In Search Of Reality

When I take up a new book I always read its conclusions first. For I have discovered that even difficult books have conclusions that are easy to read and that give a first idea of their content. Of course, I expect my readers to do this also! Indeed, the present book offers them an opportunity for generalizing the method. After having gone over chapter 14 they should preferably look through chapters 5, 2, 13 and 10, or at least some of these (in this or in other orders), before engaging into any thorough reading. The point is that-at appropriate places in other chapters-the reader will find proofs; and, as we all know, all the proofs that are worth something are unavoidably ponderous. Of course, it is good to have them but, again, the most suitable procedure not to lose interest in their development is, I think, to first provisionally grant their conclusions,. in order to see where they lead us to. Then, to study the proofs once we have been convinced that the goal is worth some effort. This is the reason why I suggest that at least chapters 4 and 11 should, on a first reading, be skipped, at any rate, by the "poets"! The problem, a new approach of which is described in chapter 4, did not come to light, at least in its present form, before 1964. The first experi mental investigations bearing on it date back from the seventies.

"Comparative analysis of the philosphical systems of the Upanisads, Advaita Vedanta and various schools of Buddhism."

Using contemporary physics, narrated at a popular science level, Ransford shows why full nothingness--a nothingness within which even the disembodied laws of mathematics would not exist--cannot possibly exist, and what most likely underpins and enables reality.s reality.

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The message of modern physics is that physical reality has, at its frontiers, all the aspects of a transcendent order. At the foundation of things, elementary particles can exert instantaneous long-distance influences on each other, can be meaningfully said to have mind-like properties, and can exist in states which are, as Heisenberg wrote, “not quite real, but between the idea of a thing and a real thing.” Thus, just as dead atoms form living organisms and stupid molecules form intelligent brains, metaphysical entities form physical reality. This remarkable book clearly explains the concepts of quantum physics in order to show how science and spirituality are not separate.

What is Reality? What is the role of human consciousness in the shaping of such a concept? These questions are as old as mankind and gave rise to the MIND-MATTER dualism which preoccupied so many physicists: Schrödinger, Wigner, etc. This book considers the problem within the realm of contemporary physics, and shows that it could be related to that of ultimate entities. The author develops the viewpoint according to which human thinking activities are fruit of the Cosmos and of its combinatorial activity. Ultimate entities, the bricks out of which our universe is made, could be hidden, as a primordial alphabet, in the foundations of the pyramid of increasing complexity, which seems to unfold as a language and to culminate in the emergence of organized and thinking structures. This is analyzed in the context of cosmological screening and horizons (an expression of our lack of access to totality) where macroscopic and microscopic can mingle, where a unification of interactions and a matching of available arrows of time can take place. This context is also that of quantum evaporation of particle-antiparticle like entities, which triggers entropy increase, and of the overlap between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The problem of an (global) origin of the cruising (and evanescent) “Now” is considered. A creative principle (reminiscent of the biological mitosis) is also presented which is the generator of the “event” through breaking of temporal symmetry. In this perspective, time-flow is an emergent concept: Creation of the World is declined priority on the concept of “coming into existence”. Participant to the origin of the World, all (possibly virtual) processes are able to culminate into the phenomenon of consciousness and Self-Awareness.