Theos-Talk Archives (March 2005 Message tt00155)

In a message dated 03/08/05 1:01:51 AM, dalval14@earthlink.net writes:

Mar 7 2005

This ought to be of great interest

Dallas

====================================

Yes, very interesting... That is, if we want to believe that consciousness 
is an epiphenomena of matter or that quantum physics describes anything real... 
Since, Penrose still thinks human consciousness is related to quantum effects 
in the brain that has its root solely in physical matter. 

For the past ten years, I have been following his work in physics, and have 
even corresponded with his collaborator Hameroff, an anesthesiology professor 
and head of the U of Arizona School of Consciousness Study. (Not that we could 
agree on anything with respect to either of our theories. :-) 

Although Hameroff stated he agrees that "awareness" may be an integral nature 
of the universe, he (or Penrose) has no scientific rational to explain it, 
and only sees it as winking on and off in relation to his anesthesia practice. 
Consequently, he believes that "consciousness" refers only to the "soul" or 
mind that arises in the brain through quantum effects (described by Penrose in 
his "Orchestrated Objective Reduction" quantum theory) that occurs in minute 
micro-tubules within the cellular cytoskeletons of the brain's neurons... 
Nowhere do they make any connections to the awareness or intent that both perceives 
and empowers such effects. Nor do they have the faintest conception of their 
causation or generation.

So, as far as I can see from a theosophical POV -- whatever they are talking 
about sounds like some sort of off the wall nonsense... And, even some 
physicists such as Bohm, Hawkings (who, incidentally, recently turned around and 
agreed with my ABC theory of retained information at the singularity) and Greene, 
along with all other string theorists, etc., disagree with both Penrose' and 
Hameroff's basic premises.

Penrose, being a strict physicalist/materialist, also denigrates and rejects 
the superstring theory of enfolded multidimensional hyperspace fields... 
Therefore, whatever he is talking about is in direct opposition to both 
theosophical metaphysics as well as my ABC interpretation of its fractal "coadunate but 
not consubstantial" fields within fields, etc. 

So, as far I can see it... Penrose -- considering his unbending belief in the 
fantasy of the Bohr-Heisenberg Copenhagen version of quantum physics (that 
only seems to work on a technical level above the particle itself but gets lost 
in space between the particles and the zero-point) -- is still as far from 
bringing science closer to proving the reality of the theosophical metaphysics as 
these quantum theories have always been. In fact, because of his reputation 
as a brilliant thinker (tile theory, etc.), I think his books are a set back 
-- as far as goes their opening the door to both the scientist's and popular 
acceptance of the true theosophical or occult metaphysics as the fundamental 
basis of all reality.

So, the same old music goes round and round... And, I still have a lot of 
work to do -- with a little bit of help from my friends. :-) 

Lenny... 

==================================

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Fulton 
Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2005 7:34 AM
To: 
Subject: Roger Penrose - Non-Esoteric Writings

WIRED MAGAZINE has an interesting article about physicist Roger Penrose,
and his new book, "THE ROAD TO REALITY: A Complete Guide to the Laws of
the Universe", 

the answer to which, as this article wryly states, is not 42!

As usual, physical science fails to take into account even the vaguest
conception of consciousness. 

At this rate Penrose can write a couple million pages and accomplish only
the decimation of valuable timber resources, and the subsequent maintainence
of Weyerhaeuser's stock price. 

Does he have any interesting thoughts here? Well, yes, kind of. 

The concept of gravity being the guilty party in the death/not-death of
Schrodinger's Cat, that's kind of intriguing. 

But then, what is gravity? 

Ahhhh...so we regress, infinitely. 

C'est la vie.

Joe Fulton

Anyway....


Penrose: The Answer's Not 42 
By Mark Anderson

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66751,00.html

02:00 AM Mar. 02, 2005 PT

In 1998, Stephen Hawking laid 50-50 odds that the holy grail of physics,
the elusive "theory of everything," was less than 20 years away.

Around the same time, Hawking's renowned peer, collaborator and
sometime-disputant, Roger Penrose of Oxford University, set out to write a
book detailing just how distant the odds actually are of unifying all the
laws of physics.

"We are nowhere close to an accurate, purely physical theory of
everything," Penrose told Nature earlier this year.

Indeed, Penrose's newly published 1,099-page treatise -- The Road to
Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe -- expends little
ink ruminating over what is not known. Rather, The Road to Reality is as
rigorous and exhaustive a map to the "theory of nearly everything" as a
reader could hope to find today.

Penrose makes a unique tour guide, overhauling components of big-bang
cosmology and quantum mechanics as some tinkerers might take out and
reinstall their car's transmission. 

And Penrose's tendency to pepper the discussion with mathematical equations
and terminology (he spends nearly 400 pages on calculus, number theory and
advanced geometry before decamping into the physical universe) will
undoubtedly limit the book's readership to those not easily intimidated by
section titles such as "frequency splitting on the Riemann sphere" or
"Hamiltonian dynamics and symplectic geometry."

Yet, according to professor Seth Lloyd of MIT, those willing to invest the
energy to work through this mathematical Finnegans Wake will be rewarded
for their efforts.

The Road to Reality, Lloyd says, "shows (Penrose's) brilliant and unique
grasp of mathematics as it applies to the physical world. That is
evidenced in the first part. The second part of the book shows his
courageousness in going on to propose fundamental physical effects even in
the absence of an explicit theory, which he thinks intuitively to be true.
So he's very bold as well as original and insightful."

Those fundamental physical effects that Penrose proposes in Road, some of
which were first covered in his 1989 best-selling book, The Emperor's New
Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics, are as
controversial as they are bold.

For instance, despite the stampede of physicists today seeking to unify
all physical theories under the aegis of string theory, Penrose thinks his
colleagues are on a wild goose chase.

In 2002, Penrose spoke at Stephen Hawking's 60th birthday celebration.
Penrose argued that the underlying assumption of string theory -- that
space-time consists of anywhere from 10 to 26 dimensions -- is simply
wrongheaded and unmotivated by either intuition or evidence. (Penrose
devotes much of the last four chapters of his book to this same argument
and to an alternative model he sets up in string theory's absence, using a
mathematical formalism Penrose invented called "twistors.")

One colleague, Penrose said, responded during the conference's lunch break
with the observation, "You're completely right, of course ... but totally
misguided."

Such has been the nature of the brickbats Penrose has faced. His genius is
unquestioned. No individual save Albert Einstein has contributed more to
relativity theory. But Penrose's sometimes-iconoclastic notions can cause
colleagues to close their eyes and ears.

At the top of the list of his unpopular departures from convention is
Penrose's theory of quantum mechanical "state reduction." Standard quantum
theory holds that submicroscopic particles exist in a nearly continual
state of blur: An electron is not so much here or there but rather a
little bit here and a little bit there. The longer an electron, or an
ensemble of particles, is allowed to evolve in isolation from the rest of
the universe, the more distended and blurry the quantum state of the
particle(s) become. Only the act of an observation -- or, alternately, the
noisy and jostling environment surrounding it -- forces the quantum state
into a precise location and energy level.

But what exactly constitutes an "observation"? Is it just an arbitrary
threshold separating the classical macroscopic world from the
submicroscopic quantum regime? Does a conscious mind actually need to
observe a system physically to cause its quantum state to collapse?

In part because of the precise agreement between quantum theory's
predictions and experimental evidence, many physicists are content to
leave well enough alone: Quantum mechanics works -- it's beautiful in its
own way, and our expectations, not the theory's inner workings, are what
need to be modified.

Penrose, however, has proposed that the missing link between macroscopic
and submicroscopic is gravity. Aggregations of particles exist in their
blurry quantum mechanical states until so many particles are both here and
there that space-time itself -- which is warped by the presence of matter
and therefore is warped in multiple simultaneous ways by matter that is
both here and there -- ultimately can no longer support so much
indeterminacy. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle wins every time.

The problem with this theory -- which Penrose first proposed in The
Emperor's New Mind and revisits in Chapter 30 of The Road to Reality -- is
that observational evidence is still wanting. Penrose proposes an
experiment that would put his model of quantum state reduction to the
test. A team led by Dirk Bouwmeester of the University of California at
Santa Barbara is now working on Penrose's proposed experiment. However,
the results are still years away.

"Penrose's place in history is secure," Lloyd said. "But I would add the
caveat, in this case, that I think he's bold and wrong."

One of Penrose's collaborators, Stuart Hameroff of the University of
Arizona, has applied Penrose's unconventional quantum models to develop a
theory of the conscious mind rooted in hypothesized quantum mechanical
forces inside the neuron.

"Roger is not just spinning yarn," Hameroff said. "He's doing this work
from a knowledge base that is unsurpassed. Then he uses his intuition and
imagination and thinks big.... My first thought was, 'This is just crazy.'
But looking back, it's just obvious. I see that it couldn't be any other
way."