Abstract
The central thesis in this chapter is that we are moving toward acceptance of the proposition that the universe must be viewed as a quantum system not merely in its early stages but at all scales and times. If this thesis is correct, the epistemological situation confronted in the quantum domain, which the principle of complementarity describes and comprehends, must also be invoked in the study of the largest system known to us—the universe. The new epistemological situation that results could also serve, in our view, to resolve some now seemingly irresolvable observational problems associated with the big-bang models of the universe. Since this more narrowly scientific argument can best be appreciated by those with a background in astrophysics, we have chosen to place it in an appendix.
In the world of quantum physics, no phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a recorded phenomenon.
—John A. Wheeler
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Notes
David N. Schramm, “The Early Universe and High-Energy Physics,” Physics Today, April 1983, p. 27.
R. Brent Tully, “More about Clustering on a Scale of 0.1 c,” Astrophysical Journal, 1987, 323, p. 1–18.
Alan H. Guth and Paul J. Steinhardt, “The Inflationary Universe,” Scientific American, May 1984, p. 116. Also, John D. Barrow, Q. Jl R. Astr. Soc., 1988,29, pp. 101–117.
See, for example, Menas Kafatos, “The Universal Diagrams and Life in the Universe,” in The Search for Extraterrestrial Life: Recent Developments, ed. Michael D. Papagiannis (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Co., 1985), pp. 245–249.
Ibid. Also see Menas Kafatos, “The Position of Brown Dwarfs on the Universal Diagrams,” in Astrophysics of Brown Dwarfs, ed. M. Kafatos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 198.
Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
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© 1990 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
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Kafatos, M., Nadeau, R. (1990). The Emergence of a New Vision: The Unfolding Universe. In: The Conscious Universe. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-0360-2_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-0360-2_9
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