LETTER TO THE EDITORS Psychophysical?
 A friend sent on to me a recent e-mail announcing this new venture and I
 write to congratulate you on it. Please add me to your mailing list.

 I do have a problem however with your use (twice in the first edition) of
 the word "psychophysical" to characterise the quantum mechanical view of
the world. It's an awful long time since I studied the subject (by happy
 coincidence, under John Polkinghorne in the 1960s) but I do not see how
the QM view of the essentially probabilistic nature of the world, of the
 interaction between observer and observed, or of the entanglement of
distant particles (all at the quantum level) leads directly to any conclusions on
 mind or spirit. That everything affects everything else is not
distinctive to the QM view of physics, of course: it goes back to Isaac Newton and
 before him to the macrocosm/microcosm of the medieval world. Many
 scientists have a 'natural theology' in that they have drawn religious
 implications from their understanding of the physical world, but that is a
 different matter. I'd be interested to know where "psychophysical" comes
 from.

 Chris Pinfield Wellington

MICHAEL COCKS REPLIES

Thank you for your kind words, and yes, I have added your e-mail to the
mailing list.

In regard to your question: I am an Anglican clergyman, and have always
been conscious that every sermon I preach is an untruth, because I do not
have time to tell the whole truth.

Part of the truth, with regard to QM, is the controversy lying behind the
Copenhagen Interpretation of QM maths. I understand that QM mathematics is
very odd, for instance, making use of imaginary numbers. The Copenhagen
Interpretation has it that in spite of the oddness, it is only mathematics,
and does not affect the materialist or mechanist philosophy lying behind
much scientific work. There were however numbers of dissidents, Heisenberg,
Pauli, Bohm, Sarfatti, and many others, and it is from the dissidents that
we get theories about consciousness, mind and matter. James Jeans was an
early dissident, and so was Heisenberg and Pauli.

Another part of the truth, is that in itself science is an investigatory
tool, and is not a philosophy, or a set of conclusions. To prescribe the
conclusions is to preclude the research.

This implies that it would be quite wrong to say that QM "proves" some forms
of Christian belief. What is true is that QM dissidents like John
Polkinghorne have been moved to adopt very spiritual interpretations of
reality, and in Polkinghorne's case, to become an Anglican clergyman.

Theoretical physicist David Bohm's "gnosis" closely resembles Platonism.
Bohm: "Wholeness and the Implicate Order", 1982 p.52: "we see that
intelligence must be in the undetermined and unknown flux, that is also the
ground of all definable forms of matter" p.53 " in intelligent perception,
the brain and the nervous system respond directly to an order in the
universal and unknown flux that cannot be reduced to anything that could be
defined in terms of knowable structures".

Physicist friend of Bohm, David Peat, wrote a book on synchronicity, where
it is assumed that matter and mind are aspects of one process, and can
behave in dream like ways. Biologist friend of Bohm, Rupert Sheldrake,
assumes that mind constitutes one of the dimensions of multidimensional
reality.

I myself have written a book on synchronicity, giving scores of pages of
examples which cry out for a psychophysical interpretation of reality.

If a person has strong experiences which have to be labelled "paranormal" in
a four-dimensioned reality, the only kinds of scientists who can produce
theories at all consistent with a scientific view, are those such as I have
named.

You may be able to find a video, amongst the Polkinghorne resource material,
dealing with the Big Bang, the moment of creation. The speaker, in line with
Heisenberg who asserts that the Observer is always Participant, and the act
of observation causes the collapse of the wave, which determines whether
this or that shall occur. The speaker theorised that God was the Observer
who cause the wave collapse which occasioned the Big Bang. The speaker may
or may not have a point. I don´t really understand this Wave Collapse
thing.

You might like to read Danah Zohar´s book, "The Quantum Self: Human nature
and Consciousness defined by the new physics." 1990
You might find some material in Co-editor Victor MacGill's home page which
would be of interest.

Michael Cocks