Deathmatch – Objective Reality vs. the Tao
In this corner – the challenger, Tao.
In this corner – the reigning champion, objective reality.
I’m an engineer. I’ve always loved physics. When I was younger, the idea that the world can be perfectly predicted if we know where everything is and where it is going at one moment in time was really attractive. As time has passed, this understanding seems less and less likely to me, even at a macro level. I am not talking about quantum mechanics. This is a philosophical discussion.
Twenty or twenty-five years ago, I started reading books about a different way of seeing the world. I read Alan Watts descriptions of eastern religions and philosophies. When I read the Tao te Ching, I felt a sense of recognition, both from a philosophical and an emotional perspective. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years and read the book probably twenty times.
More recently, it has struck me that the terms “Tao” and “objective reality”, in a sense, refer to the same thing. Not really, but kinda sorta. I’ve come to feel that replacing the idea of objective reality with the Tao is completely consistent with a scientific approach to knowledge.
- [1] The ground of being[2] The Tao that cannot be spoken[3] Oneness is the Tao which is invisible and formless.[4] Nature is Tao. Tao is everlasting.[5] The absolute principle underlying the universe[6] That in virtue of which all things happen or exist[7] The intuitive knowing of life that cannot be grasped full-heartedly as just a concept
In this corner – the reigning champion, objective reality.
- [1] The collection of things that we are sure exist independently of us[2] How things really are[3] The reality that exists independent of our minds[4] That which is true even outside of a subject's individual biases, interpretations, feelings, and imaginings[5] The world as seen by God[6] Things that we are sure exist
I’m an engineer. I’ve always loved physics. When I was younger, the idea that the world can be perfectly predicted if we know where everything is and where it is going at one moment in time was really attractive. As time has passed, this understanding seems less and less likely to me, even at a macro level. I am not talking about quantum mechanics. This is a philosophical discussion.
Twenty or twenty-five years ago, I started reading books about a different way of seeing the world. I read Alan Watts descriptions of eastern religions and philosophies. When I read the Tao te Ching, I felt a sense of recognition, both from a philosophical and an emotional perspective. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years and read the book probably twenty times.
More recently, it has struck me that the terms “Tao” and “objective reality”, in a sense, refer to the same thing. Not really, but kinda sorta. I’ve come to feel that replacing the idea of objective reality with the Tao is completely consistent with a scientific approach to knowledge.
Comments (90)
One can visualize it as some intelligence (the Dao), that polarizes to create a positive and negative (a standing wave). The wave is given impetus (movement/qi) by the same intelligence and begins to flow creating all that there is. This is the Dao creating the two, then creating the three, and from the three creating everything else (moving waves of energy). One can see that the Daoists of thousands of of years ago were pretty perceptive.
For more updated versions of Daoism, I like to study Bergson, Bohm (holographic universe), and Rupert Sheldrake as well as any of the arts and Tai Chi.
Both the Tao and objective reality could be identified with existence. They often are. It is the differences between the way the two concepts describe existence and the experience of existence that interests me.
In addition to what you've written here, I think I remember another post where you state that existence is logical consistency. I don't really know what you mean. Anyway, there is not just one way to know the world. It's a question of what works for you. What is useful, fruitful. I feel at home in the Tao, but not objective reality. The idea of objective reality is one of the most prevalent organizing principles people use. Any way of seeing things has to be compared to objective reality.
Although I read descriptions and analyses of Zen and the Tao before I read the Tao te Ching, I no longer do. I think the Tao te Ching speaks for itself. I've read 5 or 6 versions. Each is a little different. I have read a few other Taoist verses also.
"The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao." is the primary message I take from the book. It is a call to direct experience of ....the world? existence? objective reality? the Tao? None of those is right, because they are written. Nothing written is the true Tao.
Books like the Tao te Ching are not explanations. They are maps, guidebooks. When I read the Tao te Ching, any version, I feel someone taking me by the hand and trying to lead me somewhere. I think they're trying to lead to a place where I can see, experience, the world directly. Experiencing the Tao is what's important, not understanding it. I can come closer to understanding it than I can to experiencing it.
But existence is not the individual things but rather the universal property that they all have in common. As such, existence can be said to be "invisible", "formless", "everlasting", "the ground of being", or "the absolute principle underlying the universe".
Quoting T Clark
I mean logical consistency to be the property of every (existing) thing - basically, that the thing is identical to itself and different from others. This entails that the thing has relations to other things, and these relations can be reduced to the relations of similarity, instantiation and composition. Instantiation means that the thing has certain properties (or is a property of other things) and composition means that the thing has certain parts (or is a part of other things). So, if a thing is consistently defined by these relations (for example, not having the property of being a circle and a square at the same time) then it exists.
How is your vision of reality different from logical positivism or the early Wittgenstein?
I don't know enough about Wittgenstein to comment on him, but my view is far larger than logical positivism. Logical positivism limits reality to that which can be observed through the senses, but I see no reason to deny existence to things that we cannot observe. Any thing that is consistently defined via its relations to all other things exists in the sense in which it is defined. To deny it existence would be to arbitrarily accept certain logical possibilities and exclude others.
As long as that is not / cannot be done, the way we ourselves describe (our) reality, a reality which inevitably governs or dictates our physical actions, is the most coherent information we can relay to our peers. Our social instincts make us share resources and information is one of them, the way we interpret the world is what gives us an evolutionary advantage over other mammals on earth. The way we use shared information to be able to manipulate our environment is also good from the point of view of entropy, we're getting better and better at extracting work out of our environment with which we increase entropy, life is described by this mechanism (keeping entropy low locally by exporting entropy... or something like that).
So, scientifically, we can observe that there is some principle at work which is having a physical effect in the material realm yet we have trouble saying exactly what is...
I'd call it a draw.
Yes, to the extent that it can be put into words, that is what the Tao is. The goal of this thread is to talk about how that compares with objective reality as description of all that is.
Quoting litewave
I wouldn't have thought that the first quote above was written by the same person as the second. The first is impressionistic, intuitive, uncomplicated, and straightforward. Down home. The second is formal, uses technical terminology, and requires following a confusing chain of logic. How do you see them fitting together?
People can use the Tao te Ching in whatever way is useful to them, but I experience it much differently than you do. What you describe as "a compendium of chants, stories, and advice," and "a combination of interesting ancient spiritual chants, Aesops fables, and military advice," to me, and many others, tells a coherent story about the basis of reality, how to experience it directly, and the effects of that experience on those who do. It seems to me that the way I experience it represents the intention of those who wrote it. If it were only an interesting historic relic that might cast some light on ancient China, I don't know why anyone beyond scholars would be interested in it.
Isn't this just a practical way of avoiding the issues I raised in my post? If the Tao cannot be known on principle, and if objective reality cannot be known in a practical sense, we'll just take the information we have, share it with others, and work at ways to make the world better. I take a pragmatic view on almost anything where action is required. What works is more important than what's true. Today, I'm on vacation, sitting on a [figurative] beach drinking beer. I don't have to be pragmatic. I want to be metaphysical.
Or have I missed your point?
I too read and gained a lot from reading Alan Watts - and also D T Suzuki and other authors on those themes. I especially liked Watt's books The Supreme Identity, Way of Zen, and Beyond Theology I try and live by them.
But Western science has pragmatic benefits that can't be found in Eastern philosophy. They're not competing perspectives if engineering and science are used for their intended purposes, which is finding things out and getting things done. It's when science and engineering start to masquerade as a philosophy that it becomes problematical. Engineers solve problems by reducing complexities to their basic units and seeing how they work together. That approach has yielded great technological power, but it's a lousy philosophy of life.
Alan Watts said many times, the fundamental illusion that humans fall into, is that they're separated from nature, egos enclosed in a 'bag of skin'. Whereas Taoism emphasises unity, non-division and non-duality. That really is a mode of being, rather than objective knowledge as such. Watts mainly wrote about Tao, Vedanta and Buddhism - all of them make that same basic point, in myriad ways. They are profound philosophies and have started to take root in Western and indeed global culture, thanks in part to Watts' books.
Quoting T Clark
I suppose you're familiar with 'LaPlace's Daemon' which states exactly this point. Simon LaPlace was 'France's Newton' and an immensely influential intellectual in the Enlightenment; he pioneered the science of statistics, among other things. But, and although this is a contentious point, I think LaPlace's daemon was slain by the uncertainty principle. I think quantum physics generally has torpedoed Enlightenment materialism. This was the theme of the well-known Tao of Physics, and although that book has its detractors, it has spawned an entire cultural subgenre.
John Stewart Bell (1928-1990), quoted in Quantum Profiles, by Jeremy Bernstein [Princeton University Press, 1991, p. 84]
It's a matter of irony that nowadays, the so-called 'realist' interpretations of physics are often said to be the 'parallel universes' of Hugh Everett or the various permutations of the multiverse suggested by string theorists. If you look back at Bohr and Heisenberg's philosophical musings on QM (retrospectively named the 'Copenhagen Interpretation'), they seem lucid - and parsimonious - by comparison.
See Quantum Mysticism: Gone but Not Forgotten, Juan Miguel Marin.
Well, isn't that sort of like the yin-yang duality that is supposed to be the manifestation of Tao? :) The first quote was an intuitive/holistic characterization of existence while the second was an analytic/logical specification of what existence is and how it is instantiated in the structure of reality. I am sorry if this specification was confusing, I just tried to pack it into a few sentences.
Actually the Everettian view is both lucid and parsimonious. The postulates are simply:
1. The universe is described by a quantum state
2. The quantum state evolves according to the Schrödinger equation
These postulates don't imply God playing dice, spooky action at a distance or consciousness-created reality.
Bohr had no answer to this challenge.
But they do imply an infinite number of parallel universes - which is the only rebuttal I believe necessary. Bohr had the good grace to meet with Everett but he never gave the slightest indication of support for his notion.
The Copenhagen interpretation is less parsimonious than the many worlds interpretation because Copenhagen introduces an arbitrary assumption of a wave function "collapse" in an attempt to reduce reality to those logical possibilities that we observe. MWI accepts the reality of all logical possibilities that are defined by the wave function even though we only observe some of them.
They imply one universe with a (possibly finite) number of branches in superposition.
If I'm trying to interpret that so that it has things right, I'd take it to simply be a map/territory distinction. The map is not the territory, but we can only "speak the map." Or in other words, the world isn't like natural language, except for that part of the world that is natural language. The same goes for mathematical language, logic, etc.
If the world isn't like logic then the world is like logic. That's what you get from absence of logic. To argue against logic is self-defeating.
Yes, I would agree with that pithy assessment of one the core tenets of the TTC. I would just say that in addition to "speaking the map", one could "be in the territory". This meaning a kind of raw direct experience of having one's feet on the ground, and actually seeing the area represented by the map. I think the TTC encourages us to recognize and value this unmediated experience, which it calls "the uncarved block". Of course, any concepts formed and words then spoken about such experiences are then "map speaking", as accurate, helpful, and honest as they may be. (Y)
Didn't think he was arguing against logic per se, if that is what you meant. That would be highly illogical, Captain. :B
To claim that the world is illogical is to claim that the world is not what it is. Therefore, the world is not illogical. The claim refutes itself.
I guess I'm saying that I feel the Tao points more towards the interplay between the objective and subjective then it being interchangeable with objective reality. Also, it's an objective fact that our subjective interpretation of the objective world has empirically measurable effects, so we can know there's some principle at work but cannot do much more with it then embody it through living out life. As soon as we're able to clearly state it as a principle which is now only present subjectively (for example: let's say forming a social society turns out to be a natural law which repeats across the universe as long as there are sufficient conditions... like other lifeforms existing) we've probably evolved further to such an extent that we're deducing empirical facts from our past while we're still subject to some sort of subjective interpretation in the current moment.
There is no bubble to burst! The Tao accepts questioning, laughter, being ignored, and honors like they are all the same. The Tao, the highest good, is like water. It will wash stinky feet without complaint, and will flow over solid gold without boasting. But i see what you may be referring to. The TTC may seem like some New Age advice which can have all the firmness and flavor of a wet noodle. To which I would say that much of the cliche-sounding New Age wisdom is a copy of a copy of texts like the Tao Te Ching, imho. But chapter 67 anticipates this question, and answers better than i ever could:
[i]Some say that my teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
this nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
this loftiness has roots that go deep. I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.[/i]
You have said what I am trying to say in this post, but better than I did. Thanks.
Quoting Wayfarer
I read "The Tao of Physics" long ago and didn't like it. I think it's important to keep the "uncertainty principle" associated with the Tao's unspeakability separate from that that comes from quantum mechanics. Any similarity is metaphorical.
I've been reading "Subtle is the Lord," which is a scientific biography of Einstein looking for ideas about these same types of issues. It is a wonderful book, but haaard. It stretches me beyond what I can understand, even trying hard. I'll take a look at your suggestion.
Quoting Wayfarer
Your talking about the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics, yes? I've never understood why sophisticated scientists can't just say "look, it may seem weird, but it's not. That's just the way things happen to be." I've always wondered if the multiverse interpretation brings something else to the story that adds to our understanding.
I wasn't complaining. I like that you can hold both visions in your head at the same time. I try to do that too.
No bubble has been burst. I don't expect that everything that inspires, informs, and moves me will do the same for everyone. Do you assume that because you don't get what I get, that it doesn't have value? I don't much like jazz, but I recognize that there is something of value there.
I think the view consistent with the Tao te Ching is more radical than that. There is a sense that before it is mapped, the territory doesn't exist. "The 10,000 things;" i.e. the world we live in on a day to day basis with busses, supernovas, and tree frogs; don't exist until a they are named. I find that way of thinking very useful and I don't think it puts any restriction on a scientific viewpoint.
The Tao is not logical or illogical. To call it either would be naming the unnamable.
I'm not sure if the human world, the ten thousand things, is logical or not. I think it's probably a matter of choice. If logic works, use it. If not, do something else. I guess you find it useful. Or do you think logic is the fundamental basis of reality? From what you've written, I think you probably do.
Did I say that the Tao is interchangeable with objective reality? Did I mean that? Do I think it is? Let me think.
I guess I think the Tao and objective reality fill the same metaphysical role - a description, to the extent that's possible, of fundamental reality. Both work equally well in some applications - I think the practice and application of science is one. I find the idea of objective reality misleading in other situations. I think it is important to understand that there is a fundamental, irreversible, unavoidable connection between what we call the world and human observers. The universe is, in a profound way, human.
No. No. I don't mean that at all. The Tao clicks with me too (not saying that I understand it well). I believe that there's more to reality than meets the eye. However, it worries me that such a view could be wishful thinking growing out of a fertile imagination, and that we know, bottomline, is self-deception.
For all of us here, when we get to the end, all we have is trust in ourselves, our judgment, and our experience. Thinking about it now, maybe that is the fundamental fact of philosophy.
This is off-post, but have you read "Self Reliance" by Emerson. It had a strong effect on me. We have to trust ourselves, what he calls our "genius."
If Tao is what it is then it is logical.
Quoting T Clark
Yes, if reality is what it is then logic (consistency) is its fundamental basis. I can't see how reality could be otherwise.
No idea how that makes any sense to you.
Thanks for the clarification, that helps to see where you were going with that thought. I would tend to agree with what you said here about wishful thinking. We seek wisdom, not wishdom! The Buddhist teaching of the Three Poisons is illuminating. Greed, hatred, ignorance make the karmic world go around (to summarize pithily). Self-deception is an ever-present pitfall. (Not unlike the cool tarot card pictured in your avatar, btw (Y)). What seems to help me is to have self-confidence on one hand balanced by a healthy self-skepticism on the other hand. Without either i tend to get off the track and into a ditch very quickly. YMMV.
Well, that's the point - it doesn't make sense to say that the world isn't like logic, because that would mean that the world is not what it is. If the world is what it is then the world is logical (logically consistent).
Question: is the "DEALTHmatch"in the thread title intentional, or a typo? If intended, could you please explain? Thanks!
Yes, as everything I write, it has a profound, obscure meaning. Or maybe I was trying to see if anyone was paying attention. Alternatively, it might have been a mistake, which I might have fixed.
For the simple reason that 'to speak of' is to locate within the realm of phenomena, 'this' as distinct from 'that'. It is, in the terminology of religious studies, an apophatic statement.
Quoting Andrew M
And just what would 'a branch' be, in plain language?
Or to go from non-being into being. To be created.
Laplace's Demon was already slain by the "Three Body Problem". It is slain even in a completely deterministic world.
The familiar example would be Schrodinger's Cat. In the thought experiment, after a while, there is a superposition of a live cat and a dead cat. One branch is the evolution over time of the live cat. The other branch is the evolution over time of the dead cat.
I asked the question, what would a 'branch' be, in relation to 'a universe which branches'. That's a much bigger deal than a 'thought experiment'.
Actually I don't think that is the point - it's overly theist. The standard Taoist description for the phenomenonal domain is 'the ten thousand things'; which is contrasted to 'the nameless' which is the source of the ten thousand things. But there's nothing corresponding to 'creation' in that; it's more that the sage 'merges with the nameless' through contemplation or concentrated action. 'Flow', they call it nowadays. But I don't think it's a linear 'creation story' in the Biblical sense.
Consider the double-slit experiment where a single photon produces interference. There is amplitude for the photon going through both slits (all interpretations agree about this). On the Everettian view, this is the universe branching such that a photon goes through the first slit on one branch and another photon goes through the second slit on another branch. Both branches subsequently merge to produce the observed interference pattern on the back screen.
In relation to the universe, a branch is simply part of it, like the Sicilian Defense is a branch of the set of outcomes of chess, all one set, but a branch from which positions resulting from Queen's Indian Defense are disjoint. You seem incredulous that from the subjective viewpoint of one chess opening, the other ones are less existent. They're just nonexistent from that subjective viewpoint.
Some splitting event (measurement) occurs forming multiple outcomes at only that point. The universe is not cloned. The difference between the two grows at up to the speed of light, so a minute after the cat experiment measurement, the exact same sun shines on both. The lab guy is also the same, but only if the cat is still in the box, else the lab guy is split as well, each knowing a different outcome for the cat.
So the live-cat branch (a bubble confined to the box or not) has no causal relation to the dead cat branch. Hence I (a particular state of the whole that is more than 'me') have no awareness of other parallel states of my personal history, despite sharing an identical past (not a copy of a past state) at some point.
They have built a Schrodinger's box, but not one that holds a cat. The before-before experiment relies on taking a measurement, but not revealing the results of it for a time, which requires effectively such a box. Any other QM interpretation seems to require the ability to alter the past to explain that experiment.
I don't think it's theist at all. Creation is going from non-being (the Tao) into being (the 10,000 things). I take that seriously, not just as a metaphor. This is not a creation story in any normal sense of the word. The Tao came before god.
Do you have a link?
The deBroglie-Bohm causal, real, non-deterministic model nicely resolves all quantum paradoxes without resorting to infinite worlds, altering the past, etc. All that it's required is the acceptance of non-local actions which had more-or-less been observed in laboratory experience. Action at a distance via Bohm's quantum field satisfies all issues. Bohm was never properly recognized (and still isn't despite Bell's best efforts) because he dared to be different.
Nice post, but I'm curious about where we might disagree.
In the double-slit experiment, the detection of the photon at the back screen is not the only interaction that occurs in the system. It's just the obvious one since it involves someone observing it.
However there are also the distinct photon/slit interactions that occur. These constitute "measurements" between the photon and the apparatus independent of observer interaction and so also result in branching. The observed interference effect when we detect the photon on the back screen just is the interference of those branches (which is quantified as the sum of the wave amplitudes from both branches).
An interesting notion. A measurement is being taken without a conscious observer. Exactly how is this known? Something indeed may be happening, and if course, one is free to speculate about anything but a fundamental notion of quantum physics it's that impossible to separate the observer from the experiment. What ever is happening prior to the observation it's totally unknown and inaccessible. Everything in the system is totally and irrevocably entangled. That's the whole point.
Bold mine.
Western philosophy warns us against it. Trust in ourselves is often betrayed. Isn't this why logic and rationality are so vehemently emphasized? We need an unbiased and reliable mediator between us and reality. That role is currently played by logic and it's doing a fine job.
The Tao doesn't diminish the importance of reason and logic. In fact I think, owing to its poetic composition, it relies heavily on the reader's logic to infer the message the Tao wishes to convey.
That said, I think logic and rationality aren't enough to comprehend the whole of reality. Logic and reason fail at the scale of atoms and the universe. Didn't someone say ''if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.'' Also ''the heart has reasons the mind knows not''.
Ah! Middle path?
Just consder what that actually says.
Quoting T ClarkHard to find links that don't spin an interpretation of the data, but this is brief description.
Quoting Andrew MMy interpretation of double-slit differs, but being an interpretation, there's no fact to it.
The measurement on the back screen results in one point, not a pattern, and only repeated runs reveal such a pattern. I would say the slits do not constitute a measurement, and that the photon is not a classic 'thing' that goes through one or the other. It is nothing but a wave function with probabilities of where it will be measured, and that function results in a wave interference pattern beyond the slits. The slits alter the wave function but no more. The guy observing the screen has nothing to do with the measurement. Consciousness is not part of the experiment.
Good point. What's my response....? Thinking...? Still thinking...? First of all, logic and rationality are overrated. Deductive logic misses the whole point. It's inductive logic that matters - how do we get the ammunition to load into our deductive logical artillery? That's where we need whatever certainty we can muster. Which doesn't get me off the hook here. I'm just stalling for time.
How about this - "Western philosophy warns us against it. Trust in ourselves is often betrayed." True. I think that's the problem with Western philosophy. I guess what I should have said was "maybe that should be the fundamental fact of philosophy." Pretty lame. I'll keep thinking.
Quoting TheMadFool
Strongly disagree with the second sentence. The Tao can't be understood, only experienced. It doesn't have a "poetic composition." For me, it is as literal as physics. Except that the base of "literal" means "letter," and the Tao that can be expressed in letters is not the eternal Tao. Which isn't to say I am in touch with the Tao. My experience is generally as intellectual as yours is. Those few times when I made direct contact, I knew it when I felt it.
Quoting TheMadFool
I think logic and rationality miss a lot at whatever scale you use them. As I said, to me, the Tao doesn't have anything to do with the heart.
I was going to ask that but I was afraid to sound stupid. I thought it was the probability waves of the locations of the electrons that interfered with each other. Is that what you said.
I'll take a look at the link you sent.
So, the Tao Te Ching is trying to express the inexpressible. This puzzles me. I too have had experiences that make my rational side uncomfortable - the vague feeling that reality hides a truth, that something wondrous lies beneath the surface, waiting to be understood/(in your words) experienced. However, this feeling is so difficult to analyze rationally that it frustrates me. Is it the same for you?
Quoting T Clark
I agree. There's something more to reality than just logic and rationality. I think the very existence of the Tao Te Ching confirms that. Even Zen Buddhism speaks something along those lines. The question is ''what is it?"
Get a copy of the Tao te Ching. Whatever version. I like Stephen Mitchell's, which is very Westernized. See if it affects you. The Tao is nothing hidden. It is not beneath the surface, it is the surface. It comes before rationality, logic, words, god, language, mathematics, and onion soup. It's right there in front of you right now. It comes before wonderous.
From time to time I experience it directly. Mostly I understand it intellectually, which is ironic. It's not rational. It requires a surrender.
The point is just that interactions between systems result in the entanglement of those systems. Observers are not special in this regard.
Quoting Wayfarer
OK, I'll rephrase.
In the double-slit experiment where a single photon is emitted and detected on the back screen, it is represented as being in a superposition of travelling through both slits. On the Everettian view, this indicates two physical branches where one photon travels through one slit on one branch and another photon travels through the other slit on the other branch. These branches then merge into one branch (i.e., interfere) before the photon is detected on the back screen. The detected photon's location on the back screen implies this two-branch history. However there is always only one photon on any particular branch.
Quoting noAxioms
Yes, the observer measures the photon at just one point on the back screen. However if measurement is a linear process (and not a wave function collapsing or reducing process) then there is an observer measuring a photon at each point on the back screen where the wave function gives a probability of finding the photon. Which is what the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment illustrates.
No - don't rephrase it. Consider the meaning of the three words: 'the universe branches'. Leave the double-slit out of it - just think about what is being claimed.
Thanks for the book recommendation.
Agree. The fascinating thing is that no two translations are the same, in fact some verses read very differently in different translations. It's partially because of the obvious differences between Chinese and English, but it's also because many of the core terms are associated with profound ideas. In any case, it is very well worth being acquainted with, as is also the Chuang-Tzu, another Chinese classic (Burton Watson's translation is a standard, I think available from Penguin Classics.)
What I am claiming is that the universe has a (quantum) branching structure rather than a classical linear structure.
I think that phrase expresses that. But if you think it implies multiple universes, then I don't endorse that claim. Otherwise perhaps you could spell out what you think the claim is.
Well, first, branching does not entail more than one universe. A tree has branches, but it is only one tree. Secondly, it does not entail infinite outcomes. Only outcomes described by physical laws occur. A tree can have many branches but there are physical constraints on how many it can and does have.
It most assuredly does. It was implicit in Everett's paper, and then made explicit later, that:
Bryce Seligman DeWitt, R. Neill Graham, eds, The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton Series in Physics, Princeton University Press (1973), p 140.
The implication is that there are infinitely many universes existing in parallel, in which everything that happens is replicated infinitely many times.
First, your quote explicitly does not exclude a finite number of branches (i.e., it says "very many"). Second, it's no secret that people variously use "parallel universes", "multiverse", "many worlds" and so on to describe the Everettian idea. So what? It's clear from the context that they're referring to the directly visible universe that is familiar to us all. But the universe proper need not be limited to what can be directly seen. And, thirdly, the Everettian view does include competing versions, some of which may entail finite branching and others infinite branching.
The double-slit scenario I outlined earlier very clearly contains only two branches in superposition - there are no multiple universes or infinite branching implied there. You could try to show how that specific scenario has problems that you think are of concern.
It is not 'my quote'. It is a quote from the scientist who devised the term 'many worlds' for this theory (namely, Bryce DeWitt). The quote does not refer to 'branches', it says outright, plainly and simply, that the theory says the universe (or multiverse) comprises many universes.
Quoting Andrew M
Recall the thread title. If the Universe proper is not so limited, then it's game over for objectivity. 'What cannot be directly seen' might include the Tao, the Creator, and who knows what.
The whole motivation for the so-called 'relative state formulation' is to avoid the observer effect or the collapse of the wave-function issue. The basic issue is that no objectively existent thing - no particle, as such - can be said to exist in any place, up until the time the measurement is made. A consequence of the measurement being made is that the wave function, which is a distribution of probabilities, collapses. This is why when a sensor is placed before the slit, then the particles act like particles and not waves - they produce a distribution pattern, not an interference pattern. So the implication of this is that the act of observation has physical consequences, which is the whole 'quantum weirdness' thing in a nutshell. That's why Einstein asked (rhetorically) 'does the moon continue to exist when you're not looing at it'. It's why qm is weird.
So to avoid that, Everett dreamed up something even weirder, about which it was later said:
Schrodinger's equation and the Heisenberg Principle is about a measurement and a measurement requires an observer. What happens outside of the measurement it's speculation, assumptions and forever inaccessible. Bohm's real interpretation suggests something is happening, but what? Totally unknown and forever unknown.
It is impossible to unentangle the observation from quantum physics. Both the Schrodinger's equation and Heisenberg Principle are strictly about observation. One cannot arbitrarily separate observation (for convenience sake) from the essentiality of Quantum physics. If one does, one goes pact 400 years to Newtonian physics.
And Jacob Needleman's wonderfully deep voice and nuanced reading add to this classic translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching/dp/B0000544P8/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1498698516&sr=8-6&keywords=tao+te+ching+audiobook
As mentioned above, Stephen Mitchell's translation is a more modern take perhaps. https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-Author-published/dp/B00Y4RNUC0/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1498698516&sr=8-14&keywords=tao+te+ching+audiobook
I downloaded S. Mitchell's Tao Te Ching. Thanks. The first line reads:
[Quote]The Tao that can be called is not the Tao[/quote]
Kinda makes me wonder what the whole book is about if the subject can't be "called".
Perhaps as one member said, it's as close an approximation to the truth as language will allow. Then I began to wonder if Lao Tze were alive today would his work be accepted in a reputed philosophical journal? If yes, why? If no, why?
'Lao Tzu' is actually a generic name for Old Man or Wise Ancestor or something of that ilk. Analytic philosophy, it ain't.
From my own studies, Lao Tze probably did not exist as a single person but probably more of a composite, like Aesop. The Dao de Jing itself appears to be a compendium of stories, chants, advice probably gathered from many sources. Translations (of which there enumerable) are more or less a function of the skills and biases of the translator and are quite often at odds with each other. Words change and meaning of words change and of course context changes over time. There are some interesting ideas that can be found in the Dao De Jing if one wishes to study it, but my feeling is that actual experience via the arts is a better way. With that said, the Dao De Jing Genesis story it's probably the best I've read in describing the nature of the universe. Very succinct and to the point and quite prescient of quantum physics (note the wave symbol that represents the Genesis).
I'm not a scientist and quantum physics is above my paygrade but I find it interesting that there's some sorta connection. It's actually amazing! What could be the basis of this link? Coincidence? Deliberate? I don't want to be the spoilsport but there are many similar claims - science in religious books - made by Islam and Hinduism. Is the Toaism-quantum physics connection more credible?
The famous Daoist story about the farmer and the son speaks to the indeterminism of the universe:
"There was a farmer whose horse ran away. That evening the neighbors gathered to commiserate with him since this was such bad luck. He said, “May be.” The next day the horse returned, but brought with it six wild horses, and the neighbors came exclaiming at his good fortune. He said, “May be.” And then, the following day, his son tried to saddle and ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg.
Again the neighbors came to offer their sympathy for the misfortune. He said, “May be.” The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to seize young men for the army, but because of the broken leg the farmer’s son was rejected. When the neighbors came in to say how fortunately everything had turned out, he said, “May be.”
Source: Tao: The Watercourse Way, by Alan Watts
From what I know, physics is about symmetry, electron-proton, matter-antimatter, etc., and this, I believe, is a feature of the mathematical models that aim to describe reality. If I recall correctly, these mathematical models have predicted particles whose existence were later verified through experimentation. Daoism is about duality which is also symmetry. Am I making sense?