An Unusual Anthropology of High Energy Physics

by Steve Mizrach

Introduction

The ostensible history of science is one of increasing rationality, separating itself from its irrational parent, religion. Yet the interface between science and mysticism has been paradoxical, to say the least. Scientists claim to be upholders of materialism, cold rationality, objectivity, and strict empiricism. Yet, in the most rigorous realm of science - high energy particle physics - mysticism abounds and flourishes in a fertile climate. High energy physics is governed by equations that are incredibly precise and determined - constants have been isolated to multiple decimal places, at unthinkable powers of ten (i.e. the Planck constant); intervals of time and space are used that are so infinitesimal as to defy any notion of reality (i.e. the nanosecond); precise probabilitistic equations tell scientists exactly when an unstable radioactive element will decay (its half-life.) The 'particle zoo' contains a taxonomy of quarks, muons, leptons, baryons, hadrons, and other entities most of us will never see, with all their properties categorized perfectly - spin, charge, mass, polarity, binding ability. And yet, in this so well calculated and controlled field, high energy physics, mysticism abounds. Why? What does this tell us about the true cultural framework in which science is 'done'?

The Weird World of Particle Physics

Many high energy physicists point to the extremely weird nature of the subatomic realm, and the fact that it does not correspond to any of our commonsense notions. Indeed, relativity has yet to penetrate the world of common sense, after 80 years, they point out. How many of us really can accept, without denying it innately, that the faster we go, the more our rulers shrink and the slower our clocks go? The reason why many physicists use the language of mysticism, they claim, is because there is nothing in our ordinary language for the events they observe in the particle accelerator to correspond to. And, it is true that there is nothing in our language to correspond to the principle of complementarity, for example. How can anything be a wave and a particle at the same time? It would be like "a watermelon suddenly turning into a sonata," says one physicist. How can it be that the momentum and position of something cannot ever both be determined precisely?

Another says, "it would be like trying to board the bus based on relative probabilities of where it would be within 40 miles... but that's where the electron is ... a big smeary dumbbell." How can it be that an object moves from A to B without passing through the distance between the two points? Yet, due to 'quantum tunneling', electrons jump around this way between energy levels, all the time! "Don't ask me to explain it... just take my word for it," says yet another high energy physicist. And if you ran a film of particle collisions backwards on a projector, you could not tell the difference, because at the subatomic level, all events are time-reversible; the 'arrow' of time has nothing to correspond to, say the physicists, as it is something that is macroscopic, manifesting through entropy, and not found in the high energy world. And another physicist tells us: "Just imagine the lid jumping back on a jar and everything flying back inside of it as it turns right side up. THAT's what the particle world looks like to us." The subatomic world, it appears, is one where hocus-pocus is going on all the time.

But there are other reasons why high energy physics is laden with mystical metaphors. One is that the physicists are working with temperatures in their cyclotrons that approach the energy of the early universe. Like the medicine man or the writer of Genesis, physicists have stumbled into the hoary world of cosmogony; and, of late, they and the cosmologists have also been pressed into doing eschatology as well. They are struggling with fundamental questions that every culture has sought its own resolution for: Does the world have a beginning? Does it have an end? But perhaps the other reason has less to do with high energy physics' relationship with Creation than with its relationship to Apocalypse. When he witnessed the atomic bomb blast at Trinity (the Catholic symbol of Divinity), Oppenheimer quoted the ancient Hindu text known as the Mahabharata . Unable to find an adequate description for something that "shone with the lights of a thousand suns," Oppenheimer could only quote the descriptions of the ancient wars of the Hindu gods and daevas found in that text. High energy physics, by providing the research necessary for the Hydrogen Bomb, has given man the ability to not only destroy himself, but as Carl Sagan has noted, "the planet and its biota as well." The twin polarities of Creation and Destruction meet in high energy physics, and it is not surprising that in their interlocking web one can find mysticism.

Physics and the Quest for Order

And in high energy physics, we meet not just with the Beginning and the End, but with the riddle of Preservation as well. High energy physics has known for several decades that there are only four fundamental forces that govern the universe (four being, like three, an intensely mystical number, connected to the Hindu mandala) and make manifest everything we see in it. And physicists ever since Einstein banged his head against a blackboard have been searching for Grand Unification Theories to explain how, as Paul Davies puts it, the four forces might be "one Superforce present at the beginning of time." All sorts of gauge symmetries, tensor modifications, and hypotheses have been devised to try and explain the riddle of why there are four and only four forces and how they are all related to each other and how they might have arisen out of one single force. These theories predict all sorts of incredible things - superstrings, quantum black holes, 11-dimensional universes, inflationary cosmoses, parallel universes. It is not surprising that one physicists has characterized the search for GUTs as being like "looking for G-d."

Therefore, as we move to explore the intricacies of the connections between high energy physics and mysticism, we must remember that high energy physics is a field of great paradox. Within one of the smallest things conceivable - the atomic nucleus - lies one of the greatest and most powerful forces man has encountered, nuclear fusion energy, which has driven the sun for the past several billion years! In particular, our examination will touch upon four areas. First, we shall look at the interface between science and mythology, classical and otherwise. Next, we shall examine the links between science and mysticism, Eastern and Western. Then, we shall examine the uneasy coexistence of science and 'superstition.' Finally, keeping in mind Arthur C. Clarke's dictum that "a science sufficiently advanced from our own would be indistinguishable from magic," we shall look at the ways science and magic are coming together. The one thing that will certainly not survive this voyage, however, is the image of the dispassioned, nonchalant, 'by-the-books' scientist. The men (and the women) we will encounter freely admit that they are working in the cutting edge of scientific knowledge, convinced that they, like their predecessors, are heading for parts unknown, with many surprises, shocks, and serendipitous occurences ahead.

Muons and Mythology

It might not seem all that surprising that mythology is prevalent in the scientific discourse of high energy physics. After all, the astronomers named all the objects of the solar system after classical deities and other mythological figures; and Freud, hard-pressed to name the monolithic complex that afflicted modern man, could find no better source than the Greek tale of Oedipus. And many of the military systems developed at physics labs- such as the recently used Aegis, for example - have names from Greek and Roman mythology. But, who knows for example, that one of the lasers at Los Alamos laboratory is named Shiva, the mythological god of the eternal dance in Hinduism; or that other physicists, unable to articulate the dance of particles as they arise and disappear out of 'quantum foam', have nicknamed this the "dance of Shiva"? Or that one of the particle accelerators in Europe is nicknamed "little Prometheus," the Titan who stole fire out of the hands of the gods and gave it to man? For that matter, who would know that many of the names of 'quarks' - a term which comes from Lewis Carroll's books - are coined from phrases used in the quasi-mythological writings of James Joyce? Or that some of the projects performed in linear accelerators in the desert of the American southwest are named after some of the local Native American Hopi deities? Or that scientists, having often characterized the search for Grand Unification Theories as "the search for the Holy Grail," often use names from the medieval romances, such as Tristan or Merlin, for their equipment?

Of course, modern mythology impacts upon the physicists' enterprise as well. The Strategic Defense Initiative program was nicknamed "Star Wars," after the semi-mythical tale of a brave young knight, at one with the 'Force' of the universe, rescuing the fair princess from an 'Evil Empire'. Other physicists explicitly compare their efforts to the attempts to chart unknown territory by the American settlers, and their writings are filled with items of Americana folklore & frontier mythology, names like Paul Bunyan and John Henry. Mircea Eliade defines mythic time as a span set apart from profane time, a time to which profane, linear time must give way. The high energy physicists know that their actions are part of a mythic time, that their discoveries may be immortalized like the discoveries of their Greek predecessors 2500 years ago. That may be why outside of SLAC there is a poster that says "The Place Where Legends are Made."

High Energy Physics Joins East and West

Since Oppenheimer quoted the Marabharatha in the 1940s, the love affair between science and Eastern metaphysics has not ended; its honeymoon is still going on. Physicists like Capra can write The Tao of Physics and claim that "the world of quantum physics probably most closely corresponds to the worldview described by the monistic Eastern religions." Other physicists have written books entitled The Dancing Wu Li Masters and Where Science and Buddhism Meet. Some physicists claim their research leads them to Taoism because its approach to nature as holistic and undivided meets the strange world of quantum physics -- the 'bootstrap model' suggests particles are made up of other particles, and that there are no finally irreducible quanta, a Taoist idea indeed. Yet others are attracted to Buddhism because of its view of the interrelationship of the observer and the observed, a problem posed by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Buddhism has such a pervasive influence on high energy physics that one of the particle symmetries is named the Eightfold Path, which is taken straight from Buddhism's Noble Eight Truths - right action, right speech, etc. Still other physicists are fascinated by the Hindu religion's metaphysics, particularly its trinity of continual creation, preservation, and destruction mentioned earlier. More high energy physicists practice yoga or meditation than any other form of relaxation, including exercise.

Needless to say, many Western theologians are somewhat angry that science, having turned its back on Western metaphysics, has so eagerly adopted the metaphysics of the East. But some Western mysticism pervades high energy physics as well. One form is Pythagoreanism - the idea that number possesses some mystical quality. Many physicists claim that the highly mathematical quality of their work vindicates that the highest reality of the universe is mathematical - that their equations are more real than the things they measure, since there are no commonsense ways to describe the processes they work with, either verbally or visually. One physicist even claimed that he got one idea for a gauge symmetry from a magic square. The physicists also sometimes give lip service to the ancient idea of panentheism - that "everything is alive, conscious, and contains the indwelling of the Divine." Despite the antivitalist stance of science since the discovery of molecular biology, Erwin Schrodinger, physicist, could only "gape at the emergent wondrous phenomenon called life, unpredictable from its components, undescribable from its constituents" in his famous book What is Life? And science also displays the Islamic mystical belief of occasionalism: "that G-d recreates the universe from moment to moment." John von Neumann and other physicists came to the conclusion that "consciousness can be the only agency responsible for the collapse of the wave function." For that reason, many scientists that accept the so-called Copenhagen interpretation subscribe the belief that "the mind, by collapsing the wave function, creates what we observe, from moment to moment."

Science and 'Superstition'

Despite the claim of the famous publication called The Skeptical Inquirer that scientists are "less gullible and more skeptical than the public at large, and must protect the public from its own credulity," it appears that scientists have many superstitions of their own. Like baseball players about to play a game, or Trobriand Islanders about to go fishing, physicists waiting for the outcome of a critical experiment inevitably are at one of those points of 'crucial transition' where 'confidence must be reinforced psychologically,' and like those other humans, they resort to 'superstition.' Many physicists claim that they have their own personal mantra or charm that they recite from time to time. Others report that sometimes they cast the I Ching , a Chinese mode of divination, in the morning to find out how the day's events may unfold. Yet other scientists, despite the firm 'debunking' of astrology, still read their horoscope from time to time for advice. A great number of physicists have even developed elaborate rituals which they perform before a critical event. Linus Pauling, the physicist who claimed Vitamin C as a cure for cancer, and Richard Feynman, who wrote the treatise (among others) Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman! , both claimed that they often had a nightly ritual before an important experiment. Feynman would dance around a favorite hat, and Pauling would change his diet days before the experiment. (Just like the fasting of saints?...)

Other physicists were examined as regards many of the other famous superstitions by The Humanist . They were asked whether they actually had any concern about broken mirrors, spilt salt, walking under ladders, black cats, four-leaf clovers, or dogs howling. The interviewers found sadly that the prevalence of such "rank irrationality" was as prevalent among the physicists as among the "public at large." The interviewers noted, with some puzzlement, that the same physicists who could describe at some length a subatomic event, had no 'rational' description for why they held such superstitions; they could not 'rationally' explain what bothered them about a broken mirror, for example. It did not occur to them that the same 'rationality' might not be employed in both situations, as other investigators such as Tambiah have noted.

Microscopes and Magick

High energy physics also is connected to that inexplicable phenomenon called magic. Newton and Boyle may have dabbled in alchemy and Kepler in astrology, but we are not so naive. Lest people believe that the 20th century arbiters of rationality are incapable of belief in 'hocus-pocus,' I present the case of John W. 'Jack' Parsons, not strictly a particle physicist, but an engineer who was one of the founders of the Guggenheim Areonautical Caltech Laboratory (GALCIT), the predecessor of the modern Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. Jack Parsons was a longtime associate of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Dianetics/Scientology movement. Both were at one times member of the magical order Ordo Templar Orientalis (OTO) - the order of the Eastern Templars - an occult group founded by the 'Wickedest Man in the World,' Aleister Crowley. Parsons helped the development of rocketry in the 1940s by demonstrating that red-fuming nitric acid worked better than other liquid fuels, and can in a sense be called one of the fathers of the American space program. Yet at the same time he was also engaged in a magical project he called the 'Babalon Working,' and would write these incredible words in a book entitled Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword : "Babalon will shine as the ruddy evening star in the bloody sunset of Gotterdamurung, will shine as a new dawn breaks over the garden of Pan." Parsons would die in a mysterious explosion that some said resulted from a chemical reaction of rocket fuel. But others were claiming that his death resulted from an experiment to try and create a homonculus, or magically animated artificial being.

But magical craziness in California is not limited to Caltech. Stanford Research Institute physicists Puthoff, Puharich, and Targ would examine the so-called psychokinetic metal-bending abilities of Uri Geller in the 1960s. Physicists have always been interested in so-called 'psychic' phenomena, and their term for it is psi, the variable which represents an unknown quantity. More high energy physicists believe in psi than almost any other 'paranormal' occurence. Indeed, many physicists have lent support to using their research to try and explain psi, claiming it may have to do with quantum-mechanical properties of the brain. (Physicists' interest in psi is nothing new; Sir William Crookes, inventor of the X-ray cathode tube, was one of the founders of the English Society for Psychical Research, created to explore the burgeoning 'spiritualist' movement of the late 1800s.) Physicist Wolfgang Pauli, discoverer of the Pauli Exclusion Principle, would co-write with psychoanalyst Carl G. Jung an essay entitled "Sychronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle." Pauli claimed that new discoveries vindicated synchronicity, which as one commentator has noted, is "the old belief in a system of magical correspondences in a new guise," because it suggest events may be linked by similarity just as much as by proximity. And Pauli also felt that it might explain some of the mysteries of psi. And physicists also are still interested in the metaphors of alchemy: when a particle bombardment chamber in 1965 finally succeeded in transforming an unstable isotope of lead into a small amount of molecular gold, a statement was released to the press : "The Dream of the Alchemists has been Achieved." When the famous 'Higgs boson' had been found in a high-energy physics lab, one physicist exlaimed loudly: "We've found our Philospher's Stone!"

What's Wrong With this Picture?

It may seem perplexing that high energy physicists, working in one of the most super-cerebral and hyper-rational fields of science, can be found embracing and employing the metaphors of mythology, mysticism, superstition, and magick in their lives and work. But, as I have been trying to suggest, science and mysticism are more close cousins than warring brothers. All of the early 'proto-scientists' were involved in what was called at the time so-called 'elementary magic,' a part of their 'natural philosphy.' Giordano Bruno and some of the other figures involved with the 'Copernican revolution' were motivated more out of a desire to revive the heliocentric religion of Egyptian Hermeticism than anything else. Paracelsus, the founder of modern iatrochemical medicine, fully subscribed to the correspondence of the microcosm (the organs) and the macrocosm (celestial influences.) The Renaissance was as much a revival of Neoplatonic doctrines of the soul's descent through the heavenly spheres as it was "the dawn of science." The first scientific society, the Royal Society in England, whose members included alchemists Boyle and Newton, and proto-Mason Elias Ashmole was in many ways the result of the work of various 'Rosicrucian' groups on the Continent. (Whether there ever was a real 'Rosy-Cross' order is still being debated by historians.) And many of the early natural philosophers, such as the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, would write about mechanical principles, and the "intricacies of Cabalistic ciphers" in one and the same volume.

Only much later, particularly in the 18th century with the rise of the 'Enlightenment', would science in the name of 'rationality' turn on its close cousin (and in some sense, parent) 'magic.' For Voltaire, magic was something for children, women, primitives, or fools to engage in, but not rational adults. During this time, the term 'mystical' began to acquire its secondary connotation - 'mystifying,' or obscuring, confusing, deceiving, deluding. So also would the term 'myth' acquire the meaning of a false explanation, based on ignorance and unwillingness to investigate the truth of things. At the same time a revival of magic was taking place in fin-de-siecle Europe due to the writings of diletantte Alphonse-Louis Constant (Eliphas Levi) , Freud would be writing that "so-called 'mystical states,' the feeling of oceanic consciousness, are nothing but an advanced form of compensation anxiety." And while scientists like Crookes were investigating life after death and seances, other proto-anthropologists like Frazer and Tylor would be excoriating primitive man for all his "savage, imprisoning" beliefs. Despite the claims of The Humanist that science's ultimate goal is "the abolishment of all religion, superstition, hocus-pocus, and other nonsense," or the claims of James Randi that scientists who accept psi are akin to people "who cling to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy in adulthood," there are physicists who have no problem believing the claims of science and mysticism are compatible.

The question again is, why? There are many reasons why vscience and magic are compatible. Magic, unlike religion, involves a belief in the innate power of man, independent usually of any supernatural force outside of himself. Like science, magic seeks to expand the potential of man, but perhaps using different methods-- relying more on internal, subjective factors than the external, 'objective' world of physics. As Aleister Crowley put it, "Magick is the art of bringing Reality into conformance with the Will," and he would write that "magick is as much for the banker and the bomb maker as for the magus." Magic, like science, also involves the search for permanence in the ceaseless flux and passing of the world. Magical symbols, like timeless mathematical equations, are wards against change, barriers against the certainty of passing away, order in the storm of Heraclitean fire that is the universe. Magical spells and rituals often contain a rigorous internal logic and relexivity as potent as that of any scientific hypothesis. In many cases, the witch and warlock's pharmacoepia has contained ingredients that prove of use to the medical botanist as well; folk magic contains many long-tested, empirical remedies. And magic, like science, is an attempt to explain the world. Not necessarily falsely, but as one in which the person is a participant in the world they observe. That world is the same one quantum mechanics has been silently tugging physicists to as well.

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