I Am a Hologram, and So Can You!

Paradigm shifts are rare in science, as anyone who has read Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions knows. The authorities of the scientific establishment, working within a particular frame of reference, are often reluctant to eschew the accepted scientific dogma and adopt new modes of thinking. This is not entirely a bad thing, of course, since skepticism is the basis of science; and when theories explain the majority of the evidence, they deserve to be accepted. However, when the dogma becomes so entrenched that new information not conforming to the prevailing theories is tossed out, the present schema is too rigid to account for dissenting ideas. A current trend in physical science (not all of it fringe) is the emerging concept of the universe as a hologram. Since Newton, scientific materialism has been the conceptual framework of physical science, envisioning the universe as a sort of enormous machine with interrelated parts, through which all explanations of natural phenomena can be reduced to physical laws of nature. In the observable universe, this paradigm has proved remarkably resilient in its explanatory power. But, as it turns out, at the very smallest level, this view of the universe explains essentially nothing, and quantum mechanics must be employed, to the great confusion of most scientists, since the reconciliation of these two theories is among the holy grails of particle physics. According to some scientists, it seems that the model of the universe as a hologram does in fact reconcile some of the discrepancies, not only between Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics, but also string theory, the black hole information paradox, and if the bolder assertions are true, even more extra-natural phenomena.

The universe as a hologram has recently found itself in the news because of the GEO600 gravitational wave detection experiment going on in the German countryside. The experiment was originally designed to detect the enormous gravitational waves sent out by very massive, dense bodies such as neutron stars and black holes. What they didn't expect to find were traces of background noise that may inform physicists of the fundamental limits of space-time itself - where it ceases to behave like the smooth continuum that Einstein described in his theory of relativity and dissolves into a sort of grainy picture filled with little bits of information about our universe. From the article from New Scientist:

According to Hogan, the holographic principle radically changes our picture of space-time. Theoretical physicists have long believed that quantum effects will cause space-time to convulse wildly on the tiniest scales. At this magnification, the fabric of space-time becomes grainy and is ultimately made of tiny units rather like pixels, but a hundred billion billion times smaller than a proton. This distance is known as the Planck length, a mere 10^-35 metres. The Planck length is far beyond the reach of any conceivable experiment, so nobody dared dream that the graininess of space-time might be discernable.

That is, not until Hogan realised that the holographic principle changes everything. If space-time is a grainy hologram, then you can think of the universe as a sphere whose outer surface is papered in Planck length-sized squares, each containing one bit of information. The holographic principle says that the amount of information papering the outside must match the number of bits contained inside the volume of the universe.

The researchers at GEO600 had no idea what they were detecting had any real significance until Craig Hogan, a Fermilab physicist at Batavia, Illinois, who had previously predicted that such noise exists, informed the research team that the noise implies we are all living in a giant hologram: that our entire universe and everything in it is a 3D reflection of what is a 2D reality - just as a hologram is a 2D surface appearing to be a 3D image. I am no physicist so I won't attempt a more in depth explanation, (the article linked above provides a pretty good one) but suffice to say that if Hogan is right, all of the "information" of the universe is stored in bits bigger than the Planck length, but which represent information the size of the Planck length in our visible universe, and that the universe we inhabit every day - from atoms and molecules to stars and galaxies - is a sort of "reflection" of the 2D bits. This is useful for understanding the "wholeness" of the universe rather than simply the reductionist version of "leaves for the tree." The source of the theory actually dates further back than this experiment at GEO600 to at least the late 70s, when Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein discovered that black holes emit radiation, but convey no information about their interior. Once the black hole is gone, all of the physical information about its existence is gone with it. This breaks the physical law that physical information cannot be destroyed and is known as the black hole information paradox. According to the holographic universe theory, the information is actually contained in these bits of information on the sphere - the very noise that the GEO600 may be detecting.

The researchers are quick to point out that this is not "proof" that such a model of the universe is accurate, but that the evidence that it should be taken seriously is mounting. The implications for the scientific community are, of course, staggering, but what of the metaphysical ones? Major discoveries in science are often accompanied with major philosophical reinterpretations of the universe - heliocentricism, evolutionary theory, the modern genetic synthesis, relativity have all affected humanity's outlook on its place in the universe. What of this theory? After some research, I found it extraordinarily interesting that, even though it is only recently that evidence has begun to accumulate to support the holographic theory, the notion has been around among both scientific and philosophical minds alike for several decades now.

The holographic model of the universe gained traction in the 1970s as the University of London's David Bohm, a protege of Einstein's who also worked with J. Robert Oppenheimer in the 1940s and 50s, became frustrated by modern theoretical physics' inability to explain natural phenomena encountered in quantum physics. It was also explored around the same time by Stanford neuropsychologist Karl Pribram, who believed that the prevailing views on human consciousness could not account for certain functionalities in human perception. If the holographic paradigm of the universe ever supplants the materialist one, it will be a prime example of multiple discovery within the memetic zeitgeist of the human scientific experience if ever there was one, and perhaps even more so, since the discovery was made by two researchers working in different fields. Unless, of course, you believe some of the more outrageous claims about the theory that the mind sciences and physics are merging into one field.

Prior to the GEO600 experiment, the most recent synthesis of the holographic universe has been put on display in Michael Talbot's book The Holographic Universe, written in 1991. Talbot writes in the intellectual tradition of Fritjof Capra and Frank Tipler, in the sense that much of his work is characterized by an attempt to reconcile various physical phenomena with supernatural mysteries and mystical religious experiences. Capra, in his Tao of Physics, wrote of the striking similarities between what modern particle physics revealed about the nature of the cosmos and the mystical veins in Eastern religions, especially Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism. Tipler believes that the the Omega Point theory implying a quantum singularity at the end of the universe implies that life after death and the immortality of the conscious mind is a reality. In fact, Tipler says in the introduction to his book Physics and Immortality, that "theology is a branch of physics, that physics can infer by calculation the existence of God, and the likelihood of the resurrection of the dead at the end of time..." What all of these theories have in common, of course, is the unique human penchant for inserting ourselves into the cosmos when most of the scientific evidence points the other way: The universe is a cold, unknowing place, a place of Aristotle's unmoved mover, where physical laws operate as if the universe were a giant machine and all the particles cogs. Quantum physics shows us, though, that merely the act of observing particles can change their behavior, so removing conscious perception from equation is equally erroneous since we too are a part of the universe. So, is a middle ground possible? There is certainly a great deal of evidence not explained by the materialistic view of the universe. How can electrons thousands of light years away from each other affect one another? Alain Aspect's 1982 experiment seems to defy Einstein's theory of relativity by showing that "communication" between particles travels faster than the speed of light. From another article on the holographic principle:

Aspect's experiment is related to the EPR Experiment, a consciousness experiment which had been devised by Albert Einstein, and his colleagues, Poldlsky and Rosen, in order to disprove Quantum Mechanics on the basis of the Pauli Exclusion Principle contradicting Special Relativity.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.

Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.

University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

The article goes on to give the example, within the framework of the holographic principle, of a watching a fish swimming in a fish tank on two television screens, each showing slightly different angles. One would assume, if the screens were the only information available, that there were two separate fish, but once closer observations revealed corresponding movement, one would realize the the fish had something in common. Perhaps these corresponding electrons are not "communicating" but actually the same electron, separated by our perception of reality as three dimensional. How can human perception be reconciled with physical reality? Is there a true bridge between the mind and matter or is human consciousness some cosmic accident? According to Talbot at least, the holographic principle of the universe seems to answer, or at least answers better than other theories, many of these questions. From perusing just a few of the many articles on the web about the holographic principle, I've found an extraordinary list of phenomena it purports to explain:

- Like Fritjof Capra, this theory is one of "interconnectedness" and at its foundation, the less conservative proponents appear to believe that this will inevitably lead to a new field of science combining neurobiology, psychology, cognitive science, physics, cosmology, astronomy, and possibly even theology.

- String theory and the black hole information paradox will be reconciled and the information from the black holes will be encoded on the 2D "pixels" on the spherical universe (which apparently conforms to the number of dimensions predicted by string theory....I honestly have no idea what this means).

-Consciousness can be said to be a product of the universe that humans have somehow accessed, rather than as a material phenomenon localized entirely within the brain (going even further, this implies that the human mind can manipulate matter, opening the door for all sorts of science fictiony things like telekinesis, telepathy, etc.)

-Objective physical reality is an illusion, created by these pixels on the outside of the "surface" of the universe, conforming to the Hindu concept of reality as Maya, an illusion produced by the self.

-Synchronicity, the occurrence of meaningful coincidences (in time), could be explained as a product of the conscious mind, similar to the correspondence between subatomic particles at a various distances (in space).

OK. So all of this sounds a little ridiculous. And it sort of is. To be fair, most of the scientists currently working within the new paradigm don't subscribe to any of the outlandish claims made by some. This is simply another theory that confirms physical findings and no philosophical claims need be made until more information is available. This could merely be the most recent incarnation of scientifico-religious compromise that has been the norm for centuries, from the early Christian attempt to reconcile Biblical dogma with Neoplatonic philosophy to the medieval Scholastic attempt to maintain Church teaching while submitting to the authority of Aristotelian thinking to Capra and Tipler discovering links between particle physics and cosmology with Eastern philosophy and the Christian concept of an afterlife. It is, historically speaking, nothing new. Still, it's attractive to think of one theory with so much explanatory power. Whether it has a scientific basis or is New Age nonsense, the odd phenomenon people claim to encounter everyday do exist, even if only in our minds, and anything that provides answers to the unexplainable deserves to at least be given a once over.

The Clash of Civilizations or Ignorance? Pt. 3

"Civilizations die of suicide, not murder." -Arnold Toynbee

In his rebuttal to all of the rebuttals, Samuel Huntington responds to his critics by asking "if not a conflict of civilization, then what?" He primarily criticizes his detractors for not offering an alternative paradigm for understanding post-Cold War global politics. Utilizing Thomas Kuhn's famous theory of paradigm shifts from his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Huntington harnesses the scientific theory for the purposes of his political one. In Kuhn's words it states that for a theory "to be accepted as a paradigm, [it] must seem better than its competitors, but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it is confronted." Huntington seems to specifically emphasize this final point, noting that his political paradigm does not explain all of the facts, but that it does explain more of the facts and does so better than any other. However, though I am no Kuhnian, I would imagine if Kuhn were alive today, he would make mention of the fact that "truth," whatever vague concept we might imagine that to be, also need not be the prime criterion for a theory to be accepted. According to Kuhn, Copernicus's view of the heliocentric universe was not "right" because it was "true," it was "right" because it satisfied more data than the prevailing geocentric model. If we extend this metaphor to Huntington, it means that his thesis of civilizational conflict is also not "true" in the metaphysical sense, but Huntington believes that it satisfies more evidence than any other conceptual construct. The danger of this simplistic thinking is, of course, that it fails to concede that cultures and civilizations are all pluralistic, dynamic, and constantly changing. Pigeonholing and segregating the world's cultures into distinctly definable, edifying, and oppositional models simply does not account for the most realistic view of the world: an increasingly interconnected, diverse, and, yes, dangerous place.

Huntington does, perhaps reluctantly, admit that his theory has its flaws and that as a predictor, it may be untenable (he give the example of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 as a paradigm-breaker). But, holding true to the Kuhnian motor of his argument, he maintains almost defensively that his theory describes the world far better than any competing theory can or will. The two primary adversaries to his exemplar are what he calls the "statist paradigm," which he calls a "pseudo-alternative," and the "one-world paradigm," which he calls an "unreal alternative." The former theory continues the 20th century model of a world dominated by nation states as the primary bearers of power, but he rather effectively squashes this by asserting that his civilizational theory already accomodates this viewpoint and that, while nations will continue to be the primary actors on the global stage, they will do so within the context of their own civilizations. The second theory, which he completely rejects, states that a universal civilization is emerging or will emerge in the near future that will override other civilizations as the primary identifier. Certainly, this is not a viable surrogate for Huntington's theories, but it at least accounts for some of the complexities of civilizational encounters.

I think that a more likely alternative, and one which sadly I do not see expressed as much as I imagine it should be, is one that envisions a complex relationship among states, political groups, corporations, economic organizations and other entities the interplay amongst which could give rise to a lessening of conflict, a reduction of genocide and preventable disease, and the creation of a sustainable global economy and energy policy. Certainly, this may sound pie-in-the-sky and a description of the role that, presumably, the UN is supposed to play. But what I am proposing as an "alternative paradigm," if I am to play into Huntington's chimerical exercise, is a view of global politics that emphasizes the commonalities amongst all peoples around the globe, and I don't mean that in a "deep-down-we're-all-the-same" type of way. What I mean is that the interconnectedness of the global economic superstructure, the interconnectedness of the global communications network, and the fact that environmentally, all nations, cultures, and civilizations are effected by the actions of everyone else, supercede anything a "conflict of civilizations" can explain. This complex interconnectedness will describe the future conflicts that will surely occur once we begin to scramble for things such as basic energy, arable land, and water (Could the Iraq War be a shot across the bow?). Though Marxist and neo-Marxist historiography strikes me as a bit too self-consciously fatalistic and deterministic, the assessment that many conflicts throughout history may be viewed as a struggle for economic gain is not that far off the mark. One of the problems with their solutions is that it narrowly envisions "economics" as only the story of class struggle. The 21st century requires recasting and re-imagining the major struggles across the globe as not just "striving for more" in a monetary sense but, to use Huntington's term, as a "clash" between groups attempting to meet energy, agricultural, and environmental needs.

It would also behoove us to understand how much conflict has changed in such a short time. Huntington's thesis implies that global conflict is inevitable and predicts that the alignments will follow a civilizational pattern. This may be so, but it will not be simply because they are from the same civilization. It will likely be based as much on historical partnership and geographical and political commonalities as it is on language and religion. But conflict today is not what it once was. Gone are the days when soldiers from comparably equipped armies duked it out over battlefields and the winner was determined by who didn't retreat or who lost fewer soldiers. In a sense, this ended with World War II, and indeed most of the wars since then have been asymmetrical: the UN conflict in Korea, the United States in Vietnam, the French in Algeria, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In almost all cases the country who has started the war has lost, the more technologically advanced army has failed, and the country on whose soil the war was fought has won. The reality of asymmetrical war has been described more aptly elsewhere, and I will not attempt to rehash it here, but suffice to say that the future of warfare in the near future appears to be certainly asymmetrical, and the supposedly great ideological struggle of our time, the War on Terror, certainly fits that mold. (In fact, Gary Brecher, the "war nerd", describes only two major instances in the last half century of what we think of as traditional war: Ethiopia's conflicts with Somalia and Eritrea in the 1980s and 90s in the Horn of Africa and the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s--I might add the ongoing Congolese Civil War.) The point is that a clash of civilizations does not exactly describe this state of affairs. One such vision of the future that does, at least more so than Huntington's, is Thomas Friedman's description of the interplay among "superpowers, supermarkets [not grocery stores, but electronically-linked financial centers around the world] and super-empowered individuals." Friedman is often sloppy in his thinking, but at least in his basic descriptor, I think he hits the nail on the head. Currently, the United States is the world's sole superpower, but in the coming decades it is likely that this status will be rivaled by a more united Europe and an emerging China and India. And markets do not necessarily have to follow superpowers as places like London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore, and Seoul wield considerable economic clout independent of the power of thier respective states. And, the biggest wildcard is what Friedman calls the "super-empowered individual," who through increased communication tools, increased knowledge of global interconnectedness, and increased access and exposure to global news may enact change for good, such as Muhammed Yunus and his micro-economic theories enabling the poor to get small loans in the Third World, or for ill, such as Osama bin Laden and the network of al-Qaeda.

So, where does civilization fit into all of this? As intangible as it is, "civilization" is real and is certainly an important factor in the global structure. Perhaps it is better to talk about Civilization with a capital "C"--that is, the entirety of human civilization, even if that is as intangible, if not more so, than civilization with a lowercase "c". If we return to Toynbee once more, he says the lifetime and the prosperity of civilizations depends upon their ability to respond to challenges such as "hard country, new ground, blows, pressures [both internal and external], and penalizations." Certainly, these types of stimuli seem to be more applicable to the various civilizations around the world, however we may define them. A more modern approach, and one that enmeshes better with the interpretation of an interconnected world, is the one on display in Jared Diamond's marvelous book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Diamond's concern is nothing less than Civilization with a capital "C" and the warning that, for the first time in the history of the world, we as a single global community face the same possibilty of collapse that dozens of societies have faced in the past. Except of course, the stakes are far higher--about seven billion times higher. According to Diamond, several of the most spectacular civilizational collapses in the past--from Easter Island to the Anasazi to the Maya to the Greenland Viking--have occured because of an inability or, more alarmingly, an unwillingness of the society to deal with its environmental problems. Perhaps, if there is a "clash of civilizations" as Huntington seems so keen on, it will take the form of a fight for survival, as more arid countries (from the Sahel, the Middle East, Central Asia) fight wars over water while the great energy consumers (the US, Europe, China, India) may fight for dwindling energy sources. Indeed, all of our most pressing challenges are now global. The "clash of civilizations", if we are to survive as a species, as a Civilization, may have to become a war for sustainability in agriculture, energy, and economics. And this clash is one that will be more easily won if the civilizations of the world can actually work together.