Quantum mysticism and other syrupy nostrums

"History abounds with religious enthusiasts who have read spiritual portent into the arrangement of the planets, the vacuum of space, electromagnetic waves and the big bang. But no scientific discovery has proved so ripe for spiritual projection as the theories of quantum physics, replete with their quixotic qualities of uncertainty, simultaneity and parallelism. [What the Bleep do we Know] abandons itself entirely to the ecstasies of quantum mysticism, finding in this aleatory description of nature the key to spiritual transformation. As one of the film's characters gushes early in the proceedings, “The moment we acknowledge the quantum self, we say that somebody has become enlightened." A moment in which "the mathematical formalisms of quantum mechanics [...] are stripped of all empirical content and reduced to a set of syrupy nostrums""

-Margaret Wertheim

(Margaret: thank you, thank you, thank you.)

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