Science and Spirituality

Science and spirituality appear, at first glance, to be diverging if not outright opposing fields of human interest. In antiquity this was not the case: since Descartes, matter and spirit were separated and science developed along a purely materialistic path. This situation solidified and persisted until physics, thrown into crisis at the close of the nineteenth century by its inability to explain various experimental data (particularly in thermodynamics and spectroscopy), produced a true revolution through quantum theory, a theory that culture has still not fully absorbed.

In 1926, the new science of matter at the level of atoms and elementary particles consolidated into a formal structure, «quantum mechanics», with axioms, rules, and laws expressed mathematically through precise tools such as the wave function. To it contributed the great researchers of the era, whose names are likely familiar: Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, De Broglie, Dirac, to name only a few of the most important.

This new science, today called quantum physics, describes experimentally reproducible phenomena that are deeply interesting precisely because they run counter to common sense and to the classical physics conception of reality:

• Energy can only be exchanged, emitted, or absorbed in discrete amounts, the so-called quanta.

• An electron, as well as any other elementary particle, atom, or molecule, sometimes behaves as a wave, sometimes as a particle.

• Two photons generated in the same process, or that have interacted with each other, remain in entanglement: their behaviour stays correlated even across distances of millions of light years.

• It is impossible to simultaneously define all the characteristics of a particle (position, velocity, energy, time); these characteristics cannot be determined with absolute precision, but only in terms of probability.

• Matter and energy can be transformed into one another, with industrial applications (nuclear reactors) and military ones (nuclear bombs).

• The vacuum can never be completely empty: even in the absence of matter it is traversed by «virtual» particles that exist for very brief intervals of time.

What quantum physics observes experimentally, or predicts through its mathematical tools, is known and shared by all quantum physicists; its interpretation, however, is anything but. There therefore exist various theories about the deep meaning of what occurs. The principal ones, simplified as much as possible, are:

• The Copenhagen School: only what can be measured or calculated exists and counts; the rest does not exist, or at least should not concern us.

• The Many-Worlds Interpretation: every time a phenomenon determines the value of a variable, for instance velocity, all possibilities with a probability greater than zero occur simultaneously, and the world splits into a multiplicity of parallel worlds.

• David Bohm's Interpretation: the universe is a gigantic moving hologram in which things appear distinct and often without apparent connections in space and time; this is the explicit order. But at the deeper level, the implicate order, everything is interconnected: space and time are not the foundations of reality, but emerge from a more originary ground, a Universal Consciousness that creates the whole.

• String Theory: it proposes that elementary particles are in reality vibrations of one-dimensional entities, strings, within a multi-dimensional space-time.

To date, no experiment yet exists capable of discerning which of these theories is the most complete and exhaustive. Bohm's is certainly the most capable of answering the question human beings ask themselves: am I here on this Earth simply as a physical body, with perceptions, emotions, feelings, and thoughts destined to end? Or is there in me something I long for, a more loving, wise, and compassionate part, that participates in a Unitary Principle of Consciousness and Love?

This vision, in which the Divine is free of every attribute and accretion derived from the power-seeking of the various religions and in which Consciousness underlies space-time and phenomena, reconciles science with spirituality, matter with spirit. It acknowledges that it is possible to concretely realise oneself and one's goals, to integrate one's talents into one's life and, at the same time, to live with generosity towards others, leaving a trace of one's passage.

Alessandro Zerlini