"The stream of human knowledge is heading toward a non-physical reality. The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. "– Sir James Jeans
For at least two hundred years science has been telling us that any ideas of spirituality we might hold dear are little more than ignorant leftovers of a superstitious past – foolish relics. But the truth is, physics itself, that most foundational of all sciences, has now progressed far beyond that initial, dismissive assessment, to a conceptual worldview far more accepting of spirituality than ever before. To grasp the nuts and bolts of this new science, then, is to understand the nuts and bolts that support a new, evolving and far more sophisticated grasp of spirit than has ever before been available to us.
This new conceptual framework is absolutely critical to our grasp of spirit, and, frankly, for those previously unfamiliar with the discoveries of modern physics, this new framework may at first seem nothing short of “other worldly” itself – as the old saying goes, the truth can at times be far stranger than fiction. So let’s start by taking a close look at what the new physics has to tell us.
In 1964 the scientific world was literally turned on its head by a new theorem, but very few at the time understood just what had taken place. Indeed, so astounding were the material, philosophical, and spiritual implications of this assertion that it would soon be referred to as “the most profound discovery in science.”1 Yet even today, few beyond a small community of physicists have come to grips with its meaning. The conceptual implications for particle physics were so extreme that for decades after its announcement many within the scientific community resisted its implications, as do some resist them to this day.
The theoretical contentions offered in 1964 have been confirmed and replicated in laboratories across the globe on numerous occasions, and today there is no question that the original assertion was correct. This monumental insight is called Bell’s theorem, and the sea change it caused in physics is still being digested as I write. So central is Bell’s theorem to our understanding of the physical universe, how it functions, and what that means for us as human beings, that to grasp its implications is crucial for anyone interested in the science that today enables us to envision universal processes as far more than simply material phenomena. Yet, simultaneously, to truly grasp the new reality Bell’s theorem implies, it is essential that we first understand the old reality it so violently overturned.
Today many within the scientific community believe that our modern science – that is, the science of observation and testing, of the scientific method – was inaugurated in the seventeenth century when Galileo Galilei first pointed his homemade telescope toward the heavens and started poking around. How did this new science differ from previous approaches to the study of physical phenomena? Dr. Dean Radin, Laboratory Director at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California explains:
“Classical physics began in the seventeenth century when pioneers such as Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei, French philosopher Rene Descartes, German astronomer Johannes Kepler, and English mathematician (and alchemist) Isaac Newton advanced a new idea. The idea was that through experiments one could learn about Nature, and with mathematics, describe and predict it. Thus rational empiricism was born. Classical physics was extended and substantially refined in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by luminaries like James Clerk Maxwell, Albert Einstein, and hundreds of other scientists.”2
This physics – called classical, or Newtonian, or material physics – has made an enormous contribution to our understanding of the universe we inhabit, and as a result has had a profoundly positive effect upon the overall human condition. Food production, health services, economics, education, transportation, etc., etc., have all been vastly improved as a result of scientific applications made available through analysis and testing. No doubt, material science has been a boon to human kind. Initially, this new science looked outward as had Galileo toward the planets and stars for answers regarding how the universe worked and the matter by which it was constructed. Larger and better telescopes were developed in order to augment this process, and today, of course, spacecraft have been constructed that fly to points distant enough to inspect and photograph distant terrestrial bodies. As a result, a great deal has been learned.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries enormous strides were made in terms of our understanding, not only of the greater cosmos, but also of the physics by which it functions. Most of the planets, their orbits, and their relationship with the sun were established early on. The mathematical calculations for all of this fit nicely within the prevailing understanding, or model, of the universe, and all of these findings both confirmed and augmented our grasp of Newtonian physics.
