I’ve been doing a little reading about quantum theory. After watching What the Bleep Do We Know?, I went down to Borders and found Quantum Theory, A Very Short Introduction by John Polkinghorne. I read Polkinghorne’s The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker several years ago and really enjoyed it. As its title implies, “Quantum Theory” is a very brief look at the basic ideas, questions, and mysteries surrounding quantum theory. Polkinghorne does a great job of not getting too technical, while at the same time communicating the “cloudy fitfulness” of quantum theory. If you’re looking for an entry point into this subject, give this book a try. I’ve got The Elegant Universe sitting on the bookshelf and I plan to crack it open sometime in the not too distant future as well.

Polkinghorne concludes “Quantum Theory” with the following:

It seems appropriate to close this chapter with an intellectual health warning. Quantum theory is certainly strange and surprising, but it is not so odd that according to it “anything goes”. Of course, no one would actually argue with such crudity, but there is a kind of discourse that can come perilously close to adopting that caricature attitude. One might call it “quantum hype”. I want to suggest that sobriety is in order when making an appeal to quantum insight.

We have seen that the EPR effect does not offer an explanation of telepathy, for its degree of mutual entanglement is not one that could facilitate the transfer of information. Quantum processes in the brain my possibly have some connection with the existence of the human conscious mind, but random subatomic uncertainty is very different indeed from the exercise of the free will of an agent. Wave/particle duality is a highly surprising and instructive phenomenon, whose seemingly paradoxical character has been resolved for us by insights from quantum field theory. It does not, however, afford us a license to indulge in embracing any pair of apparently contradictory notions that take our fancy. Like a powerful drug, quantum theory is wonderful when applied correctly, disastrous when abused and misapplied.

Here’s my favorite quote from “Faith of a Physicist”:

Mistakes by natural theologians in the past do not preclude the possibility of success in the present. The science of 1750-1850 made plenty of mistakes too (phlogiston, caloric), and had ideas which were eventually fruitful but in a somewhat different form from that envisioned by their orginators. As a scientist I am often struck by theologians persistent fears of getting it wrong. …a willingness to explore ideas which might prove mistaken, or in need of revision, is a necessary price of scientific progress. One would have thought that the intrinsic difficulty in doing theology would encourage a similiar intrepidity. At times that has been so, but not always. I am not, of course, denying the existence of many wild flights of contemporary theological fancy, but saying within its more sober core I detect a degree of disinclination to take intellectual risk, particularly where it involves interaction with another discipline.