The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key 3rd Edition [Paperback]

In this little book, Wolfgang Smith argues against Cartesian bifurcationism, which distinguishes sharply between the inner realm of perceptual phenomena and the external, "noumenal" world. Bifurcationism, says Smith, lies at the very heart of the ontological paradoxes of quantum theory which have prompted many leading scientists to concur with Richard Feynman's cry that "...no one understands quantum mechanics." It is not the mathematical formalism, but rather the prevailing Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, that renders quantum "strangeness" ontologically incomprehensible. Hence, Smith replaces bifurcationism with an ontology that has its roots in Aristotle and Aquinas, showing how such an ontological overhaul can dispel quantum mysteries such as those exemplified by the Schrodinger's cat experiment. I found this book to be a refreshing and insightful challenge to methodological orthoxody in physics, and it offers a very helpful appendix in which Smith (former UCLA and MIT professor of math) gives a somewhat technical but readable introduction to quantum formalism. Smith's ideas are too sophisticated to be dismissed--he forces a reconsideration of this traditional ontology by showing how it contextualizes scientific hypotheses in such a way as to bolster their explanatory power, especially at the quantum level. I highly recommend this book.

As a graduate student in Physics, I can attest that this is an great book. Smith, who has evidently made much effort to study eastern and western philosophy in addition to physics, is able to do something so many other writers fail to do. In this volume, he succesfully separates good science-quantum mechanics-from bad metascience-the Cartesian dualism that splits the mind forever from the body, in addition to the embarrasing pseudo-philosophy of many physicists). If anything, this book shows how fallacious it is to assume that science has totally replaced philosophy. There are always metaphysical and logical assumptions underlying theory of natural science, even if we refuse to admit as much. The only caveat is that someone should have some familiarity with basic topic in quantum mechanics before trying to read this book.

It is a strange but true fact that quantum mechanics is both the most experimentally verified and the least understood branch of modern physics. It is used as the theoretical basis for everthing from modern weaponry to consumer electronics and no one can seriously question its predictive value but explaining it is an entirely different matter. It's central reliance on indeterminism and nonlocality fly in the face of both "common sense" and the philosophical basis of modernism that had held sway since Descartes. Many have argued that it calls for a complete switch in paradigms for how we understand the universe and calls for both a new view of physics and a new underlying logic.

In The Quantum Enigma, philosopher/physicist Wolfgang Smith takes an entirely different approach and claims the understanding of the challenges of quantum theory are not to be found in a new philosophy but in a new application of the perennial philosophy best exampled in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. Attempts to apply the foundational insights of the great classical and scholastic philosophers to modern physics is not necessarily new - some such work was done during the Neo-Thomist movement that faded in the wake of Vatican II. However, this work was largely done by those who had a background in philosophy but were not well versed in the revolution going on in physics. Smith, on the other hand, is both a philosopher and a physicist of note and has a thorough understanding of the issues involved.

Smith's provocative thesis is that the problems of quantum theory evaporate once one understands their cause. He places this in the implicit assumption beginning with Descartes that there is a bifurcation principle operating in the underlying assumptions of modern physics that separates those properties of objects considered quantitative and those that are qualitative. The former are considered objective and thus in the proper realm of science while the latter are treated as subjective and discarded. Smith contends this Cartesian distinction is completely artificial and yet so ingrained (even among those who reject Cartesian dualism) that no one notices. The result is that the "objects" of the physicists are not the objects of our experience (although there is a correspondence).

Throughout the book, Smith reworks quantum theory's implications by keeping the weeding out the unwanted assumptions of the bifurcatiin principle and taming many of the theory's odd assumptions. There is certainly no return to a purely deterministic outlook but this is not a drawback as it was a byproduct of post-Cartesian modernism and not the reworked Aristotelianism that he supports.

There are a few minor issues to be taken. It is not clear exactly how such classical qualitative properties such as "color" are to be thought of as objective or whether a new class of qualitative properties would arise. Without a better fleshing out of this part of his theory, there will no doubt be little support within the scientific community. Still, his insight that the mathematical constructions of the physicists are not isomorphic in all properties to the objects of experience must be given stong consideration.

For those interested, Smith adds a mathematical introduction to quantum theory as an appendix but this may be safely ignored by those not so inclined. Overall, Smith seems to perhaps herald a new meeting of philosophy in the classical/scholastic tradition and modern science and perhaps can breathe some new life in a worldview that has been largely neglected even by Catholic philosophers who have historically been its greatest defenders. Regardless, his work is a powerful challenge to the most basic assumptions of modernist science.

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