Original subtitles

Above the entrance to the Platonic Academy of Athens, we are told,

... was an inscription, which read:

... "that no one ignorant of Geometry enter here."

The plain of this ancient Geometry was conceived of as a void,

... as something which had the potential to receive existence,

... only by the act of generation.

It begins, then, with the signal point.

Only two instruments exist for the constructions of the Euclidian Geometry:

The first is the straight edge.

... which allows the line to come into existence.

The second is the compass,

... which brings the circle into existence:

... by the act of rotation,

... enjoins the source to the perimeter.

We will refer to this simple construction as the "cosmic icon".

This icon represents the cosmos,

... as proceeding from God, as the source and center of creation.

Expanding across an intermediate domain to the corporeal world in which we live our lives.

Beyond that, lies the chaos of outer darkness.

Where then that the particles and fields of Physics enter the picture?

Where do these entities fit into the cosmic icon?

And how in the end to we get from these particles and fields,

... to the world...

... in which we live,

... and move,

and have our being?

"The builds keep on building...

... the tearers down keep tearing down...

Killers keep on killing...

... and the dead keep coming around...

In the world of Albert Einstein,

... there is no solid ground... to build on.

But the builders keep on building...

... looking down, down down down...

One way up!

One way up!

I want to tell you...

... how I met Wolfgang Smith.

... and how he's changed my life.

I hold him in very high esteem...

And if I can bound your opinion,

... I think he's a man who combines the knowledge of modern science to this level.

As well as a traditional Physics,

... and such duality and after that, specific Catholic theology...

... and early Catholic Philosophy,

... is very rare. Probably there's no one more like him.

When they say this, sometimes I hear this,

"No, maybe science has its limitations."

They don't know what they're talking about, because Science is limitation.

Without limitations, there's no Science.

And they say: "Ah, you think this is a table, but in fact this is a... bunch of particles."

Anywhere, we can invert this.

"See, this bunch of particles...

... you think it's a bunch of particles, but in fact it's a table."

It's not just in Physics, it's in everything. Everything is conspiring to what the Physicist would call it singularity.

When things just break down and they can't go on the way they have been going on.

We all knew it was coming.

Every pillar was whupping at once.

Political,

... financial,

... religious,

... military.

And of course...

... scientific.

We are approaching...

... a very singular moment in History. That doesn't happen often.

Looking back,

It is as if we were hypnotized.

And we were.

No one understands quantum theory.

In 1985, in a book entitled "Quantum Reality",

The Physicist of the name Nick Herbert reviewed a startling fact...

"One of the best kept secrets of science is that physicists have lost grip on reality." Nick Herbert

On denouncing to the general public that has been for the past century an ongoing quest...

... among top ranking physicists...

... to determine what precisely the findings of quantum theory entail regarding the nature of the physical universe.

A multitude of competing theories have been advanced,

... which strikes the uninitiated as ranging from the more or less weird...

... to the patently absurd.

The classic notion that the universe is made of atomic particles...

... which calls back all the way to Democritus...

Has proved to be untenable.

Which is to say,

Physicists really have lost their grip in reality.

"The Quantum Reality Problem"

The great arc of human history of the past four centuries...

... has been characterized by a stupendous project:

... to reduce the world to quantity.

Quantum Physics or foundational science will reduce the world to quantum particles.

Evolutionary Biology will reduce living organisms to aggregates or such particles,

... resulting from random, stochastic and deterministic processes.

Post-post-Einsteinian cosmology...

... would reduce the cosmos itself to...

... random fluctuations...

... in the quantum vacuum.

The reign of quantity is reaching its full measure.

Which turns out also to be its "reductio ad absurdum".

It's time to take stock of what's been following us.

Time to break the spell.

Wolfgang Smith was born in 1930, in Vienna.

Graduating from Cornell University with majors in Physics, Mathematics and Philosophy,

... at age 18,

... he obtained his Masters degree in Theoretical Physics at Purdue University,

... before moving on to help lay the foundations...

... for the reentry prom,

... during his work as an aerodynamicist,

... at Bell Aircraft Corporation.

After obtaining his PhD in Mathematics,

... from Columbia University,

... Smith held faculty positions at MIT, UCLA,

... and Oregon State University.

He's well-known in traditional circles through his books...

... including "Cosmos and Transcendence",

... "Teilhardism and the New Religion",

... and "The Quantum Enigma".

His unique background as Mathematician,

... Physicist and Philosopher,

... and, crucially, he's outside of status, without bond to any establishment of our time,

... provide the vantage point from which Wolfgang Smith...

... is able to identify...

... what turns out to be the Achilles' heel...

... of the present scientistic worldview.

Mathematical Physics received its first definitive formulation...

... in 1687,

... with the publication of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia.

And from the outset,

... it was tacitly assumed...

... that material objects...

... were made of minute undecomposable entities thorough atoms.

It was moreover understood...

... that these were too small by far,

... to be detected by means then at the disposal of experimentalists,

... yet the expectation was right,

... that in time the discovery would be made.

In 1897,

... the anticipated breakthrough was in fact achieved by Physicist J. J. Thomson.

In his discovery of the electron,

... the catch, however,

... is that it turns out not to be a Newtonian atom.

That is to say, an authentic particle,

... but a so-called quantum particle.

Which is in truth,

... not a particle at all.

One source of so-called "quantum paradox",

... was a so-called "superposition principle",

The fact namely...

... that states of a physical system...

... could be added...

... which means for example...

... that the single particle could in essence multi-locates.

... could be in any number of regions at once.

Inasmuch as observed that the actual particle obviously...

... does not multi-locate.

A radical discrepancy between the observed and unobserved physically universe came into view.

The senior quantum theorist, Niels Bohr,

... responded to the impasse by affirming, soberly,

... "there is no quantum reality",

... "there is only a quantum description."

What, however, rendered this position most unsatisfying...

... is the fact that it had by now become clear...

... that there is no classical reality as well.

The timeworn notion of atoms...

... as undecomposable bits of matter,

... had by now proved to be chimerical.

What then is the quantum enigma?

It resides in the fact that there are no actual particles in the quantum world.

That actual particles come into existence...

... abruptly...

... in the act of observation or measurement.

So,

... what is there before measurement?

Not a thing.

"The concept of substance has disappeared from fundamental physics."

It thus became a pattern that the act of observation or measurement...

... is a profound and inherently unpredictable impact...

... upon the physical system itself.

An undeniable fact...

... which physicists could not explain...

... and which moreover gave rise...

... to unending speculations...

... on the part of the philosophically interested minority...

... which however includes some of the most illustrious names...

... beginning with the famous Bohr-Einstein debates...

... in 1927.

It's hardly surprising that some quantum theorists proposed that ordinary logic does not apply in the quantum domain.

What is needed, they say, is a "quantum logic".

Another strategy to read the world of quantum paradox...

... proposed by a cadre of intrepid theorists...

... is to stipulate that every measurement...

... of quantum particles...

... splits a universe into as many copies of itself...

... as there are possible outcomes.

A notion that marks the birth...

... of the so-called "multiverse theory".

Ah, there is that word again.

Multiverse.

While it is true that the means by which the multiverse of the cosmologists generated...

... is entirely different than the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics...

... first proposed by Hugh Everett,

... often associated with his thesis supervisor John Wheeler,

... when one looks carefully will concede that IS the same solution to the problem.

The multiverse, embodying large and small things in the scale,

... constitute an appeal to an infinitive world we cannot observe,

... in order to explain the one that we can.

For across the century thus, the quantum reality problem responded a plethora of proposed solutions,

... which seem to have only one thing in common:

... it strikes the non-specialist...

... as quite absurd.

Some more, admittedly, and some less.

For the first time in human history (it appears),

... civilization has succumbed to a worldview based on a...

... science, which in the world's view defining,

... no one understands.

What is even more remarkable, is that this is too a benefit...

... is the fact which... no one understands.

"We have abolished the true world. What has remained?

The apparent one perhaps? Oh, no!

With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one."

By the time the quantum reality to patent...

... past the half century mark without...

... resemblance of a resolution in sight.

It became apparent that something was seriously a miss.

It was at this point that Wolfgang Smith became interested in this.

Fateful conundrum.

It was in the 90's...

... after had for sometimes perused this curiously detour,

... that I was took by what proved to be a decisive recognition.

They came evident to me that all this quantum reality theorists,

... unbeknownst to themselves,

... had assumed to the highly dubious premises of Rene Descartes.

The supposition, namely, that the real splits neatly, into two disjoint domains,

... in external world consisting of so-called res extensae or extended entities,

... and a internal or subjective domain, pertaining to so-called res cogitantes, or thinking entities.

I felt that I had discovered the source of the difficulty:

... the hidden premise,

... which has all along bedeviled the quantum reality debate.

It doesn't mean that the physicists are conscious of that.

May many of them perhaps have not even heard of Rene Descartes.

But unconsciously they have, and I would almost say too amen...

But unconsciously they have, and I would almost say too verily...

... absorbed that philosophy.

What is characteristic, the external domain, and the way defines it is...

... that it is populated with objects...

... which can be described completely...

... without residue, in mathematical terms.

So therefore, everything which pertains to the realm of qualities,

... had to be eliminated from the external world,

... and are relegated this qualitative "dramatos",

... to a subjective world...

... which refers to res cogitantes, thinking entities.

So, as it were by force,

... it eliminated the qualities,

... pushed them over, out of the way, so to speak...

... in order to produce a world...

... which would be ideal...

... for the mathematical physicist.

And this is what enabled them to take a corporeal object...

... a piece of stone,

... a piece of organic tissue, or whatever may be and say:

"This is nothing but quantum particles."

He could not say that,

... if it is not assumed,

... that the qualities, for example the color red,

... is subjective.

"The Reign of Quality and the Clockwork Universe"

With the qualities thus banished to the realm of the mind,

... the way was open...

... for the establishment of the age of the reign of quantity.

When equations could describe everything from...

... the orbit of the planets to the fall of the feather.

A...

... almost clockwork conception of the universe of cause and effect.

The Newtonian or clockwork universe's paradigm...

... is based upon the notion of "bea mater".

The paths of which interact through forces of attraction or repulsion...

... so that the movement of the whole,

... is determined as a disposition of the parts.

To be sure,

... the concept of "bea mater",

... a Cartesian res extensa,

... turns out to be philosophically problematic,

... and ultimately untenable in light of the discovery of the quantum domain...

... the physical universe.

Despite its philosophical invalidity,

... the success of the Newtonian paradigm...

... has proved to be spectacular.

From the publication of Newton's Principia in 1687,

... to the 20th century,

... this conception was looked upon not merely as a way of knowing,

... but as the master key to unlock of of reality.

Even fallacious premises...

... can play a legitimate role as a paradigm.

Especially in the early stages of an evolving science,

... where oversimplification, so far from been an impediment,

... constitutes a prime necessity.

One can see in retrospect...

... that Newtonian physics...

... needed the drastic oversimplification implicit in its paradigm...

... to lift off the ground,

... that in fact even an inkling of the so-called quantum world...

... would have had a paralyzing and indeed fateful impact upon its thorough development.

As the same token, however,

... it needs to be recognized...

... that paradigms can indeed outlive their usefulness,

... and turn into an insurmountable barrier...

... to the further development of a science.

Planck, Black Bodies and the Bridge

In the first two decades of the 20th century,

... experiments began to raise serious problems for the Newtonian conception of physical reality.

It is longer beknown, for example, that, black bodies...

... made to glow for instance in furnaces,

... having no color of their own,

... ought to glow blue,

... according to Newtonian classical Physics.

However,

... as any steel worker knows,

... they glow cherry red.

... at temperatures around 1300°F.

The deviation from predicted behavior attracted the attention of a hitherto unknown Physicist named Max Planck,

... in 1900.

Planck decided to calculate the emitted energy E,

... or vibrating particles,

... is multiples of "hu",

... where "u" is a frequency of the emitted radiation,

... and "h" is a constant to be determined.

When "h" was allowed to go to zero,

... Planck obtained classical results:

... the black body ought to glow blue.

However,

... if "h" was a assigned one particular value,

... the calculation would match observations perfectly.

Thus, Planck showed that furnaces glow red,

... only if they emitted energy or particles satisfying this hereto unknown formula.

What finally stands at issue in the black body problem,

... is to connect the frequency of an emitted wave,

... to the energy of a vibrating particle.

And what is needed basically,

... is a bridge from the particle to wave description of physical reality.

Since then,

... the constant "h",

... has turned up again and again,

... as the bridge between the physical universe conceived of as particles...

... and the physical universe conceived of... as waves.

The implications of this recognition turned out to be world-shattering.

The worldview of classical physics has been broken irretrievably.

And this was recognized by an almost forlorn Albert Einstein:

"All my attempts to adapt the theoretical foundations of physics to these new notions failed completely.

It was as if the ground had been pulled out from under one,

... with no firm foundation to be seen anywhere upon which one could have built." Albert Einstein

"Heisenberg on Heligoland"

"In the experiments about atomic events we have to do with things and facts,

... with phenomena that are just as real as any phenomena of daily life.

But the atoms or the elementary particles themselves are not as real;

... they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things and facts." Werner Heisenberg

It was Werner Heisenberg...

... who evinced the deepest insight into the enigma of quantum reality.

What Heisenberg tells us about quantum particles...

... proves to be as enlightening as it is enigmatic.

Quantum particles are something called...

... midway between being and non-being.

And as such,

... are reminiscent of Aristotelian potentiae.

Thus, every place in the corporeal world...

... as a physical,

... physicists discovered that the physical does not actually exist.

As Lord Kelvin had recognized long ago,

... the defining fact concerning physics at large...

... is that it proves to be none other than the science of measurement.

Now, in keeping with this basic recognition,

... Heisenberg realized...

... that this need for to jettison the classical Newtonian description of physical systems...

... and replace it by a mathematical formalism the world had never yet seen.

The breakthrough came in July 1925,

... when a 24-year-old Heisenberg found himself alone on bleak North Sea island of Angolam,

... where he had gone for reasons how?

He is the one who really broke through...

... and developed this brand new Physics.

In light of this basic recognition, he postulated...

... that what exists in general prior to measurement are not the actual values of an observer but only their probabilities.

Moreover, by a stroke of genius,

... he perceive that these probabilities...

... could be represented in terms of the square array of numbers turned a matrix,

... and thus was born a brand new formalism for quantum theory,

... known as matrix mechanics, which breaks radically with the classical.

We return now to a cosmic icon...

... and situate this newly discovered quantum world of potentiae...

... at the boundary between our corporeal world and the outer darkness.

Its measurement, that affects the transition from potency to act...

... from the chaos of multi-locating particles...

... to the world of corporeal being.

"With smiling certainty, he once said to me:

... 'I was lucky enough to be allowed, once, to look over the good Lord shoulder while he was at work.'

That was enough for him, and more than enough." Elisabeth Heisenberg

Most importantly, the new theory works like a charm.

Since then, it has been used for over 90 years and in thousands of experiments has never yet failed.

By all accounts it is the most accurate mathematical physics ever conceived by man.

These quantum mechanical calculations typically attain levels of accuracy...

... unheard of in pretty quantum days.

Reflecting the fact that notwithstanding our inability to comprehend in non-mathematical terms what is going on...

... we are dealing no longer with macroscopic approximations,

... but with mathematical structures on a foundational play.

But...

... since these structures consist exclusively in quantities,

... they cannot bring us into the world where we perceive qualities:

... green grass and red apples and the songs of birds.

Qualities pertain to essence and thus to being no less.

The fact is that nothing bereft of qualities can actually exist,

... which is precisely the reason why the physical universe proves to be sub-existential...

... a domain made of mere potentiae.

Heisenberg realized...

... that the quantum world while being certainly more than merely a description...

... still fall short of being an actual world in which we live and move...

... and have our being,

And still, he struggled to the end of his life to understand exactly what this relationship might be.

Why, for example, an actual cat cannot be both dead and alive?

Heisenberg appears to have come within a hair's breath...

... of resolving...

... the quantum enigma.

But in the end...

... it appears to have eluded his grasp.

The question is:

Why?

The prime example of a scientistic belief...

... is doubtless a well-nigh universally accepted notion...

... that corporeal objects are made of fundamental particles.

What confronts us here is a residual Cartesianism.

Unconsciously presupposed within the scientific community...

... and since passed on to the public at large...

... by way of schools and universities and of late, the media.

The universally accepted notion...

... that corporeal objects are made of fundamental particles.

Here is the crucial assumption...

... that may explain why Heisenberg failed to go all the way...

... in resolving the quantum enigma.

Is like breaking through a fortified wall...

... and then you can go all the rest of the way, there's nothing there...

... and suddenly you stop.

He arrived at the position that although a single quantum particle...

... is... near potentiae...

... when you have enough of them, like 10 to the power 36...

... then you are in act,

... as if the mere aggregation of potencies can put you into the real world.

After all,

... how can a mere aggregation of potentiae,

... howsoever many potentiae you care to lump together,

... somehow become a thing?

A chair upon which we can sit, or a tree under which we can take shade?

There is something more involved,

... and that something more is tantamount to what the Platonists term "essence"...

... and Thomistic philosophy knows as "substantial for".

Smith's grounding in traditional philosophy,

... coupled with his hard-won ability to transcend the sight guides to contemporary civilization,

... enabled him to unwalk the quantum paradoxes in a way no one has been able to do before.

The story begins surprisingly,

... when he was 14 years of age,

Well, in a word, I started to think.

Before that age I had various interests...

... and passed through various phases, of course, but...

... thinking in the true sense of the word started I would say almost abruptly at the age of 14.

I remember it was quite exasperating for my mother,

... because very often I would be in my room...

... and she would call me to dinner...

... and I said "I can't come now, I am thinking".

By the time Wolfgang Smith applied to Cornell University at age 15,

... his newly discovered propensity for thinking...

... and pointed him in a very specific direction.

On this application form we were asked...

... what we wanted to major in,

... and I said Physics.

And then the question was: why? Why did you choose that major?

And...

... I remember to this day my response.

I wrote down:

"I want to study Physics because I believe that Physics is the key to the understanding of the universe."

Needless to say I've changed my mind in the interim.

During his time at Cornell University,

... Wolfgang Smith encounters the "Gitanjali",

... of Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore,

... and the encounter changed the future course of his life.

Some of these lines of the Gitanjali are still in my head.

And I will tell you one of these lines just to give you a little bit the flavor.

He says:

"Drunk with the joy of singing

I call you friend who art my lord."

That struck a chord,

... I mean I've never encountered anything like that...

... and it just touched me deeply,

... and from that moment on, I realized...

... that there is a mysticism that is there are ways of entering into higher spiritual realms...

... which,

... are wonderful and in...

... fundamentally far greater...

... far more wonderful than what we have here with our ordinary five senses as all...

... I was in that way converted to something at that point...

... and so,

... philosophy became to me at that point...

... a kind of holy quest.

I understood it literally as Philo Sophia,

... love of wisdom,

... so there's wisdom, and this is not just mental acrobatics this is something mystical,

... spiritual,

... and there is love.

... is not just the academic occupation.

So,

... I studied Mathematics, I studied Physics and I studied Philosophy, but my heart was in Philosophy.

From that point,

... not for a second anymore,

... could I regard Physics as the key to the secrets of the universe.

Upon graduation,

... Smith was accepted into Cornell's graduate school at age 18 for a fellowship in Philosophy,

... but the fellowship proved short-lived indeed.

After three weeks,

... I couldn't stand it, I couldn't stand the milieu,

... and I went to the chairman of the philosophy department saying:

... "I'm giving up my fellowship, I'm going away."

Because to me Philosophy was Philo Sophia,

... and these people, they were not a bit interested in Sophia,

... nor was there any "Philos", any love in their heart at all.

It was professionalism.

It was cold, it was dry, it was all up here...

... and I felt not only that I'm not interested in that,

... I felt it was a profanation...

... of something that is fundamentally sacred.

That felt like shaking the dust off my feet.

While harboring a romantic notion of perhaps heading to the Pacific Northwest and working as a lumberjack,

... Wolfgang soon found out that his older brother Jerry had other ideas.

There are times in one's life...

... when the hand of Providence enters,

... and you can... When that happens you can recognize it. There's no question about it.

So, what happened is I sent a letter to my brother who was studying at Purdue University...

... telling him of my intention.

He immediately went to the chairman of the Physics department at Purdue...

... and told him that I have this brother, he's smart but is a little crazy please read this letter...

And professor chairman Weddit when he was finished he said:

"Tell your brother I want to see him here in my office Monday morning."

"He... Must start his duties as a teaching assistant in the department."

And just like that, the world lost a lumberjack, but gained a mathematical physicist.

Smith ultimately chose to focus on Mathematics,

... obtaining his doctorate from Columbia University.

After a year and a half fellowship at the M.I.T.,

... he accepted a position on the mathematics faculty at UCLA beginning the next academic year.

In the meantime, he took the opportunity to fulfill a dream:

I went to India and the Himalaya region for seven months,

... and I can really say in retrospect this was an absolutely decisive event in my life.

It turned out very differently from what I had imagined.

I imagined that I would climb this ladder,

... this Jacob's ladder,

... I did not.

However,

... I sat at the feet of those who had,

... and I caught a glimpse of their magnificence.

I approached these great people and the whole tradition, I approached it with reverence.

'Cause I like to say I approached with folded hands and it was just natural to me.

And this is, I believe, why...

... I didn't go away empty-handed...

... while I was traveling in India,

... there was one question I had,

... an equation which intrigued me very much,

... and I posed it to practically all the great saints or sadhus I met.

And it was this:

I wanted to know about that supreme state by whatever name you want to call it

... and I wanted to know whether anything of the human is left.

Is there anything of this man that survives, that as end, actually, is taken of into the supreme state?

And the answer which I got invariably is: no.

The state of affairs reminded me of that famous poem by Edwin Arnold which...

... speaks of the dual drop slipping into the shining sea.

And that happens there's nothing left of the dual drop.

The sea gets no bigger.

And the dual drop disappears.

Now...

... there was something in this that...

... I could not really accept.

It intrigued me and I was not satisfied.

Smith returned from India and took up his career as a professor of Mathematics,

... first UCLA and finally at Oregon State University.

But he returned a changed man.

Coming back, there was no longer a Western man in the contemporary sense.

There's an outer life as a professor of Mathematics...

... and then there's an inner life,

... as somebody who wants to as best he can deepen his understanding...

... of the great metaphysical traditions of the world.

So,

... Wolfgang Smith seemed prepared to spend the rest of his years...

... in his secluded home in the beautiful forests of Oregon.

Deeply influenced,

... but ultimately unsatisfying by,

... the knowledge imparted to him in India.

And that's where Thea comes in.

Something very momentous happened.

A beautiful young woman came into the Mathematics department to get her PhD in Mathematics.

And...

... we were... We became acquainted...

And...

... by the time she left after getting a doctorate in...

... was about ready to...

... begin a very fine career at the University of San Diego.

I decided that I would like to marry her...

I proposed...

And... She accepted...

And... Thus starts a very brand new life.

Thea...

... was a deep, deep... Catholic.

She was deeply rooted in her Catholic faith that was in her blood and in her bones.

And, when we were married I was not...

I had been raised as a Catholic but...

I had drifted away and I was now in a different kind of spiritual world...

And...

Thea never forced anything on me...

Unbeknownst to myself, she,

... in company with a very wonderful Franciscan monk,

... brother Giovanni,

... they were praying daily that I would return to the faith.

And so then, it happened.

I had been reading St. Augustine's commentary on the Gospel of St. John,

... the biography of St. Catherine of Siena.

These two books converted me.

So I returned to the Catholic faith...

... and incidentally, it soon became clear to me that now...

... this nagging question...

... which I asked all over India,

... and which was never answered,

... to my satisfaction...

... now it was answered.

... because Christianity is a religion of the incarnation.

God...

... became man.

So that, man could become God,

... as the Fathers have said.

So that means...

... that by way of the incarnation...

... our humanity...

... does not need to be disintegrated, dissolved, like the jew Job.

But it can be deified - "deificatio"...

... this is the term the Fathers have used.

And there is yet one additional moment to stay for which we have to thank Thea.

It was precisely at that point...

... that my life started to become productive.

During my Hindu... days, if I may put it so,

... I had no interest in writing.

It made no sense to me to write.

Why should you right?

But as soon as I returned to my Catholic roots,

... I became interested to write

And in all this process...

... I recognize now more clearly than ever...

... Thea was there.

She was...

... in a sense my inspiration and I can really say my strength.

It's hard to explain, she...

... she was a powerful spirit. And I, as it were leaned upon her.

So...

... she really is very much a part of this adventure...

... and...

... I am very happy that my first book and my last are both dedicated to her.

Such was Wolfgang's background and formation,

... when he approached the quantum reality quandary some 20 years ago.

Having realized from his study of Platonism and the metaphysical traditions of the world...

... that the universe comprises not just quantities, but qualities as well,

... and having come to understand, moreover, that qualities have primacy...

... that in fact they resembled a light from higher spheres shining into this world.

The starting point of his reflections could be none other than a critique of the Cartesian bifurcation.

The educated strata of our society...

... have been condemned to a chronic state of schizophrenia.

This is schizophrenia!

One moment the grass is green the next moment it is not, that's exactly what schizophrenia is.

So that is not a healthy condition.

And I realized they're not woke at all.

So once we had corrected all these errors based upon residual Cartesians...

... we were delivered from schizophrenia.

We could then be normal human beings...

... totally sane,

... and yet do Physics.

So that is one thing that came out of this work,

... namely the clear ontological discernment between two ontological pains:

... the corporeal plan which we perceive, which defines the world in which we find ourselves,

... and then this physical universe,

... which we can say as half discovered, half constructed by the physicist,

... that's another world.

What if was Wolfgang's return to his Catholic roots that launched his writing career?

Ironically, it was a Muslim.

A traditionalist.

A perennialist.

Indeed, a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad,

... who turned out to be his early champion,

... publishing his works repeatedly over the years in the journal "Sophia".

We went to Washington to sit down with this great philosopher and champion of Wolfgang Smith.

Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Wolfgang has told me so many stories about Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who championed Wolfgang's work for decades,

... on the questions that have perplexed humanity for the past century,

... since the discovery of quantum physics.

Allow me to begin this discourse in God's name.

Because is God who made the good friends whom I meet.

So, we meet in Him.

I first ran across in an essay, at first.

I began looking him up on the books of his which were available.

I began to read, and after reading a few pages...

... was very impressed...

... with the combination of depth and spiritual awareness that could be found in his writings.

I saw through the writings that we clicked, so we became friends and began to correspond.

I've never met him.

Even now, but we speak by the telephone, exchange many letters...

... have many ideas...

One of the things that I must thank you for...

... is that when Stephen Hawking published his very famous book in 2011,

... "The Grand Design",

... you immediately sensed that this was a sign, that the appearance of this work...

... was something that could not go unanswered...

... and I have to personally thank you for that.

It's that's how I first found out about Wolfgang Smith.

I saw that asset...

... that you were the most famous philosophers in the world.

You have probably got a whole index...

... with the best names and numbers in the world.

But you picked Wolfgang to reach out.

I wonder if you can tell us what it was that led you to sort of assign this task Wolfgang Smith.

Like Wolfgang, I began to study the Sciences.

I studied Physics and Mathematics at the M.I.T.

And I was a very gifted student of Physics.

I was the number one in my class...

... but by the second year...

... on the sophomore...

... we're led right through Physics.

The great Greek philosopher Parmenides...

... says that "I'm a physicos",

... in Greek.

In my mind, without realizing, as a 18-19-year-old young man,

... that's what I wanted to be.

I want to be that kind of physicos,

... and not this kind of physicist.

But I stuck it out, I got my degree, I went to Harvard...

... also studied Geology, Geophysics and then Philosophy of Science...

But I wanted to have this background.

I wanted to be able to criticize modern science...

... on the basis of the traditional science and cosmologies and worldviews and philosophies.

That I discovered through a very wide reading...

... and I know enough on modern science not to be rolled over.

If not, they say you, "you don't know what you're talking about" and so on and so.

I just started all over to Quantum Mechanics and...

... and a very advanced Mathematics,

... I was not going to be fooled.

I was looking for a voice,

... or a thought,

... who'd be able to revive the role that a man who knows Science well...

... can play...

... in reviving the philosophical and metaphysical aspects of knowledge...

... and critiquing...

... the monopolistic tendencies of modern science.

In addition to Seyyed Hossein Nasr's influence...

... in introducing Wolfgang Smith's work into traditionalist circles throughout the world...

... Olavo de Carvalho,

... a Brazilian thinker,

... has recently introduced Wolfgang's work into circles including physics professors and students...

... interested in Smith's resolution of the quantum enigma.

A few hours south of Washington D.C.,

... we visited Olavo de Carvalho,

... in his home in the beautiful Virginia woods.

We are so very pleased to welcome Prof. Olavo de Carvalho,

... a man who has made original contributions...

... to the restitution of authentic philosophy...

... and a man who has had the remarkable achievements...

... to launch and found and sustain an actual school of philosophy.

... which seems to be attracting thousands upon thousands of young people in Brazil,

... who are answering the clarion call...

... at this critical moment in history.

How did you put this together, how did you make this happen?

My real interest was the education of young people;

... not children, I am not gifted to educate children,

... but young people from, let's say, 15 to 25 years.

And...

... this is my dream to educate these people to the depths of high culture.

Because, this did not exist anymore in Brazil.

The high culture has been totally destroyed.

I started this Internet course and now I have 5000 students.

There is not, never a... course of Philosophy thus so big in the whole history of the world.

Plato had not 5000 students!

In Socrates and Aristotle, nobody!

I can tell you that when we launched the Philos-Sophia Initiative website...

... for Wolfgang's work,

... we noticed suddenly the, like, huge percentages of the visits that we were getting...

... and a very large number of the really best comments...

... that we would get during a philosophical discussion...

... were coming from Brazil!

... and... that's the level!

It is possible to take unique historical circumstances...

... and undertake an outreach to young minds...

... to young people,

... and give them the opportunity to encounter...

... the work of Dr. Wolfgang Smith,

... the work of men like Olavo de Carvalho,

... men like Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

And give these young people a chance to reconnect back...

... to the entire panorama of the wisdom of humanity.

The first time I hit the name of Prof. Smith...

... was in 1986, at Dr. Rama's house.

He showed the book and I read it in two days.

And I got absolutely fascinated.

... because it said everything I want someone to say!

It was a complete refoundation of Western science in new basis.

Pulling again, giving new life to very important tools that had been forgotten for 5 or 6 centuries.

"The Measurement Problem"

"Today the only way left is 'upwards'!"

The resolution of the Quantum Enigma by Wolfgang Smith...

... commences with what might be termed the rediscovery of the corporeal world.

The world's perception, where the grass really is green,

... but once we have broken free from the Cartesian bifurcation,

... were left once again, with the dichotomy, with two domains,

... the corporeal world, in which we live and move and have our being,

... and the physical universe.

The world... as conceived by the physicist.

It turns out that there exists one and only one function...

... as, from the corporeal to the physical domain,

... which can serve as a bridge,

... one which is in fact in constant use since otherwise, no science of the physical would be possible.

As...

... is this the function which to every corporeal object X...

... assigns the physical object SX,

... which is none other than the corporeal object X as conceived by the physicist.

SX represents the quantitative side of X,

... to the exclusion of all else,

... but has been jettisoned, to put it in Aristotelian and Thomistic terms,

... are precisely the qualitative attributes of X and its substantial form.

Brilliantly, Wolfgang Smith,

... separates the corporeal world from the physical world.

Establishes a great contribution...

- Yes.

... to show that the corporeal world,

... first of all, is not simply...

... that based on, you might say, on the reduction of the physical world, is another set of being.

That's a very, very important contribution, an ontological jump.

One can aggregate as many "potentiae"...

... as one pleases!

Very of themselves cannot bring us across the bridge,

... from the realm of potential...

... to the realm of act.

From the physical quantum row to the corporeal universe.

What actually stands at issue...

... is a fundamental and hitherto unrecognized world of causation:

vertical causation,

... which in fact is more basic than physical causality.

It does becomes apparent that the resolution of the measurement problem,

... the so-called phenomenon of data-affecter collapse,

... requires two new conceptions:

First the idea of a corporeal, as distinguished from a physical entity,

... and second,

... a distinction between two fundamental modes of causality,

... what Smith terms horizontal and vertical causality.

The first of which operate in tide by way of the sequence of events,

... and the second of which operate instantaneously,

... as if... From above.

"No one on either side of the Copenhagen debate seems to have realized...

... that the role of quantum particles is not to bestow, but to receive being." Wolfgang Smith

"Bell's Theorem and Non-Locality"

Unrecognized so the fact may be, vertical causation has also made its appearance...

... in what is arguably the most profound discovery of Physics.

What has come to be known as "Bell's Theorem".

What Jon Stewart Bell discovered,

... in flat contradiction to what physicists have believed since the days of Newton,

... is the existence and quasi-ubiquity of so-called non-local correlations,

... which take place instantaneously,

... without a transfer of energy.

To convey the gist of what stands at issue,

... let us consider a pair of what are termed "polarization correlated photons":

B and Q.

T means that if one measures the polarization of one of these photons,

... the polarization of the other is thereby determined as well.

Now,

... consider an experiment in which the photons P and Q are sent off in opposite directions

... as far as one might please,

... to stations A and B, respectively.

And suppose that the polarization of P is measured as A.

Inasmuch as the photons own a polarization correlated,

... this measurement will instantly determine the polarization...

... not only of P, but of Q as well.

The effect of this measurement on Q cannot therefore be ascribed...

... to any field-based transmission.

Now, what confronts us in the phenomenon of non-locality...

... is none other than what we have termed vertical causation.

The deeper and more extensively one probes into the secret workings of nature,

... the more the ubiquity of vertical causation will come to light.

It emerges that the notion of a mechanistic universe,

... which has bedeviled all civilization since the days of Descartes and Newton,

... has now been irrevocably disproved .

"Everything we know about Nature is in accord with the idea...

... that the fundamental process in Nature lies outside space-time...

... but generates events that can be located in space-time." Henry Stapp

The existence of vertical causation was confirmed in 1998...

... by a mathematician named William Dembski,

... whose story we need to tell next.

"Dembski's Theorem: Complex Specified Information and Vertical Causation"

In 1998, this hitherto unknown mathematician startled the erudite world...

... with a theorem that has revolutionized our scientific understanding of causality.

Dembski introduced an idea which proves to be crucial:

... the notion of specified information.

Whereas every event produces information,

... Dembski sharpens his concept drastically by two innovations:

First, the notion of a detachable target,

... followed by the imposition over probability bound,

... large enough to exclude accidental hits.

The information generated by events need to fill these two conditions,

... as termed complex specified information,

... in a word, CSI.

Is information generated by an event,

... which, like an arrow striking a bull's eye,

... needs a highly restrictive condition.

With these basic definitions in place,

... William Dembski was able to prove one of the most remarkable theorems in the history of Mathematics,

... namely, that no combination of natural causes:

... random,

... deterministic...

... or stochastic,

... can produce CSI.

Neither a book, nor even a simple artifact,

... let alone the genome of an organism,

... can be produced by horizontal causes alone.

The vertical causation necessary...

... to resolve the quantum enigma proves to be ubiquitous.

The discovery of vertical causation as operative throughout nature,

... from the measurement of a quantum system,

... to biogenesis,

... to the making of a water pot...

... has "de iure" invalidated the post-Galilean worldview and brought it to an end:

The period known as the Enlightenment.

"The War on Design"

The scientistic war on vertical causality...

... has in fact assumed two corresponding forms,

... epitomized, respectively, by Darwinian biology and Einsteinian physics.

The Darwinist hypothesis...

... is actually been rigorously disproved on the strengths of Dembski's design inference theorem,

... which establishes once and for all...

... that the tons of complex specified information, or CSI,

... contained in the genome or even the simplest living organism,

... cannot be generated by horizontal modes of causality.

Period.

Darwinism, thus, is a scientific theory came to an end in the fateful year 1998...

... when William Dembski established his spectacular result.

The fact that the scientific establishme nt at large has reacted to this fact...

... by obfuscating the issue,

... and that a judge even in a court of law...

... has in effect ruled against Dembski's theorem...

... all this,

... thought-provoking as it may be in its own right,

... constitutes basically a sociological phenomenon...

... beyond the scope of our present focus.

We contend next that Einsteinian physics...

... wars against cosmic vertical causality.

Einstein, in his famous 1905 paper,

... introducing special relativity,

... mentions the, quote,

"... unsuccessful attempts to detect any motion of the Earth relative to a light beam."

Only a few years before, the famous Michelson-Morley experiment...

... had attempted to measure the orbital motion of the Earth around the Sun,

... and to the great perplexity of the Physics community,

... had failed to detect any kind of motion.

Because of this failure,

... the equations of Physics were rewritten,

... to explain this apparent lack of orbital motion...

... of the Earth.

What motivated Einstein evidently...

... was the conviction...

... that the Earth, or equivalently reference frame stationary was expected the Earth,

... could have normal preferential status.

That, in other words, there can be no design or architecture on a cosmic scale.

This is a radically egalitarian physics,

... which equalizes not only reference frames,

... but even the fundamental cosmic bounds of space and time...

... by combining them into an abstract, mathematically conceived "space-time".

"Axis of Evil: Is the Universe Arranged Around Us?"

In 2014 I was involved in the release of the film entitled "The Principle",

... which dealt with the fundamental assumption of standard cosmology, the so-called Copernican principle,

... which simply states that we are in no special or central location with regard to the large-scale structure of cosmos.

"The Principle" deals with the "stunning" recent observational evidence...

... and of all the benefits which have come to me from making that film,

... the greatest, I think, is that it is the mean which I met Wolfgang Smith.

I interviewed him for the very first time,

... and he had some very interesting things to say about "The Principle".

Your film,

... comes into this... moment of history...

... and captures it...

... captures it...

... in a masterful way.

You have first of all the documentary evidence, you can see the microwave background...

... colors show the different temperature regions,

... the so-called axis of evil...

Well, the fact that this microwave background...

... turns out to have a well-defined axis,

... negates the fundamental assumption...

... on which all of our Astrophysics has been based for the last 60 or more years:

Number one and number two,

... the fact that this axis lines up with the ecliptic of our solar system,

... is almost an insult following injury!

It takes us right back to pre-Galilean cosmology!

Our solar system is central!

So, this has enormous significance, I mean...

... you could not possibly overstate...

... the scientific and philosophical and cultural impacts of this discovery.

There is an absoluteness, something can be completely right about this.

Absoluteness about the direction of space.

About our experience of space from the Earth,

... of dimensions of space,

... and this is to the great credit...

... of Wolfgang Smith.

The board is now so clearly, the vertical always symbolizes transcendence.

You know, even ordinary thorough atheists...

... when they are happy, they do like this.

They don't go like this.

When you're happy, you never go like this.

Even if they think they're atheists.

Is inbred in our nature, is needed in our nature.

"To be sure, the geocentrist outlook commends itself to simple and untutored minds...

... (as we have been reminded often enough),

... and moreover accords with the understanding of sages and saints.

What is new - and has sent shock waves through the scientific establishment -

... is that empirical findings in the domain of astrophysics...

... have begun irrevocably to side with the aforesaid simpletons." Wolfgang Smith

The so-called Copernican principle,

... brought into play at a later date,

... to found the Einsteinian astrophysics,

... proves to have been the driving force behind relativistic physics from its inception.

The question remains...

... whether it is compatible with the most spectacularly accurate physics...

... ever conceived by man, namely quantum physics.

Now,

... it happens...

... that this question has been investigated by the brightness theoreticians...

... for well over half a century.

An enterprise, moreover, which has engendered the most...

... extravagant displays of mathematical acrobatics the world has ever seen,

... including 11 dimensional spaces,

... which fall into the ambiance we normally behold in ways to subtle...

... for ordinary minds to brass.

At all to no avail.

And by now at last the verdict appears to be in.

Do what you will...

Einsteinian physics and quantum theory cannot coexist.

As physicist Michio Kaku explained in "The Principle":

The theory of the big is relativity.

It gives us black holes, and big bangs, the things we can't see with the naked eye in outer space.

Then there's the quantum theory.

The theory of the atom.

Now the juncture between the two...

... that's where all that's fail.

Usually in Science,

... if you're off by a factor of 2, or a factor of 10,

... we call that horrible.

We say that something's wrong with the theory. We're off by a factor of 10.

However, in Cosmology,

... we're off by a factor of 10 to the 120.

That is 1 with a 120 after it.

This is the largest mismatch between theory and experiment in the history of science!

And so at last we face the conclusion...

... that the most famous and lavishly taught scientific theory in modern history...

... turns out to be untenable.

It is important to note that in this regard quantum theory constitutes the pole opposite...

... of Einsteinian physics.

For it is clear that the physics of Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg...

... has imposed itself upon the scientific community...

... not on the strengths of ideological premises,

... but on the basis of incontrovertible findings that transgress the assumptions of Newtonian physics.

It should surprise no one, therefore,

... that in the end it is quantum theory that prevails.

It is nature, after all, that has the last word.

"... reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." Richard Feynman

I've told you how I met Wolfgang Smith.

Now I suppose it's time to tell you how he has changed my life.

When I first met Wolfgang,

... I felt like I was coming into contact with a world that has passed away.

A man who is equally at home in the ancient schools of philosophy...

... and the quandaries of quantum physics...

... and it's truth.

Wolfgang may very well be one of the last representatives of an earlier time when physicists...

... still felt themselves limited...

... by their ability to experimentally test their theories with the intention...

... of possibly falsifying them.

A long step from current multiverses theory.

We do live at a moment...

... where one great arc of history is closing...

... and something entirely different shall certainly arise.

And lastly...

... my friend Wolfgang Smith...

... has taught me to never ever forget...

... that the cosmos and everything in it at every second...

... is being both brought into existence...

... and held in existence...

... by something...

... incomparably higher...

... than those aspects of reality,

... which can be reduced to an equation.

Do I love Prof. Wolfgang? I love him, I love him, and is the least I can say!

I believe he is a great heart.

He's very sincere.

Very honest, and he is telling you the true the best he can.

Men like this you can find one or two in a century!

Please, listen to him, because your life depends on it!

The life of this nation depends on it.

The realization that nature is not, after all,

... soundless, senseless, colorless.

There is a hurling of material endlessly meaningless...

... this alone is taught to us in principle...

... the perennial wonder of the world,

... from the song of birds and the murmur of trees,

... there's a silent call of things...

... that enter not into the minds of men.

We should rejoice and be profoundly grateful...

... that the world proves in fact be vastly richer...

... and incomparably more sublime...

... than the pundits of the flat land have taught us to believe.

Then that, finally...

... it points beyond itself.

... to something great still.

Above the entrance to the Platonic Academy of Athens, we are told,

... was an inscription, which read:

... "that no one ignorant of Geometry enter here."

The great project to reduce the world...

... to what can be measured and operated upon by the instruments and procedures of physical science...

... is reaching its end.

And in reaching its end,

... finds itself confronted by the ancient wisdom of humanity,

... which wisdom,

... modernity continues to be perfectly persuaded,

... has been banished forever to a pre-scientific edge of myth and superstition.

As it turns out,

... not so much.

The cosmos transcends the domain of physics, and cannot be reduced to it.

The disintegrating dream of a theory of everything...

... might not be quite yet the nightmare stage for the theoretical physicists...

... but it is not that far all from that.

The notion of an integral cosmos...

... read as an icon, as a sign, as an harp...

... varnishes the key...

... by which we return from an infinite multiverse,

... concerning which we can never know a single truth...

... we return as last,

... to the real world.

"DEDICATED IN LOVING MEMORY TO THEA, WHO GIVES THIS FILM ITS HEART."