Three physicists walk into a bar … I mean, they participate in a panel discussion about the existence of the multiverse. There was one for it, and two against, with three different perspectives

Michio Kaku has become a science popularizer and is on the physics fringe with string theory, belief in alien visitations, and outlandish claims about the benefits of quantum computing. He claims that the multiverse explains quantum theory, but offered no way to test it in a scientific way. But hyperbolic predictions make for engaging pop science.

The human being, in Kaku’s perspective, is just an assemblage of matter. A copy of a human being — with all its memories, hopes, dreams, plans — can be instantly created, just from matter, and just because an electron somewhere was “measured”. It is analogous to a human version of mitosis.

Sabine Hossenfelder has also become a popularizer with an often useful youtube channel. She is a materialist and believes in something called superdeterminism, i.e., everything that happens is predetermined. She suspects that there are hidden variables that would overturn the apparent randomness of quantum events. They are still hidden.

Presumably, those variables, hidden away since the Big Bang, can account for all the motions and activities of a typical day in New York City.

Roger Penrose, who is actually a mathematician, is a Platonist. He is convinced that there is a fundamental flaw in quantum theory. I vote for the Platonist. Obviously, if a physical theory gives rise to several incompatible “interpretations”, then it is at best incomplete.

So what to do when three eminent physicists find themselves in a Mexican standoff? A clue came from the astute question about the efficacy of physics: why is the world intelligible at all? They were taken aback by the question, with one claiming that it is just a “given”. Well, then who or what “gave” it?

Penrose, in his book The Road to Reality, came to the conclusion that there are three worlds, only one of which is amenable to physics. In his earlier works, the diagram that illustrates the Platonic realm of Truth, Beauty, and Morality only included Mathematics. From the Platonic perspective, Mathematics is in between the realm of ideas and the physical world. In his diagram, only Truth is related to the physical world. Penrose has enough self-awareness to recognize that any discussion of beauty or morality has no physical explanation; they make sense only in the mental world.

As for the mental world, he recognizes that any universe that can be observed requires the existence of conscious observers. This requirement places many constraints on the physical world in order for conscious beings to exist at all. This is a version of the Anthropic principle even if no one currently knows all the constraints.

Gross manifestation

This segues into traditional metaphysics. In this diagram, existence consists of the subtle state and the gross state, which Penrose calls mentality and physicality. In the next installment, the subtle state will be further broken down, but at this point, only the gross state is being described.

Corporeal World

The Corporeal World is that of our everyday experience, symbolically represented by the elements of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth. This is the world studied by science. Ever since Galileo, at least, science eliminates the sensible experiences of sound, sight, touch, smell, and taste. They belong to the subtle state, or mentality. No fundamental theory of science requires mentality.

As purely physical entities, the science of the corporeal world deals with count, shape or extension, mass, and motion or energy.

Space

The element Ether is also called Space. It is the bridge between gross and subtle manifestation, since space does not exist in the subtle realm. Although you can pick up a rock, or drink water, you cannot find a piece of space. Nevertheless, space is part of gross manifestation because it is actually formed by matter. In other words, things don’t exist in space, but their very existence is space. General relativity demonstrates that a massive distorts the local space around it.

Quantum World

Physics was motivated to find the smallest unit of matter, which was called the Atom. At first, it seemed successful when the basic elements were organized into the Periodic Table. But as physics kept probing, even more elementary particles were discovered. Ultimately, with quantum theory, there was nothing in particular, just potentiality as described by Schrödinger’s Equation. The corporeal world arises when something is measured; what that entails is still not clear to physics. Thus, various interpretations of quantum theory have been proposed to account for it.

Wolfgang Smith has asserted that, with the quantum world, physics has discovered a plane of existence between the traditional Prime Matter and the Corporeal World. That is plausible, since it has characteristics of Prime Matter, yet is physically observable.

Possibilities of manifestation

If, as physicalists believe, everything that exists arises from the measurement problem, then the existence of things, life, consciousness, and thought must somehow be hidden in Schrödinger’s Equation. To date, no one has offered any plausible physical explanation for consciousness or rationality. Yet they are as observable as anything else; actually, the physicist himself illustrates it.

The alternative is to believe in emergent evolution, which is the theory that entirely new properties can arise over the course of time. Obviously, that theory has its own problems, such as explaining the origin of such properties.

In traditional metaphysics, Universal Substance or Prakriti is pure potentiality. All the possibilities of manifestation reside in it. The quantum world is the bridge, then, between Prime Matter and the Corporeal World.

In particular, there is absolutely no physical explanation of the human being. A human being loses and gains matter at every moment, yet the being persists across time. Personal experience demonstrates it. This rules out any multiverse theory. There cannot be a counterpart of a human being in another universe. There is clearly no personal continuity.

Intelligibility

Now we return to the question of the intelligibility of the world. This requires something that transcends the physical world as Penrose noted. The Essence or Idea of things resides in Purusha. Things are known because the idea of the thing is known. Otherwise, the thing is a mere assemblage of atoms, with the same lack of inherent intelligibility as a mound of windblown sand on the beach.

For those who are time constrained, just listen to the three minute introductions of the three panelists.