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Editorial Review Amazon.com
It's not every day you hear a physicist ask what happens when we die.Evan Harris Walker, sparked by the early, tragic loss of his love, does just that and more in The Physics of Consciousness, a book in the same vein as Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics, but with a firmer grounding in scientific understanding. Walker marries the traditions of Southern literature--a longing for the past, a resignation toward the present, and a determined optimism about the future--to a technical explanation of the limits of materialism; a weird synthesis, certainly, but charming and engaging nonetheless. Since his primary topic is consciousness, Walker turns to neuroscience and Buddhism (its spiritual equivalent) for inspiration.His quantum-mechanical approach to synaptic transmission and "the speed of consciousness" are difficult to evaluate and seem a bit overstretched, but his discussions of the history and current events of physics are lucid and ironically lend weight to his antimaterialistic arguments. Is this, as he hopes, another step toward 21st-century religion, or just another New Age reinterpretation of the spooky world of the ultrasmall?Don't bet on either--The Physics of Consciousness will jog your brain in new ways and, if nothing else, you'll find a new appreciation for how little we really know about ourselves. --Rob LightnerBook Description
How quantum physics will explain the nature of reality and the human mind. For decades, neuroscientists, psychologists, and an army of brain researchers have been struggling, in vain, to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. Now there is a clear trail to the answer, and it leads through the dense jungle of quantum physics, Zen, and subjective experience, and arrives at an unexpected destination. In this tour-de-force of scientific investigation, Evan Harris Walker shows how the operation of bizarre yet actual properties of elementary particles support a new and exciting theory of reality, based on the principles of quantum physics-a theory that answers questions such as "What is the nature of consciousness, of will?" "What is the source of material reality?" and "What is God?""A breathtaking journey into the very atoms of the brain...In his rare fusion of intellectual ambition with emotional urgency, Walker exposes the emptiness of a science that avoids the ultimate questions." -Booklist ... Read more Customer Reviews (33) 
Phyiscs and Consciousness
Physics and consciousness are hot topics in the quantum community and this book goes on to correlate between the outside reality (physical) and the inside reality (spiritual) It gives you a new way of looking at reality and to understand that different planes of realities exist. This is an excellent book.
Regards,
Enigma Valdez
Thoughtful, but sometimes misleading.
Evan Harris Walker has written an entirely different book than you may have expected from reading the title.Certainly, the book discusses all of what is included in the title, but with a trifle more sophistication than I had expected.Readers who are not already familiar with thinking about Quantum Theory and philosophy of mind will probably find the book a rough ride.While Walker takes pains to explain the concepts, his are not certainly not the clearest available.
What is unnerving to me about this book is the lack of respect paid to the unwitting non-specialist reader.Walker argues for a specific interpretation of quantum theory, an interpretation from which the rest of his argument laregly hangs, but fails to duly note the capriciousness of his philosophical choices.The fact is that his interpretation is based on an intuition, one that he tries to force down the reader's throat via an emotional and tragic tale from his past.He uses the story, which is weaved throughout the narrative, to cultivate the appropriate emotional response from his reader so that his interpretations and philosophical presuppositions look inevitable.He is quite masterful actually, but the uninitiated reader will probably not be able to see through the rhetoric.
Walker's intuitions are certainly well argued for in this book and, if they match your own, you will probably find this book to be a powerful confirmation for what you already believed.However, please be aware that Walker's interpretations and opinions are not necessary conclusions from science and are not the only consistent approaches to interpretation.This book is, then, an exploration in the justification of a faith via various lines of evidence from science, philosophy and experience.Recommended to the experienced reader.
The Nature of Consciousness and the Meaning of Life
The Nature of Consciousness and the Meaning of Life
Michael J. Vandeman, Ph.D.
December 20, 2005
Copyright(c) Michael J. Vandeman, 2005
"Consciousness is not to be found among physical objects", E. H. Walker, p.147
I think that there must be very few books that live up to the promise implicit in their title. It is very tempting to exaggerate, in order to get people to buy the book. (By contrast, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, one of my favorite books, does discuss leaves of grass, but also a lot more!) As far as I can tell, Evan Harris Walker's The Physics of Consciousness: Quantum Minds and the Meaning of Life discusses neither the physics of consciousness, quantum minds, nor the meaning of life.
Woven throughout the book is a very charming and entertaining thread devoted to describing Walker's relationship with his high school sweetheart, Merilyn Ann Zehnder, and her tragic death from leukemia. I enjoyed this glimpse into the author's life, but I don't see how it contributed to fulfilling the book's promise. I suppose it gave some "human interest" to a book that otherwise could be too taxing on the brain, or served as a dramatic device -- interrupting the physics thread and creating suspense.
For me, by far the greatest value of the book was the fascinating and very detailed recounting of the history of physics -- especially the description of particle physics and quantum mechanics. It's comforting to know that quantum mechanics and relativity are an accurate reflection of the world -- all of it! It's also fascinating to watch humanity (who, according to Reg Morrison (The Spirit in the Gene), are genetically predisposed to spirituality or religion) be forced to relinquish one myth after another to the persuasive power of science. Walker's writing is lucid and generally easy to understand -- quite a feat, considering the difficulty of the subject matter and the fact that its essence can be expressed only in mathematical form! For me the book brought together numerous disparate bits of physics that I hadn't fully grasped or integrated. For that, I am very grateful.
Walker then takes a giant leap and asserts, without citing any evidence, that consciousness is different from anything ever studied or described by physics -- it's "special". He seems to assume that this is so obvious that it doesn't need proof, but, on the contrary, not only does it require evidence, but it is actually false, which derails the rest of his arguments. Remember, he has just finished describing the fact that current physical theories describe the entire universe (at least since it was 10-43 seconds old), from subatomic particles to galaxies, with enormous precision! So it is illogical to suddenly claim that there is something -- consciousness -- which is not described by those equations! (And yet, he later contradicts himself by equating consciousness with a quantum mechanical "tunneling" of electrons.) That consciousness is "special" is an assumption. If it falls, then the rest of the book -- and probably all other writing and thinking about consciousness -- also falls.
Here are some of Walker's statements in support of this assumption: "Science is incomplete and must be greatly expanded if it is to meet the challenge of this data." (p.159) "If we approach what is in those equations [of physics] exclusively in terms of those ideas physicists have put there, we will see that there are some things that are missing and that cannot be derived from the things that have gone into those equations. The equations have positions and intervals, quantities and forms, and they describe responses. But feelings are not there, nor is pain, C#, or the colors we see in the budding red rose. 'Motives' are there, but emotions are not. Conscious being is not in these equations. [That is an assumption! In other words, he is begging the question, not answering it.] If consciousness is to play its role in physics, it must be included in its own right, on its own terms. [That's funny -- ethics, philosophy, art, music appreciation, and government are also not in those equations, but no one has ever suggested that we need to expand physics in order to explain them!]. ... It will be necessary to introduce something new into physics on its own terms. This is how it has always been in physics when we have wished to understand something totally new. This is how we must do things now." (p.176) "Consciousness is something that exists in its own right and has its own identity. It is distinct from all other objects, processes, energies, and realities that physics or science as a whole reveals." (p.178) "Consciousness is nonphysical. ... It is real and nonphysical." (p.182) "The classical machine cannot have consciousness, and it cannot have any identity of its own." (p.253)
Walker then describes his theory of the functioning of the synapse, and argues that consciousness is the quantum mechanical "tunneling" of electrons across the synapse: "There, in those minute switches, at the miniscule intersynaptic cleft -- that is where the quantitative link between mind and brain is to be found." (p.194)
He then goes on to make the absurd assertion that nothing exists until it is observed by a conscious observer! "Only our observation of the object [a die thrown onto a craps table] leads it to take on one out of all its possible orientations and come to rest with one of its six faces up." (p.270) "We have seen matter and space as the natural consequence of nothing more than the fact that conscious observers exist." (p.331) In order to understand this assertion, we need to think about quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Heisenberg showed that when one tries to measure either the location or momentum of an object, the act of measuring itself disturbs the object, so that one can determine either characteristic to arbitrary precision, but not both. This is not simply a defect in our equipment! This is the fundamental nature of matter! For example, if we shoot an electron at a phosphorescent target, until it hits the target and creates a flash of light, it has no position, but exists only as an infinite set of possible locations and momenta, with varying degrees of probability.
But it is not the observer that determines where and how the die will land! It is the table and the forces of gravity and electromagnetism! The observer enters the picture only after the die has settled into its final resting position. This is Walker's means of injecting (human, or at least animal) consciousness (and, ultimately, meaning and God) into physics. It fails. (However, I wish that Walker had spent more time on this matter, since it is the crux of his argument. I had trouble following the part that centered on Bell's Theorem, where supposedly quantum mechanics triumphs, and belief in concrete reality has a stake driven through its heart. This section (Chapter 8) was intriguing, but very difficult to understand.)
In mathematics there is a tool called "reductio ad absurdum". One makes an assumption, and then argues logically from that assumption to arrive at a conclusion that is "absurd" (obviously false). That proves that the assumption upon which the argument was based must be false (for example, one can assume that a number exists which is zero divided by zero; from this one can "prove" that 1 = 2). Thus, in the present case, the assumption that consciousness exists as something "special", not describable by physics, is false: it leads to absurd conclusions.
The other serious error that Walker makes is that he identifies consciousness with wakefulness. The state of being awake, which, according to my physiology text, is controlled by the brain's reticular activating system, is only one meaning of "conscious" ("having mental faculties undulled by sleep, faintness, or stupor: awake" (Webster, p.238)). The more important use of the word is being conscious of something: "aware of and responding to one's surroundings" (Compact Oxford English Dictionary). Wakefulness is a necessary (except possibly for dreams), but not a sufficient, condition for being aware of something. Although I am awake, I am rarely aware (conscious) of the traffic outside my house, nor even the temperature of my own skin. I am very good at focusing on one thing, and ignoring everything else. (No wonder we men are so often accused of being "insensitive"!)
A third serious error is that Walker identifies consciousness with something that takes place in a very specific location: the nerve synapse. This would imply that organisms without nerves cannot be conscious. However, Donald Griffin (Animal Thinking) has argued convincingly that thinking (complex decision-making) goes back as far as single-celled organisms, which are aware of chemicals in their environment and respond appropriately -- approaching or avoiding them based on whether they represent food, mate, or threat. Green plants detect (are aware of) sunlight and turn their leaves so as to maximize the energy they receive. Humans are genetically 98.6% identical with chimpanzees, so it is unlikely that so important a characteristic as consciousness could be present in humans but not in chimps. But we also share a large percentage of our genome with all animals, and in fact with all living things! Since consciousness (awareness of things and events outside the organism) is so integral to all life, it most likely is not simply a matter or nerve synapses, and probably is an essential feature of all living things: "All living beings, not just animals but plants and microorganisms, perceive. ... Mind and body, perceiving and living, are equally self-referring, self-reflexive processes already present in the earliest bacteria". (Margulis & Sagan, p.32) "Life ... is awareness and responsiveness; it is consciousness and even self-consciousness." (ibid., p.177) "Mobile microbes make selections -- they choose." (ibid., p.179) "The gulf between us and other organic beings is a matter of degree, not of kind." (ibid., p.182) "Thinking and being are the same thing." (ibid., p.188)
So how can we determine what consciousness is? Obviously, the laws of physics that apply within living organisms are identical to the laws that hold outside them. Walker admits that the laws of physics apply to the entire known universe. ("Life is less mechanistic than we have been taught to believe [we obey probabilistic quantum mechanics, rather than the deterministic Newtonian physics]; yet, since it disobeys no chemical or physical law, it is not vitalistic [i.e., there is nothing "magic" or "special" about life]." (Margulis & Sagan, p.178)) But this implies that there is nothing "special" about life -- nor about consciousness! And it implies that anything that can happen inside a living organism can also happen outside living things (if a distinction between living things and nonliving things even makes sense) -- including consciousness! The splitting of H2O into hydrogen and oxygen takes place in green plants, but it can also happen outside them. Every event that can happen within a living organism can potentially (given the right conditions) also happen outside them. In fact, if we assume that life and consciousness are "special", then (by reductio ad absurdum) it follows that they don't exist! No wonder they are so hard to define and describe! It is hard to define something that doesn't exist (such as, for example, God). ...
So what is consciousness? Simply the registering of an effect. A scale is conscious of weight. It is not conscious of (able to measure) anything else. If it could be arranged so as to weigh itself (I don't know if that is physically possible), then it would be self-conscious (in that one dimension). We are also capable of being conscious of weight. I can feel pressure on my skin from a weight resting on top of it, and I can also hold the weight in my hand and feel the strain on my arm muscles. These are just two possible ways of being conscious of weight, neither of which is the same method used by the scale. I am also conscious of light, which the scale is not. But I am not conscious of ultraviolet radiation, although a bee and a UV meter are. A robot is conscious, but not of enough things to survive on its own -- not enough to survive in this rough-and-tumble world. Humans are visually conscious of the movement of distant objects, but we are nowhere as perceptive as birds. Of course, being conscious of more dimensions doesn't make one superior, except in the narrow sense of those dimensions. Bacteria are undoubtedly superior in their consciousness of chemical nuances. In any case, there are obviously many ways to be conscious, not just one, just as there are many different ways to store information. Consciousness is not a fundamental constituent of reality -- nor anything new or unitary.
To show how life and non-life (whatever they are, if they even exist!) shade into each other, look at a couple of examples. Frogs in Canada freeze solid every winter and thaw out again in the spring. While frozen, they are neither alive (they don't meet any of Margulis and Sagan's criteria, since they are doing absolutely nothing) nor dead (death is, by definition, final). Okay, maybe you believe that the frozen frogs are alive, and doing something, although you don't know what. The frogs don't contain much extra energy, so if they were doing anything, all their stored energy would get used up, and they would have none left to allow them to awaken in the spring. If that example doesn't convince you, then look at the seeds stored in the pyramids for 3,000 years. Dead, or alive? Since they were able to germinate upon being given water, they couldn't have been dead, according to Margulis and Sagan and every other biologist. But they can't have been alive either, because if they were doing anything during those 3,000 years, all of their tiny store of energy would have long since been exhausted. Viruses and prions are two more examples of life shading into non-life; viruses are not considered alive, but they perform some of the same functions as living things, such as reproduction. In other words, it is not possible to detect the difference between life and non-life: i.e., there is no real difference! Life is an indefinable state of matter, kind of like (but even less definable than) the liquid- vs. solid state of water.
Thus, the real mystery is not consciousness; the real mystery is how humans can miss what is "hidden" in plain sight -- right in front of our noses! Obviously, we can't know directly whether any other organism is conscious. We can only infer that from its behavior. That goes for our own friends and family, pre-verbal or dumb (unable to talk) humans, animals, plants, bacteria, etc. Bacteria and protists (e.g. protozoa) act as if they are conscious. Or perhaps I should say that we sometimes act like them -- turning our faces toward the sun, sniffing out attractive smells from the kitchen, reacting instinctively to environmental hazards. Try this experiment: turn on the television, but turn off the sound. You will be amazed at the things you become conscious of (the mole on an actor's nose, the blond hair and brown eyebrows, the funny way people move, etc.), that you had been forced to ignore due to trying to follow (be conscious of) the (verbal) story. Meditation is another experiment in consciousness. Try meditating on the self-conscious scale. ... It's no wonder that no one has discovered what consciousness is. If consciousness is a white horse (or nothing special at all), but you insist that it is a green dragon, you can look all you want, but you will never find it. ...
Two more things remain to be discussed: will, and the meaning of life. On page 333 Walker admits: "But for all this terror, there is one thing that is worse: the thought that all the suffering and all the pleasure of life have no meaning." I don't see how the meaning of my life, or any life, depends on the existence or importance of consciousness. While life has no single, canonical meaning (else we would long ago have discovered what it is!), each person's life has -- to them -- the meaning that he or she chooses to give it. (Of course, we get some ideas from others, past or present.) The same goes for morality and ethics: what is moral is what we think (based partially on input from others) is moral. Science and physics have little to do with any of this, except to keep us honest. Science can only tell us what is, never if it should be. Therefore it cannot be blamed for any alleged decline in morality. I suspect that "immorality" is like a recessive gene -- impossible to eliminate. We also can't depend on evolution to "improve" humankind. Evolution is like justice: blind. It only ensures the survival of those who survive -- not necessarily those with any given characteristic (including alleged "fitness", whatever that is).
Then what about free will? (Walker simply refers to "will", and sidesteps this question.) The fall of Newton's deterministic physics, and the triumph of "probabilistic" quantum mechanics, implies that our behavior is neither predetermined nor predictable. (That's nice! It would be pretty boring, otherwise!) The "butterfly effect" rules. But this also doesn't imply that our behavior is under our own control. And since it is apparently decided at a molecular (hence quantum) level, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle prevents us from ever knowing causation for certain. In other words, we probably don't have free will, but we have no way of ever knowing for sure, and we feel that we have free will, so ... who cares? (Well, the criminal justice system may care, thinking that people should only be held responsible for what they deliberately do. But it's impossible to know for sure, and ... nature (evolution) doesn't care.)
In spite of centuries of thought and research into human-, animal, and plant behavior we still don't know why people commit murder -- or much else. Can you resist eating that cookie? If humans were rational, no one would smoke, right? I know that I am irrational, because no matter how often I see people behave irrationally, I still continue trying to treat them as if they were rational, by reasoning with them!
This paper would be incomplete without discussing the purpose of life -- something Walker skipped, even though he is obviously interested in it. The purpose of life is to have fun! I mean, what else could it be?! (Of course, that excludes hurting wildlife or other people, even if you happen to think that that's fun.) And I certainly had fun reading this book, and thinking about it. ...
(...)
A great reference for quantum physics in real life
I was given this book by a friend several years ago, along with another book on quantum physics.This book stood out because of the approach Walker took to presenting his material.I had many insights into quantum physics as it relates to my own life while reading this book (three times so far), but the gem of the book in my opinion is contained in the appendix.I come back to Walker's insights into consciousness as presented in the last part of the book, and in the appendix many times to refresh my understanding of how quantum physics applies to my daily experience in life.This is particularly interesting when looking at how events affect my consciousness, and has given me insight into how to apply quantum physics in my daily life.Outstanding book to read, but if you have only a passing interest in quantum physics, you may want to prepare yourself to take more of an interest in the subject, as this book will be much more rewarding if you do.
Double fantasy
In this insightful work, "The Physics of Consciousness" Evan Harris Walker concludes that "Consciousness is Reality."Many philosophers and scientist have suggested that consciousness can never be explained because of its subjective nature, but Walker disagrees.
Methodically quantifying the various processes involved in information exchange in the brain in terms of "bits", Walker is able to extrapolate approximations of the speed and capacities of the information being manipulated in neural activities.
With this information in hand, Walker proceeds to treat the mind/brain activities in Descartean fashion, maintaining that in order to fully understand the relationship between the part and the whole, a dualistic notion of mind and matter must be entertained. The dualities of wave vs. particle, and observer vs. observed in the strange quantum world of state vector collapse, give us a clue as to what transpires in the brain.
Walker contends that the 24 trillion synapses in the brain delineate the transition point beween mind and matter.Most have rejected quantum effects across the synapses because of the relatively large distances and energy it takes to make the leap, but these individuals have not taken into account several known facets of quantum physics such as the principles of tunneling, indistinguishability, and state vertor collapse.
Walker says that the mind itself consists of two parts--consciousness and "will".Consciousness does not have to be a part of a living entity, but is a factor in all quantum events in nature.The "will", which defines what we are, is the catalyst that collapses the wave function into one discrete, non-local event from a myriad of possibilities. According to the principles established by Bell's non-locality theorem, this state vector collapse travels out into the universe at large, and always maintains a link to our individual and collective minds.As a bonus, Walker has answered another mystery as deep as consciousness itself--the nature of time.Time is real and asymmetrical.It is the irreversibility of the state vector collapse that gives time its arrow.
This is without exception the most satisfying and believable description of the naure of consciousness I have read to date.This work is a bit difficult at times for the non-scientist, but in the end patients pays off.With great effort he has made the concepts of the principles of "indistinguishability" and "non-locality" understandable, and he has brought us to a definitive link between mind, time, and nature.
Even so, I found his distinctions between consciousness, thought, and "will" a bit confusing if not contradictory at times.But he has something very important to say about the nature of mind. And, as a result of his thorough understanding of quantum theory, he has come closer than previous scholars to finally nailing down the nature of consciousness.
Running parallel to his main thesis is a delightful reminiscence of his high school lover who died after graduation in the summer of 1952.Excerpts from his diary and rememberances of the lost love of days gone by, make Walker's work both a scholarly and endearing tale.
This review by David Kreiter Author of "Quantum Reality: A New Philosophical Perspective"
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