Wednesday, March 31, 2010


Quantum theory tells us that nothing can be measured or observed without disturbing it, so that the role of the observer is crucial in understanding any physical process. So crucial in fact that some people have been led to believe that it is the observer’s mind that is the only reality- that everything else including the whole physical universe is illusion”

“Because our knowledge of the outside world (if it exist!) comes only through our sense impression, it is only the sensual data of whose existence we can be sure. When we say, for example, that there is a table near us, all we actually know is that our mind has acquired information by way of our brain and our senses that is consistent with the postulate of a table… a quantum theory based on consciousness, however, goes further that this: the very existence of an external universe, or at least the particular stat it is in, is strongly determined by the fact that conscious minds are observing it.”

 - Alistair Rae, Quantum Physics: Illusion or Reality?