Week 7 - Anna Le

I personally love both articles that we read for this week. Both of which talked about the importance of studying consciousness in science and the need to change the current scientific paradigm. Current science focuses too much on the materialistic and functionalist viewpoint that it dismisses the richness other possibilities and viewpoints that explain our Universe/reality.

In Robert Lanza's article, he talks about the double slit experiment. I first learned about this from a philosophy class. I didn't know why my teacher was showing us these random science videos, but I soon learned that this experiment was the science behind what the new age community calls the "Law of Attraction" or to explain the power of consciousness. Lanza and Walton acknowledged that materialists scientists have dismissed this experiment and pushed it under the rug because it could not fully be explained by the electrons were acting that way. To sum it up, the double slit experiment shows what is known as the observer effect. Electrons exist in waves of potential until someone consciously observes the electron that it takes one form or the other. It does not exist in waves or takes one single form at the same time. It transforms and behaves the way that the observer expects it to behave, but when we take eyes off of it, it turns into waves. Many people have suggested that this experiment shows how powerful consciousness potentially is, and some new-agers have suggested that this is the science behind the law of attraction. 

Robert Lanza goes as far as to say that this is proof that our conscious experiences are the only reality that exists and that everything else is a false illusion. Everything else that exists outside of your consciousness exists in waves of potential, meaning it hasn't happened yet until you have observed it to happen and then it becomes a single event. 

The things that Lanza says echoes the idealist and spiritualist viewpoint of consciousness, that consciousness is all there is. Although we call it consciousness, it has been referred to as God or the Soul in past philosophical and spiritual knowledge.

References

Walton, Joan (2017) The significance of consciousness studies and quantum physics for creating a spiritual research paradigm. Journal for the Study of Spirituality, 7 (1). pp. 21-34.

Lanza, R. (2007, March 1). A New Theory of the Universe. Retrieved from https://theamericanscholar.org/a-new-theory-of-the-universe/