Quantum science (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, September 10, 2009, 22:56 (5551 days ago) @ George Jelliss

Just this week I obtained two more books by Victor J. Stenger that I ordered. One is The Comprehensible Cosmos (2006) which is rather like Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality in that it is half mathematics, but has the mathematics in Supplements in the second half instead of at the beginning, and of course it's only 340 pages in large type as compared to 1094 in small type. 
> 
> On page 135 he has: "... maximum entropy is estimated to be 10^122 for the visible Universe." and "Roger Penrose has argued that the total entropy of the Universe should be dominated by the sum of the entropies of all the black holes within, which he estimates at 10^100. Based on this estimate, currently we have at least 22 orders of magnitude of room available for order to form." [I've substituted ^ in place of raised power notation.]
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> The other is a new book Quantum Gods (Subtitled Creation, Chaos, and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness). This sets out to argue against what he calls "Quantum spirituality" and "Quantum theology". It is non-mathematical and goes quite deeply into the history of how various people, like Fritjof Capra, Deepak Chopra, John Hagelin, F. A. Wolf and the Maharishi, have exploited quantum theory for mystical purposes, and others like John Polkinghorne have used it in theology. He mentions NDEs and OBEs briefly but doesn't go into any detail. Also I notice there is no mention of Sheldrake.
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> I may mention some more when I've read them more thoroughly.-I spent some time this summer with "The Comprehensible Cosmos," though in my case I haven't really read the main text but read a huge chunk of the mathematical supplement. I think you pounced on me earlier for making a claim about needing a good level of math to understand physics, this supplement does a great job of explaining why I make that claim. Quite a bit of precision is lost in laymen's translations of some of the more esoteric equations such as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Some physicists claim you don't need the fancy math, but I don't know how you can understand some of the mathematical descriptions outside of the language of math. Otherwise I'm looking forward to your comments.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"