classes and in graduate work (post-retirement) at the University of Scranton.     And most important, I’ve done much reading, post-retirement, in both philosophy and theology (references are given at the end of the book);  to quote Samuel Johnson  (Boswell’s Life of Johnson):

"I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken."

The book begins with a very brief history of the development of quantum mechanics.   There will follow a qualitative account of two fundamental experiments that relate to philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics, the double slit and the entanglement experiments.   Since there are so many good and interesting sites that give descriptions of these experiments, including animation, I’ll depend on the reader of this ebook to go to the given links and explore them as needs be, for in-depth explanations.

In the second chapter I’ll speak to the interpretations and mysteries of quantum mechanics (without coming to a definite judgment), and then examine how quantum mechanics and Catholic teaching might intersect.    Several examples, taken from posts on my blog, are discussed in later chapters:   Divine action via quantum mechanics, quantum mechanics as an analog for the Holy Trinity, quantum mechanics and the Real Presence in the Eucharist,  and how quantum mechanics might enter into that ever-puzzling question of free will.

One final note, before acknowledgments:  originally this book was to be the third in a series, Top Down to Jesus,    After I spent some time with the second, War between Science and the Church?, it struck me that some grounding in quantum mechanics and its intersection with Catholic teaching would be useful as background—hence, the change of order.

I’d like to express my gratitude to those teachers, fellow students, and colleagues (way back when) who helped me understand how to use quantum mechanics and to the students who asked the embarrassing questions that increased my understanding of quantum mechanics.   And finally, of course, a debt of gratitude to my wife, (a historian) who has helped me make all this intelligible to non-scientists and math-phobes.

Chapter 1.

What is Quantum Mechanics All About?

INTRODUCTION

Since 1900 the world of science has been turned upside down and inside out by two revolutionary theories:  relativity (special and general) and quantum mechanics.  Quantum mechanics originated from Max Planck’s explanation of black-body radiation (radiation from hot objects) and since that time (1899) has become a powerful and unchallenged tool of physics, down to DNA, quarks and the God Particle, the Higgs boson.

Its predictions are highly accurate, yet as the Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman remarked "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics".   Despite this eminent scientist’s remark (he received the Nobel prize for his pioneering work in quantum electrodynamics), it is possible to understand how quantum mechanics developed and how it is used.

In order to give the reader such a qualitative understanding, there will be first a preliminary, very qualitative discussion of the physical stuff, then a short history of the development of quantum mechanics, and finally a discussion of two experiments crucial to understanding theological implications, the double slit and entanglement experiments.   It’s interesting that Richard Feynman  used the double slit experiment in his undergraduate lectures at Caltech as a starting point for  learning about quantum mechanics.

PRELIMINARIES—WAVES, RADIATION, MOMENTUM, ENERGY

This section was not in the first draft version of this book, but my wife (my beta-reader, who is a  math-phobe) read what follows and said Too many symbols and numbers, my stomach aches, so I thought I should do some