Friday, August 25, 2023

Science validates the metaphysical idea of yin-yang?

I thought this was rather cool. Using a technique called "biphoton digital holography", Canadian and Italian scientists have captured an image of the pattern of light interference between two entangled quantum particles in real time. And it looks for all the world like ... not a swastika, not the Virgin Mary, but the yin-yang symbol.

Now, I know there is a lot of gobbledy-gook in that sentence, and I don't propose going into any explanation of quantum theory, much less of how biphoton digital holography works, because it is well above my pay-grade. It kind of looks like a bad April Fool's prank, but I think it is all above-board - it was published in the obscure but respected journal Nature Photonics (part of the Nature family of journals). I'm just wondering what repercussions this will have for theology, even geopolitics. 

The idea of yin-yang comes from ancient Chinese philosophy (Taoism and Confucianism), and represents the underlying duality of all things - light and dark, good and bad, fire and water, liberal and conservative (joke, that one) - and the ultimate oneness that these apparently contradictory forces can hide, in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts.

Yeah, I know, essentially gobbledy-gook, but then so appears much of quantum theory or quantum mechanics. Wave-particle duality, quantum tunnelling, quantum entanglement, coherence, superposition, the uncertainty principle, Schrodinger's cat, "spooky action at a distance"? It's pretty out-there stuff, and really hard to understand or explain. Wasn't it the great American physicist Richard Feynman who said that, if you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you probably don't understand it, or words to that effect? And yet, over the last hundred or so years, it has become the bedrock of our understanding of physics and the universe around us.

I can just imagine the New Age movement latching onto this new discovery, as it has latched on to so many other things that serve its purpose (whatever THAT might be!) over the years. And I can even imagine Xi Jinping trying to use it to his advantage, as proof of Chinese moral and intellectual superiority. 

No comments: