Dear Theophilus, 

In our last two letters we have seen that there are echoes in the behavior of nature which resonate with what our faith teaches about God. And this is not surprising because it is God's energies which uphold and permeate creation and we should be able to meet God in creation and see that His behavior is consistent with His being. We have to keep in mind that there can be no opposition between the God we meet in Revelation and Scriptures, and the God we meet in creation.

We will continue our discussion of the tiny aspect of matter by looking at what is referred to as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. What this principle does is to link up two quantities such as, for example position and momentum, and show that if one of the quantities is measured very accurately then the other becomes inaccurate. Several points of clarification. First of all, this principle is not limited to just the position and momentum but applies to many more coupled quantities. Secondly, this principle does not arise from the limitation imposed on us by our instruments but is an inherent part of nature.

The way this principle is often illustrated is through the following example. Suppose that you want to locate an electron and determine its momentum, which is another way of saying its energy. To see something, you have to interact with it through a photon, which is the unit of light, like an atom of light. But, because the electron is so light, the photon, by colliding with the electron will displace it and therefore change the electron's location. If we try to avoid this problem and use a photon of low energy we run into another difficulty. Lower energy photons have larger wavelengths and therefore a larger error is introduced in locating the electron because the longer wavelength sweeps with a wider scope thereby increasing the volume within which the electron is located. Irrespective of what we do, we cannot get very accurate information about both the location and momentum of the electron. This illustration, that is often used to try to explain the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, is a little misleading. It implies that the problem is in our technical expertise. If we were to somehow refine this, if we found ways of interacting with the electron in a more gentle manner, we would bypass the Uncertainty Principle. What we will see in the subsequent discussion is that this is not so. What we will see is that the Principle does not indicate the limits of our technical abilities but it talks about something that is inherent in nature. Nature is mysterious and guards her hiddenness. But, by looking at challenges to the Principle of Uncertainty, we will see that our reductive approach where we break systems down into their simplest components, is faulty and misses an aspect of systems that is important.

Einstein could not accept Heisenberg's Principle and felt that as we got a deeper knowledge about matter, the problems pointed out by Heisenberg would disappear. Einstein proposed the following scenario in an effort to challenge Bohr's statement that we do not know anything about a body except what we learn through an interaction with it and through this also offer a challenge to the Uncertainty Principle. Consider two electrons. One is stationary and lets denote it by S and the other, denoted by M, is moving with a certain velocity at a specific angle, collides with the stationary electron. After collision, the two electrons fly apart far enough so that there are no force interactions possible whether electrical or gravitational, and we will now analyze the situation. We can look at the electron that was initially stationary, S, and measure its motion accurately and from the law of conservation of momentum, we could talk precisely about the momentum of electron M. Using the same kind of approach, the position of electron M could also be determined accurately. And note, this information is extracted without any interaction with electron M thereby challenging the proposal by Bohr that we can speak only about our interactions with objects.

Within six weeks of the publication of Einstein's challenge, Bohr countered with an analysis that was to challenge some of the most dearly held assumptions of classical physics. What Bohr stated was that in fact the two electrons being studied, S and M, were not separate entities but parts of a total system that included both of them. By interacting with one of the electrons, you interact with the other, as well. What was surprising about all of this was that the interaction between the two electrons could not be described through the accepted parameters of charge or any other force since they were too far away from each other. With this, Bohr was challenging the accepted reductionist line that the component parts of systems could be considered in isolation from each other. This is not the way that nature behaves and instead points to the existence of an additional factor that comes into play, which we, for the lack of a better term, could call a principle of wholeness which is not based on any of the accepted physical forces. There is something unusual operating here.

What we have talked about above was in the area of thought experiments where we simply discussed the possibilities of various situations. In the last decade, Bell, a physicist proved mathematically that Bohr's views are in accord with nature. And within the last decade or so actual experiments were carried out by a group of physicists led by Aspect and their results show again that Bohr was right - there is a mysterious interconnectedness between the constituents of the universe.

From this, we see that a new characteristic is involved in describing complex systems and this characteristic is different from anything that we can measure or detect or analyze using our standard physical methods. This opens the door to a different and richer understanding of concepts that have baffled us for so long such as that of love and life and spirit and other intangible qualities. In the past there were no ways of tying them into our conception of the universe. Now we see that we cannot rule them out of hand. This applies especially in the case of humans who now should not be viewed merely as a sum total of all the physical identifiable systems. If there is more to a simple system consisting of two electrons than the separate electrons behaving independently, then surely we can extrapolate this to humans and state that there is more to humans than just their constituent parts.

Again, let me underline an important point. None of this proves the existence of spirit or love or any other quality that we associate with humans. But, what it shows is that the universe has provisions for permitting these to exist and when we talk about our soul or spirit, we are not talking about some fantasy which is totally unconnected to the way creation behaves, but reflects the behavior of nature at its most fundamental level.

We are experiencing a revolution in our idea of knowledge. The concept that we have had, and which has been very powerful, is that knowledge which gives man the greatest mastery over nature. This has been the yardstick that we have used to evaluate the validity of our knowledge. In the ancient world, there were two main actors on stage, God and man, with the former dominating. Starting with the eighteenth century into this one, again two main actors are seen on the stage of the world but this time, they are man and nature with man being the lead actor. It is unfortunate for the second view, that God was seen as threatening man's sovereignty over nature and this may be one of the hidden motives for some scientists being totally averse to any mention of God acting in the world. The newer vision that we have, one that is more complete is the presence of three actors on stage - God, man and nature. And there should not be any incompatibility between any of these if God is taken as a true creator, as He is in Christianity. By looking at some of the major recent discoveries in science, we see that in fact there is room for all three participants in the universe and this is the main reason why we have looked at relativity and quantum mechanics.

In the next letter, I would like to wrap up our discussion by considering a few of the other accepted aspects of our faith to see if they too stand in accord with what we know of the world.

For now, adieu, and I remain,

Yours truly,

Bar-Abbas