Angelus News | August 2-9, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 27

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Waking up from the quantum pipe dream A renowned physicist makes his case for why modern science needs to make room for God BY SOPHIA BUONO / ANGELUS When Wolfgang Smith applied to Cornell University at the age of 14, he wrote that he wanted to study physics because he believed it was “the key to understanding the universe.” But he soon changed his mind. A voracious reader and deep thinker, the young Smith (who went on to earn a master’s degree in physics from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Columbia University) found himself drawn to philosophy. But he found the cold, academic environment of graduate school a “profanation” of what he viewed as a sacred enterprise, one that calls for wisdom and love, in accord with the etymology of “philosophia” (“love of knowledge”). Fortunately, these setbacks did not stop Smith’s pursuit of truth, which finally led him to a realization that upends modern materialistic science as we know it. This realization is the subject of In Ohm Entertainment’s newly released documentary, “The End of Quantum Reality.” As the title suggests, the film posits that quantum physics, which has dominated modern science’s interpretation of the world for decades, has now been proven untenable, thanks to Smith’s work. Spearheaded by Katheryne Thomas (director and producer) and Rick DeLano (producer and narrator), the documentary proceeds to explain the history, ideas, and paradoxes surrounding quantum physics. Physicist Wolfgang Smith. Katheryne Thomas, director and producer. It soon becomes clear that while the theory, which has developed since the 19th century by various physicists, most notably Max Planck and Albert Einstein, provides a mathematical description of physical reality with pinpoint accuracy, it also raises some IMDB Rick DeLano, producer and narrator. serious metaphysical problems. Essentially, quantum physics rests upon the notion that particles only come into existence upon observation and that they are otherwise in a state of “potentiality.” This, in turn, leads to the conclusion that our world holds SCREENSHOT VIA VIMEO IMDB 28 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019
no objective reality or truth, and only exists to humans as we perceive and measure it. Twentieth-century Nobel Prize-winning physicist Neils Bohr summed it up with this disturbing phrase: “There is no quantum reality … only a quantum description.” This conundrum plagued scientists for decades and led to various attempts to square metaphysical explanations with this effective yet troubling system —“from the more or less weird to the patently absurd,” DeLano asserts in the film. (One explanation, for example, claims that a countless number of universes exist that contain every possible event that could have happened, but has not, in our own observed world.) Smith faced the same paradoxes until the 1990s, when he came to a simple yet pivotal realization about the theories of quantum physics: All of them assumed what he called “the Cartesian split,” referring to the work of René Descartes. The 17th-century French Enlightenment philosopher, famous for asserting, “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”), built his philosophy on the premise that man’s access to truth is limited to intellectual understanding. When taken to its full extent, argues Smith, it reduces what is accepted as true to what can be proven with mathematical certainty. Everything else, including the perception of qualities in the world, belongs to the subjective world, or the realm of the mind, and cannot be relied upon in scientific analysis. Descartes’ work has long been acknowledged as one of the most influential on modern philosophy, and as the film highlights, that influence has given rise to a moral dilemma in both science and society at large. “Qualities pertain to essence, and to Philosopher René Descartes. being no less,” DeLano asserts in the film. In other words, if we disregard qualities, we refer to a world of just potentiality, not the world we know, experience, and live in. All of this tells us that while quantum physics can give a mathematical description of something like our world, it cannot capture the actual nature of the real world. What the quantum theorists missed, in other words, is that you need something else, something substantial and not merely potential, to give form and make that transition from not being to being. And that something, Smith realized, must come from above. “Qualities have primacy,” he states. “[They are] the light of higher spheres shining into this world.” FRANS HALS/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS This discovery is what led Smith to turn to philosophy in the first place. First, he turned to Indian writers, whom he admired for acknowledging a higher realm and revering it in their lives. Still, something was missing. After traveling to India and making many inquiries, Smith found himself unsatisfied with the Indian philosophers’ assertions that the supreme, spiritual state of being necessarily abandons the particulars of human nature. Was there no view of the world that reconciled the material with the spiritual? Finally, Smith concluded that the answer was yes, and he found it in the Catholic Church. “God became man so that man can become God,” says Smith in the documentary. Through the mystery of the Incarnation, he found, “Our humanity is not disintegrated but can be deified.” With this new inspiration, Smith hurriedly returned to the Faith he had abandoned long before. As Smith’s story continues to unfold, the film August 2-9, 2019 • ANGELUS • 29
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Angelus News | August 2-9, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 27

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