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Epilogue and Summary ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF METAPHYSICS IN THE MIND-LIKE BACKGROUND OF PHYSICAL REALITY That the basis of the material world is non-material is a transcription of the fact that the properties of things are determined by quantum waves—probability amplitudes which carry numerical relations, but are devoid of mass and energy. As a consequence of the wave-like aspects of reality, atoms do not have any shape—a solid outline in space—but the things which they form do, and the constituents of matter, the elementary particles, are not in the same sense real as the real things that they constitute. Rather, left to themselves they exist in a world of possibilities, “between the idea of a thing and a real thing,” as Heisenberg wrote, in superpositions of quantum states, in which a definite place in space, for example, is not an intrinsic attribute. That is, when such a particle is not observed it is, in particular, nowhere. In the quantum phenomena, we have discovered that reality is different from what we thought it was. Visible order and permanence are based on chaos and transitory entities. Mental principles—numerical relations, mathematical forms, principles of symmetry—are the foundations of order in the universe, whose mind-like properties are further established by the fact that changes in information can act, without any direct physical intervention, as causal agents in observable changes in quantum states. Prior to the discovery of these phenomena, information-driven reactions were a prerogative of the mind. “The universe is of the nature of a thought. The stuff of the world,” Eddington wrote, “is mind-stuff.” Mind-stuff, in a part of reality behind the mechanistic foreground of the world of space-time energy sensibility, as Sherrington  1SCHÄFER_PAGES:SCHÄFER PAGES 4/29/10 11:14 AM Page 111 called it, is not restricted to Einstein locality. The existence of nonlocal physical effects—faster-than-light phenomena—has now been well established by quantum coherence-type experiments like those related to Bell’s inequality. If the universe is non-local, something that happens at this moment in its depths may have an instantaneous effect a long distance away; for example, right here and right now. By every molecule in our body we are tuned to the mind-stuff of the universe. In this way the quantum phenomena have forced the opening of a universe that Newton’s mechanism once closed. Unintended by its creator, Newton’s mechanics defined a machine, without any life or room for human values, the Parmenidian One, forever unchanging and predictable, “eternal matter ruled by eternal laws,” as Sheldrake wrote. In contrast, the quantum phenomena have revealed that the world of mechanism is just the cortex of a deeper and wider—a transcendent—reality. The future of the universe is open, because it is unpredictable. Its present is open, because it is subject to non-local influences that are beyond our control. Cracks have formed in the solidity of the material world from which emanations of a different type of reality seep in. In the diffraction experiments of material particles, a window has opened to the world of Platonic ideas. That the universe should be mind-like and not communicate with the human mind—the one organ to which it is akin—is not likely. In fact, one of the most fascinating faculties of the human mind is its ability to be inspired by unknown sources—as though it were sensitive to signals of a mysterious origin. It is at this point that the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Ever since the discovery of Hume’s paradox—the principles that we use to establish scientific knowledge cannot establish themselves —science has had an illegitimate basis. Hume was right: in every external event we observe conjunction, but infer connection. Thus, causality is not a principle of nature but a habit of the human mind. At the same time, Hume was wrong in postulating that there is no single experience of causality. When the self-conscious mind itself is directly involved in a causal link—for example, when its associated body takes part in a collision, or when the mind by its own free will is the cause of some action—then there is a direct experience of, and no doubt that, causal connections exist. When this modifi-  1SCHÄFER_PAGES:SCHÄFER PAGES 4/29/10 11:14 AM Page...

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