{"type":"video","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Dailymotion","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.dailymotion.com","title":"Does Quantum Physics Confirm The Occult?","description":"Rather than discrediting the occult, recent scientific discoveries in quantum physics seem to reaffirm a place for mystical ideas. But the author cautions both sides not to jump to hasty conclusions.Question: Have the scientific innovations of the past century made occultism obsolete?Mitch Horowitz: Science, as it reaches the public mind, has both served to discredit and unintentionally reaffirmed mystical ideas.\u00a0 During the age of the Enlightenment, certainly people that were interested in astrology divination, alchemy, mesmerism, were forced out of royal courts and mainstream universities\u2014this light shone throughout Europe and people were interested in Newtonian mechanics never mind the fact that Newton himself also had a lifelong interest in alchemy.\u00a0 But the irony was that some people who were at the forefront of the Enlightenment were enamored of the religious experiments that occurred during the renaissance.\u00a0 But, regardless, their experiments and their rationalist philosophy removed occultism forever from respectable courts and universities.\u00a0 That was mirrored to a degree in America\u2014although institutions were much more independent in America.\u00a0 But if you move forward several generations, as you get into the 20th Century, really for the past 80 years, and really right now in our generation, experiments in quantum physics have reignited people's religious or mystical imaginations.\u00a0 It's almost impossible to overstate the strangeness and the peculiar nature, the astonishing nature of what's been found in quantum physics experiments, say over the past eight decades.\u00a0 On an atomic scale, scientists are finding that particles seem not to appear until they're observed.\u00a0 It's suggestive of all kinds of incredible and extraordinary things and quantum physicists are rightly concerned that new agers, or people like me, should not be seizing upon these things to say, \"Aha!\u00a0 Look!\u00a0 Evidence of everything the renaissance occultists were interested in.\"\u00a0 Because quantum physicists themselves don't understand this material.\u00a0 It's the challenge of our age.\u00a0 It's the mystery of our age.\u00a0 And the danger is that it gets overstated in this colloquial way and everybody uses it to say, \"Well look, physics itself is proving that our minds create reality,\" which is one of the cherished beliefs of occultism, particularly in this country as the mental healing movement and the positive thinking movement began to develop from the mid-19th Century and spread out across the entire country. That is a hasty conclusion because, first of all, all the quantum physics experiments have occurred chiefly on the atomic scale and we are taught to believe that nature's laws are consistent.\u00a0 But we still need proof because when you're seeing something that extraordinary in a particle accelerator, it doesn't mean that's what's gonna happen to me in a corporate board meeting.\u00a0 And I encourage people not to make that leap.\u00a0 At the same time, I encourage quantum physicists not to disparage the new agers who are intelligently interested in this material.\u00a0 They should be interested in it.\u00a0 We all should be able to have a conversation without exaggerating what's going on.\u00a0 It's a very precious time and moment, because also in physics department all across this country and universities, there is a generation that was educated in the 60s and 70s that is attaining positions of leadership and is able to have some influence over funding.\u00a0 Some of these physicists educated in the 60s and 70s are more open to the question of quantum physics than the previous generation.\u00a0 The previous generation felt that physics is not concerned with meaning.\u00a0 Yes, you can observe extraordinary things in a particle accelerator, but leave it to the metaphysicians, leave it to the philosophers to discuss the meaning.\u00a0 That doesn't belong in the lab.\u00a0 The younger generation of physicists, classically trained, rigorously rational folks responds to that and says: \"Well, but what is physics for if not to explain the nature of reality?\"\u00a0 So I think in this generation we are going to see a blossoming of experiments and funding in the area of quantum physics.\u00a0 And that's really something to watch.\u00a0 That's the mystery of our age. Recorded on October 4, 2010Interviewed by Max Miller","author_name":"Big Think","author_url":"https:\/\/www.dailymotion.com\/bigthinkofficial","width":480,"height":269,"html":"