“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
—Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum science.
One of the strangest myths of the modern age is that science has somehow “figured things out.” People speak as if the great mysteries have been solved and all that remains is to fill in a few technical details around the edges.
We hear expressions like “The science is in.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
The greatest scientists who ever lived were not arrogant. They were humbled.
The deeper they looked, the more astonished they became.
As Sir Isaac Newton famously remarked:
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore… whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
Incidentally, the majority of Newton’s output was on occult and alchemical materials; what we would call today magical and mystical, not rock science, as his fans believe. To me, it adds to his repute as the greatest scientist of all time, though critics of the time were shocked to find this simple fact.
The pioneers of quantum theory were much the same. The deeper they probed into reality, the stranger reality became.
Niels Bohr observed:
“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.”
Werner Heisenberg confessed:
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
Max Planck, founder of quantum theory, went even further:
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness.”
Notice the tone. Wonder. Humility. Awe.
Not certainty. Not smugness. Not the modern illusion that everything important can be explained by a biochemical pathway and a colored diagram.
Take something as simple as a living cell.
Scientists can describe mitosis—the process by which a cell divides. They can show photographs of chromosomes lining up. They can identify proteins involved in the process. They can name dozens of molecular actors.
Wonderful.
But they cannot answer the deepest questions.
Why does it happen? What initiates it? What tells the cell that now is the moment? What summons the various parts into position? What causes millions of molecular components to cooperate in perfect synchrony?
A description is not an explanation.
The two are often confused.
Consider the mitochondria, the tiny power stations within our cells.
Across the membrane of a mitochondrion exists an electrical potential of roughly 150 millivolts. That sounds insignificant until you realize the membrane itself is only about 5 nanometres thick.
Do the arithmetic and the resulting electric field is on the order of thirty million volts per metre.
Thirty million. That is comparable to the electric fields found in lightning discharges. When did you ever read that? Scientists never mention it and many deny it, sometimes vociferously, “Hum. That’s nonsense. It’s not possible.”
In fact every cell in your body contains forces so extraordinary that they would have seemed magical to scientists a century ago.
Take reproduction. Why do sperm race upstream, to get to the egg and why only one can enter? To turn this great mystery of life into a supposed model of chemical gradients is not enough. What INITIATES it?
We can describe chemical gradients, receptor molecules, membrane potentials, signaling cascades and a hundred other mechanisms.
But mechanisms are not motives.
Modern pseudo-scientists think they can turn everything into explanations of chemicals and substance. That’s rot.
Even to say it’s all controlled by energy factors is still not enough. I mean, why do atoms in a teacup know they are in a teacup and so hold the shape of a teacup? Why don’t they just wonder off?
Electricity does a lot of things but what is electricity? WHAT IS CHARGE, actually, and how does it arise? What does the property of MASS mean and how does that come into being, as a property of matter? [mass, please note, is not the same as weight!]
It’s INFORMATION that holds the universe together and causes it to function. But what IS information? It’s been a saying of mine for decades that information implies consciousness but then where does that lead us? That consciousness creates all, NOT factors at work in the physical universe.
Hormones are marvelous chemical messengers. But they are not two-way radios. They carry signals. They do not explain the origin of the signal.
They tell us how instructions are transmitted. Not where the instructions came from.
At some point we must confront the uncomfortable fact that life behaves as though it knows what it is doing.
And that thought terrifies materialists.
The deeper we go, the less we know.
Richard Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century, admitted: “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”
Nobody.
Not then.
Not now.
Not despite all our computers, particle accelerators, satellites and artificial intelligence.
Even to say it’s all controlled by energy factors is still not enough. I mean, why do atoms in a teacup know they are in a teacup and so hold the shape of a teacup? Why don’t they just wonder off?
The answer is INFORMATION.
But now we arrive at the greatest mystery of all.
What is information?
Not bits. Not data. Not symbols. They carry information, yes. But what is information itself?
Information is not a thing you can hold.
It has no weight.
No colour.
No smell.
Yet without it, nothing functions. Everything in the universe appears to depend upon it.
For decades I have repeated a simple observation: Information implies consciousness.
After all, information only has meaning to a knower.
A message implies a recipient.
A pattern implies recognition.
Information and consciousness appear inseparable.
Which leads us naturally to the possibility that many scientists resist but many great thinkers have entertained: Perhaps consciousness produces the universe.
Perhaps matter emerges within consciousness rather than consciousness emerging from matter.
Perhaps what we call physical reality is the visible expression of deeper informational and conscious principles.
John Wheeler, one of the giants of modern physics, proposed the astonishing phrase:
“It from bit,” (it referring to “stuff”, bit referring to information (“bits” make up bytes, which make up everything in your computer and phone).
In other words, physical reality emerges from information.
Well, it’s a bit of a ramble from Prof. But you’ve got to let me hang down my metaphysical hair once in a while! As I said in my book MEDICINE BEYOND, if medicine is based on faulty science, then you’ll have faulty medicine (duh!) Medicine that is dogmatic, silly, out of touch with reality and is self-limiting to a remarkable degree, ie. doesn’t really work. Which is what we’ve got!
I rest my case.
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor
