SOLAR (IAN MCEWAN) AND THE QUANTUM MECHANICS AS ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY

Quantum mechanics. What a repository, a dump, of human aspiration it was, the borderland where mathematical rigour defeated commom sense, and reason and fantasy irrationally merged. Here, the mystically inclined could find whatever they required, and claim sciene as their proof. And for these ingenious men in their spare time, what ghostly and beautiful music it must be- ‘spectral asymmetry, resonances, entanglement, quantum harmonic oscillators’- beguiling ancient airs, the harmony of the spheres that might transmute a lead wall into gold, and bring into being the engine that ran on virtually nothing, on virtual particles, that emitted no harm and would power the human enterprise as well as save it

Whose fault is it that charlatans have claimed the property of the word “quantum”? The opposites attract each other, as they say, and they even touch each other, closing the circle, no doubt. The longest-established physicist or mathematician, whith glasses and a calculator, shares the quantum nomenclature with the pseudo-mystic, bald but ponytailed man who talks about Universe harmony.

Maths are too diffciult, that´s true, and the text words it very well; further in the novel the next question appears: was the starnge reality described by quantum mechanics a descrption of the actual world, or was it simply a system that happened to work?.

I would really like that, as I read last night ‘there wouldnt be disloyalty or contradicition separating the ordinary from the unusual’

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF TREES (ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA) AND THE OBSERVATOR´S POSITION AS THE CENTER OF THE FRAME OF REFERENT

Focus your gaze on the current: the bridge moves forward, we move forward, the water is still, it comes to a halt. That is what Julian, her step father, said on the bridge where he used to take her when she was a child. At the begining it is difficult but then you get used to it, it is like those strange drawings which you have to stare at until you see a figure, a dragon, a bear, somebody´s face; one more time, look, focus your gaze, keep your eyes on the water until you feel you move forward, that the bridge moves forward, until the river is not a river any more. The water loses velocity, and now it is you who moves forward in the water, in a ship

Newton´s first law doesn´t distinguish between an object in rest and an object with uniform linear motion, it´s the same state, and the different perception only depends on where the observator is. Many situations can explain this phenomenon, my favourite is the traveller who looks out of the train window (the train is the most complete experience as a observator traveller) how a cow who is looking at him moves back. But the cow is motionless and sees how the train progresses. Indeed, both of them, traveller and cow, move together with Earth around the Sun

THE PALE KING (DAVID FOSTER WALLACE) AND THE INTRINSIC MISTAKE IN MEASURE

 ‘If you´re pretty,’ Meredith says, ‘it can be hard to respect guys.’

‘I can understand that,’ Drinion says.

‘Because you never even get to see what they might really be like. Because the minute you´re around, they change; if they´ve decided you´re beautiful, they change. It´s like the thing un physics- if you´re there to look at the experiment, it supposedly messes up the results’

‘There´s a paradox involved in it’, Drinion says

Meredith says that the thing you watch changes because of your own look, but even more is important is that the observator also changes. She doesn´t respect guys now. Obviously all of us influence each other.

Physics can minimize this influence.

As a fellow countryman said ‘the eyes that you see is not an eye because you see it, it is an eye because it sees you’, and I think the quote is appropriate. In a José Cervera´s talk I discovered that the human eye was the only eye with a white sclerotic and that´s why you can know where a human is gazing. This fact has lots of social and evolutive connotations, all of which I must admit I don´t remenber .