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Quantum physics indicates particles are waves of probability when not observed

• When calculations are done with the Schrödinger equation, what’s left is not the Newtonian state of exact position and velocity. Instead, you get what is called the wave function (physicists refer to it as psi after the Greek symbol Ψ used to denote it). Unlike the Newtonian state, which can be clearly imagined in a commonsense way, the wave function is an epistemological and ontological mess. The wave function does not give you a specific measurement of location and velocity for a particle; it gives you only probabilities at the root level of reality. Psi appears to tell you that, at any moment, the particle has many positions and many velocities. In effect, the bits of matter from Newtonian physics are smeared out into sets of potentials or possibilities. Corey S Powell
• When a quantum is behaving like a wave, it retains its ability to be everywhere at once. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• According to quantum theory, as long as a photon or electron isn’t being observed, it acts like a wave. One feature of waves is that they spread out in all directions; there is no pinpoint location for a photon when it is in its wave-like state. Yet, as soon as the photon or electron is observed, it behaves like a particle, displaying a specific location along with other features like charge and momentum. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• According to the results of countless experiments, matter—if unmeasured, or unobserved by an intelligent observer—will remain in a wave state. Only when measured by an intelligent observer will it behave as particles. Measurement by an intelligent observer always causes the matter-wave to behave like matter—and in the absence of such a measurement, the matter-wave behaves like a wave. We are left with the fact that an intelligent observer is—somehow— integral to the formation of matter. Joseph Selbie
• To know the mechanics of the wave, is to know the entire secret of Nature. Walter Russell
• But it is necessary to insist more strongly than usual that what I am putting before you is a model-the Bohr model atom-because later I shall take you to a profounder level of representation in which the electron instead of being confined to a particular locality is distributed in a sort of probability haze all over the atom.  Arthur Eddington
• Subatomic particles do not exist but rather show ‘tendencies to exist’, and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show ‘tendencies to occur’.  Fritjof Capra

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Quantum physics experiments indicate that the simple act of observation seems to cause the wave function to collapse, bringing particles “into existence”  

• The electron’s wave collapses immediately upon our observation. Amit Goswami
• Until you measure it, a particle is never in a specific place or a specific state. Steve Taylor
• The simple act of observation causes the wave function to collapse. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• We can only perceive particles and objects as entities localized in time and space. Physicists assume that this is because of what they call, “the collapse of the wave function.” This means that because of our observation the particle suddenly collects itself into one spot in time and space and the probability of finding it in a different place now becomes zero. The particle is now here and not anywhere else. Tony Nader
• When we measure it, we always find the electron localized as a particle. We may say that our measurement reduces the electron wave to the particle state.  Amit Goswami
• The content of the mind is the ultimate reality, and only an act of observation can confer shape and form to reality—from a dandelion in a meadow to sun, wind, and rain.  Robert Lanza
• The consciousness of the observer causes the collapse of the wave function thus actually creating his or her own reality.  Tony Nader
• The path of the electron comes into existence only when we observe it. The act of observation itself seems to be the key to unlocking a particularly “local” reality out of the “non-local” probability wave of where the particle might be. Rizwan Virk
• The moment a matter-wave takes on a specific form and location, from among the vast number of other possible forms and locations it could take, the probabilistic waveform is said to have collapsed. Further, and most significantly, according to almost all interpretations, what causes it to collapse is measurement by an intelligent observer. John Selbie
• Whether one favors the Copenhagen interpretation, or the von Neumann–Wigner interpretation, or even some other interpretation, such as the Many-Worlds interpretation, it is clear that if quantum mechanics is correct—and from all that we know this seems to be the case—then an observation, or in technical terms, the measurement process, does something to the object of observation. Essentially, it collapses the wave function and thus, what was uncertain because of probability becomes more localized in space time.  Tony Nader
• No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. John Wheeler
• Consciousness—mind and thought—creates reality. Before it is observed, reality—in this case a multitude of photons fired through slits—exists as non-material potential in the form of waves. Observed, the waves collapse into something more solid—photons that form a pattern. Stephen Martin
• No one has ever seen the wave function collapse—it’s not an observable event. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• The best explanation for what collapses the probability wave is the process of observation. It is as if we need to have someone looking at the thing to determine what the thing is, otherwise the thing is really just a mass of floating probabilities (often called the quantum foam). Rizwan Virk
• Our regular consciousness causes collapse of the wave function, thereby manifesting physical reality. Bernardo Kastrup
• According to the most widely accepted theories in Quantum Physics, there is a fundamental aspect of nature in which particles are not localized. That is, they do not exist in one place only, as most things do in our “ordinary” perceptual reality. Rather, they have a probability to be anywhere. An electron, for example, has a probability to be in a very large number of places, indeed almost anywhere in space, and it is only when it is observed or measured that it collapses at a relatively precise point in time and space and thus may theoretically be construed to be definitively “here.”  Tony Nader
• All objects remain in an indeterminate wave state until they are measured by an intelligent observer. Joseph Selbie
• Probabilities are collapsed by observation. Rizwan Virk
• The path of the electron comes into existence only when we observe it.” The act of observation itself seems to be the key to unlocking a particularly “local” reality out of the “non-local” probability wave of where the particle might be. Werner Heisenberg
• Our observation collapses the quantum wave packet to a localized particle. Subjects and objects are inextricably blended together. Amit Goswami
• A quantum object cannot be said to manifest in ordinary space-time reality until we observe it as a particle (collapse of the wave). Amit Goswami
• All physicists today acknowledge the fact that matter needs to be observed by consciousness before it collapses into any kind of tangible existence
• In the quantum world, the observer always interacts, changing the behaviour of particles through the acts of observation and measurement. Steve Taylor
• Without consciousness, “matter” dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state. Robert Lanza
• A wave of probability isn’t an event or a phenomenon, it is a description of the likelihood of an event or phenomenon occurring. Nothing happens until the event is actually observed. Robert Lanza
• Consciousness collapses the quantum wave function. This view works best when consciousness is present only in macro-subjects, since wave function collapse in micro subjects is hard to reconcile with known quantum interference effects at the microscopic level. David Chalmers
• Another aspect of consciousness that materialists cannot explain is that quantum physics indicates that matter needs to be observed by a conscious agent before it collapses into tangible existence. Anthony Lambert
• An observation, or in technical terms, the measurement process, does something to the object of observation. Essentially, it collapses the wave function and thus, what was uncertain because of probability becomes more localized in space time. Tony Nader
• A physical particle or bit of light only exists in a blurry state of possibility until its wave-function collapses at the time of observation, and only then actually assumes a definite existence. Robert Lanza
• Before it is observed, a subatomic particle doesn’t really exist in a definite place or have an actual motion. Instead, it dwells in a strange nether realm without actually being anywhere in particular. Robert Lanza
• Observation isn’t passive. It causes waves to collapse into particles. Something that is invisible, all-pervasive, and subject to the laws of probability turns into something else that is local, physical, and certain. Deepak Chopra
• With small discrete particles, however, if they are not being observed, they cannot be thought of as having any real existence—either duration or a position in space. It cannot be thought of as being either here or there.  Robert Lanza
• Every time when we measure the orbit of the electron, the answer of the measurement will be that the electron was either in a lower or higher orbit, never something in between,” says Stockholm University physicist Fabian Pokorny. “The measurement in a sense forces the electron to decide in which of the two states it is.” Mike Mcrae
• According to the ‘uncertainty principle’ of quantum physics, on an elementary level the physical universe is a collection of possibilities. Scientists have discovered that there has to be a conscious observer to ‘collapse’ the quantum possibilities, which stops particles being in two places at once and creates a world we can examine and measure. Tim Freke
• Then things get weirder still. According to the standard way of treating the quantum calculus, the act of making a measurement on the particle kills off all pieces of the wave function, except the one your instruments register. The wave function is said to collapse as all the smeared-out, potential positions or velocities vanish in the act of measurement. Adam Frank
• When the quantum physicists looked deeply into the nature of matter, they discovered something astonishing. The quantum possibilities only come into a definite form when observed by consciousness. They concluded that consciousness ‘collapses’ the quantum possibilities into a seemingly solid universe. So, without the conscious observer the world as we know it doesn’t exist. Tim Freke
• Quantum mechanics insists that when it comes to the 10^80 subatomic objects that comprise the observable universe, none have real existence or actual motion. The only things that are real, insists quantum theory, are observed events that emerge from the blurry possibilities that always exist. Robert Lanza
• What makes the observer problem unique in quantum physics is that the act of observation can be enough to bring particles into existence in time and space. This is technically known as the collapse of the wave function, meaning that a probability wave, which is invisible and extends infinitely in all directions, changes state, and suddenly a particle is visible. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• Sights, tactile experiences, odours—all these sensations are experienced inside the mind alone. None are “out there” except by the convention of language. Everything we observe is the direct interaction of energy and mind. Anything that we do not observe directly exists only as potential—or more mathematically speaking—as a haze of probability. “Nothing,” said Wheeler, “exists until it is observed.” Robert Lanza
• As demonstrated in quantum physics, the act of observation, measurement, and registration of an event, can effect that event, causing a collapse of a the wave function, thereby registering form, length, shape which emerges like a blemish on the face of the quantum continuum. Thus, it can be said, at the moment the quantum continuum became conscious, achieved consciousness, this triggered a collapse of the wave function, and the universe came into being. Rhawn Joseph
• Observers are powerful players in the quantum world. According to the theory, particles can be in several places or states at once—this is called a superposition. But oddly, this is only the case when they aren’t observed. The second you observe a quantum system, it picks a specific location or state—breaking the superposition. The fact that nature behaves this way has been proven multiple times in the lab—for example, in the famous double slit experiment by Alessandro Fedrizzi
• As summed up the Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum mechanics: “the transition from the possible to the actual takes place during the act of observation… and the interaction of the object with the measuring device, and thereby with the rest of the world…Since through the observation our knowledge of the system has changed discontinuously, its mathematical representation has also undergone the discontinuous change and we speak of a quantum jump” (Heisenberg, 1958). In other words, something comes into existence, by becoming conscious of it. Rhawn Joseph
• Most physicists believe that before a measurement is made at the quantum level, a particle exists in all its theoretically possible states. There are no real entities at this stage, only an ensemble of potentials that coexist in an all-at-once “superposition.” When a measurement or observation occurs, these potentials undergo a “collapse of the wave function,” which is a mathematical description, and manifest as only one of many possible configurations, like the famous cat in Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment. Measurement or observation makes the ghostly potentials real. Larry Dossey
• Perhaps the most essential ingredient of this interconnected universe was the living consciousness that observed it. In classical physics, the experimenter was considered a separate entity, a silent observer behind glass, attempting to understand a universe that carried on, whether he or she was observing it or not. In quantum physics, however, it was discovered, the state of all possibilities of any quantum particle collapsed into a set entity as soon as it was observed or a measurement taken. To explain these strange events, quantum physicists had postulated that a participatory relationship existed between observer and observed – these particles could only be considered as ‘probably’ existing in space and time until they were ‘perturbed’, and the act of observing and measuring them forced them into a set state – an act akin to solidifying Jell-O. This astounding observation also had shattering implications about the nature of reality. It suggested that the consciousness of the observer brought the observed object into being. Nothing in the universe existed as an actual ‘thing’ independently of our perception of it. Every minute of every day we were creating our world. Lynne McTaggart
• A particle does not have a precise property until measured. For example, a particle doesn’t have a precise position unless something – whether it be a person or a photon of light – “observes” it. This isn’t simply that we don’t know what the particle’s position is – it is that it doesn’t have a position – only an array of probable locations. Elizabeth Fernandez
• One key property of quantum systems is that they exist in a state of superposition until a measurement is made. For instance, an electron can have a spin “pointing” up or down or a photon can have a horizontal or vertical polarization. James B. Glattfelder
• One of the most famous and troubling aspects of quantum physics is that we may not be living in a physical universe after all, but in a universe of probabilities. The idea is that a subatomic particle exists as a wave of probabilities—what’s called the quantum probability wave—until the probability wave collapses into a single reality. You might compare it to a theater that has a number of seats in it, and the “wave” is the probability that you (the particle) might be sitting in any one of these seats. The best explanation that quantum physicists have been able to give for how the probability wave collapses is that consciousness, through the act of observation, plays a central role. In fact, some, like Fred Alan Wolf, a theoretical physicist, believe consciousness plays the critical role in the collapse of the probability wave: it is the act of observation that behaves much like a cosmic usher, ushering you to a specific seat in the theater.  Rizwan Virk
• Quantum mechanics, the most accurate scientific theory ever devised by humankind, is a model of nature wherein two fundamental processes can be found at work. The first process is a linear, deterministic process described by the so-called ‘Schrödinger’s equation.’ All you need to know about it, for the purposes of our argumentation, is that Schrödinger’s equation describes an envelope of possibilities—potential realities—called a ‘wave function.’ This envelope changes over time, propagating like a wave in a very predictable way. At any moment in time, armed with the correct wave function, we could in principle determine what the possible ‘realities’ of that moment are. However, the wave function does not determine which of the possible realities actually manifests; it just tells us what the alternatives are in potentiality. In other words, the wave function does not describe reality as we consciously observe it, but simply establishes boundaries on what can potentially be observed. The second fundamental process of quantum mechanics is an apparent collapse of the wave function. It is through this apparent collapse that the envelope of possible realities turns into a specific manifested reality. This is not a deterministic process, in the sense that there is no way, even in principle, to exactly predict which of the possible realities actually manifests to our observation upon apparent collapse. All we can experience as conscious beings is the non-deterministic reality emerging from an apparently collapsed wave function. Everything else within the original envelope of possibilities described by the wave function will have been just alternatives that never came into existence in our physical universe.  Bernardo Kastrup
• Take quantum Bayesianism or QBism, a relatively new interpretation of quantum theory. It holds that wave function collapse is caused by observers updating their knowledge. There is no objective reality, only our subjective estimation of it. Donna Lu
• At the moment of measurement, the wave function describing the superposition of alternatives appears to collapse into one member of the superposition, thereby interrupting the smooth evolution of the wave function and introducing discontinuity. A single measurement outcome emerges, banishing all the other possibilities from classically described reality. Which alternative is produced at the moment of measurement appears to be arbitrary; its selection does not evolve logically from the information- packed wave function of the electron before measurement. Nor does the mathematics of collapse emerge from the seamless flow of the Schrödinger equation. In fact, collapse has to be added as a postulate, as an additional process that seems to violate the equation. Peter Byrne

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The observer effect is evident in the double-split experiment

• When electrons pass through a double-slit experiment, the results imply that each electron comes through both slits, implying it is a spatially extended object (a wave), and it then “collapses” to atomic dimensions upon impacting a viewing screen. Quantum physics was invented during the 1920s to make sense of such phenomena. Electrons, as well as protons, neutrons, atoms, and molecules, are not particles. Electrons and photons are spatially extended bundles of field energy. Art Hobson
• To demonstrate how much we take for granted, even with our basic assumptions about straightforward, rational logic, imagine the following scenario: We are passing farm animals through a gate that only lets horses through and rejects all cows. Now we take the horses that made it through the first gate and pass them through a second gate that only lets through black animals and rejects all white animals. Logic tells us that only animals that are both horses and black can pass through both gates. To our surprise, about half of the animals that make it through both gates turn out to be white cows! This seems completely ridiculous, and would be instantly dismissed as a mistake, except that the world at the quantum level actually does operate this way. If we assumed that elementary particles were like tiny versions of black and white horses and cows, we would be wrong! Dean I Radin
• Quantum physics’ double-slit experiments indicate that an intelligent observer must be present for energy to change from its wave state to its particle state. Joseph Selbie
• If just one slit is open, then the photons land, as expected, on a portion of the photographic plate just behind that slit. But if both slits are open, then the photons land, contrary to expectations, in a sequence of bands reminiscent of the interference patterns one gets when two water waves collide—each photon somehow went through both A and B at the same time. That is no problem for a wave. How does a particle do this trick? Does it split itself in half? If we try to observe the slits closely, we always see a photon go through just one slit, never both. Moreover, if we observe which slit it goes through then the interference pattern disappears. Donald Hoffman
• We choose to examine a phenomenon [Double-slit experiment] which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery. We cannot make the mystery go away by “explaining” how it works. We will just tell you how it works. In telling you how it works we will have told you about the basic peculiarities of all quantum mechanics. Richard Feynman
• A photon can’t be seen in flight and is known only at the moment of detection. If a detector is placed right at the slit, it shows in real time that each photon passes through one slit, the way a pellet would. What if we place the detector after the slit? Wheeler asked. It turns out that the photon can delay its decision to behave like a wave or a particle until after it passes through the slit, which is very peculiar. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• An actual experiment, involves firing a single electron at a barrier that contains two narrow slits in it, separated by only a short distance, with a screen behind them. Common sense tells you that the electron should go through either the left slit or the right slit, and that if you fire many such electrons in a row, you should get two bunches: one corresponding to electrons that went through the left slit, the other corresponding to those that went through the right slit. But that’s not what happens at all. Instead, what you see on the screen looks like an interference pattern. These individual electrons are behaving like waves, and the patterns looks like what you’d get if you fired continuous light waves through a double slit, or even sent water waves through a tank with two gaps where the slits are. But these are single electrons! Where are they, at any given point in time, and which slit did they go through?  You might think to set up a detector at each slit, to measure which one each electron goes through. And you can do this: electron #1 goes through the right slit; #2 goes left; #3 goes left; #4 goes right; #5 goes left, and so on. But now, when you look at the pattern of electrons on the screen, you don’t get the interference pattern you had before. You only get the two bunches. Somehow, the act of observing, measuring, or forcing an interaction has changed the outcome.   Ethan Siegel
• In the famous double-slit experiment, single particles, such as photons, pass one at a time through a screen containing two slits. If either path is monitored, a photon seemingly passes through one slit or the other, and no interference will be seen. Conversely, if neither is checked, a photon will appear to have passed through both slits simultaneously before interfering with itself, acting like a wave. Tim Wogan
• The classic example of a superposition involves firing photons at two parallel slits in a barrier. One fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics is that tiny particles can behave like waves, so that those passing through one slit “interfere” with those going through the other, their wavy ripples either boosting or canceling one another to create a characteristic pattern on a detector screen. The odd thing, though, is this interference occurs even if only one particle is fired at a time. The particle seems somehow to pass through both slits at once, interfering with itself. That’s a superposition. And it gets weirder: Measuring which slit such a particle goes through will invariably indicate it only goes through one—but then the wavelike interference (the “quantumness,” if you will) vanishes. The very act of measurement seems to “collapse” the superposition. “We know something fishy is going on in a superposition,” says physicist Avshalom Elitzur of the Israeli Institute for Advanced Research. “But you’re not allowed to measure it. This is what makes quantum mechanics so diabolical.” For decades researchers have stalled at this apparent impasse. They cannot say exactly what a superposition is without looking at it; but if they try to look at it, it disappears. By Philip Bal

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Observation is performed by a process termed “quantum measurement”

• In this connection the “classical object” is usually called apparatus, and its interaction with the electron is spoken of as measurement. However, it must be emphasized that we are here not discussing a process of measurement in which the physicist-observer takes part. By measurement, in quantum mechanics, we understand any process of interaction between classical and quantum objects, occurring apart from and independently of any observer. The importance of the concept of measurement in quantum mechanics was elucidated by N. Bohr. Lev Landau and Evgeny Lifshitz
• In the words of Heisenberg, “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Fritjof Capra
• Observers do not need to be conscious, they must merely be able to establish facts in the form of a measurement outcome. Alessandro Fedrizz

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The double-split experiment can even be done after the fact

• Wheeler’s delayed-choice variation on this experiment is clever: wait until after the photon passes the metal screen, and only then decide what to measure—path A, path B, or a superposition. In his words, “Let us wait until the quantum has already gone through the screen before we—at our free choice—decide whether it shall have gone ‘through both slits’ or ‘through one.’” Wheeler’s experiment has been performed with photons (and helium atoms!) and it works.  What we choose to measure after the photon has passed the screen determines what the photon did, or at least what we can say about what it did, before we measured. “In the delayed-choice experiment we, by a decision in the here and now, have an irretrievable influence on what we will want to say about the past—a strange inversion of the normal order of time.” The past depends on our choice in the present. Donald Hoffman

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The observer effect gives rise to the startling thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s Cat…

• Consider the case of Schrödinger’s cat. Place a cat in a box with a single radioactive atom in there. If the atom decays, poison is released; the cat eats it and dies. If the atom doesn’t decay, the poison isn’t released; the cat lives. This analogy bothered Schrödinger tremendously, because under the cause-and-effect rules, either the cat must either be alive or not alive. The atom decayed or it didn’t, the poison was released or it wasn’t, and the cat died or didn’t die. But if you don’t make a measurement, observation, or cause an interaction that tells you the outcome, the atom — and hence, the cat — must be in a superposition of states, meaning the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. The failure to know whether a (theoretically quantum) animal is alive or dead, and insisting it must be a mix of both, is a classic example of quantum weirdness. Ethan Siegel
• One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is locked up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of an hour only one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts. Erwin Schrödinger
• It takes an observer to cause a superposition to collapse into a specific state. What about the cat? It would be dead and alive at the same time, suspended 50/50 between the two states, until an observer opens the box! Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• What about the cat? It would be dead and alive at the same time, suspended 50/50 between the two states, until an observer opens the box! There is both an observer seeing a dead cat and an observer seeing a live cat. These two equally real scenarios split off from each other with no communication between them. The many-worlds theory is nifty in the way it turns head-scratching problems into no problem at all. You can have your cat and kill it, too. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• In his standoff with Dr. Ramsay of Harvard last fall, Dr. Leggett suggested that his colleagues should consider the merits of the latter theory. “Why should we think of an electron as being in two states at once but not a cat, when the theory is ostensibly the same in both cases?” Dr. Leggett asked. Dr. Ramsay said that Dr. Leggett had missed the point. How the wave function mutates is not what you calculate. “What you calculate is the prediction of a measurement,” he said. If it’s a cat, I can guarantee you will get that it’s alive or dead, Dr. Ramsay said. Dennis Overbye
• In 1935, Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger was attempting to explain the concept of quantum superposition, which is the idea that any particle can be in more than one state at one time until and unless it is observed, at which point it assumes one state or the other. This was another way to describe the collapse of the probability wave in terms of the state of a specific particle. Schrödinger, in an attempt to bring quantum weirdness out of the subatomic realm into the realm of everyday objects that could be better understood by non-physicists, came up with his ill-fated feline. He described an experiment involving a theoretical cat that is inside a box with some radioactive material, which decays at a certain probabilistic rate. In his original proposition, the radioactive material unleashes a poison, and after an hour, there is a 50 percent chance of the cat being alive and a 50 percent chance of the cat being dead. Before we open the box to “observe” the cat, which state is it in? Is the cat alive or dead? The dilemma is that we don’t know if the cat is dead or alive until we open up the box and observe the state of the cat. Goswami, in his book, The Self-Aware Universe, states that we might be “tempted to think” of this 50 percent probability like a coin that we have flipped but which is hidden. But in quantum mechanics, he and other physicists insist it’s not the case which common sense would dictate. Rizwan Virk
• When I hear of Schrödinger’s cat, I reach for my gun. Hermann Goering

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…which gives rise to profound implications

• The resolution of the Schrödinger’s cat paradox tells us a great deal about the nature of consciousness. It chooses among alternatives when it manifests the material reality; it is transcendent and unitive; and its doings elude our normal mundane perception. Admittedly, none of these aspects of consciousness is self-evident to common sense. Try to suspend your disbelief and remember what Robert Oppenheimer once said: “Science is uncommon sense.” Quantum collapse is a process of choosing and recognizing by a conscious observer; there is ultimately only one observer. Amit Goswami

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Reality would seem to be inseparable from the observer

• In modern physics, the universe is experienced as a dynamic inseparable whole which always includes the observer in an essential way.  Fritjof Capra
• First, some physicists insist that quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without taking into account the minds of observers. They argue that minds cannot be reduced to physics because physics presupposes the minds of physicists. Rupert Sheldrake
• The observer is woven into the very fabric of reality. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• The observer cannot be separated from the observed. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement. Fritjof Capra
• The most widely accepted version of quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpretation (so named after the work done at the Copenhagen Institute by Danish physicist Niels Bohr), places the observer at the crossroads between wave and particle. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• Talking about a quantum object without talking about how we observe it is ambiguous because the two are inseparable. Amit Goswami
• Quantum theory has abolished the notion of fundamentally separated objects, has introduced the concept of the participator to replace that of the observer, and may even find it necessary to include the human consciousness in its description of the world. It has come to see the universe as an interconnected web of physical and mental relations whose parts are only defined through their connections to the whole. Fritjof Capra
• In atomic physics, we cannot talk about the properties of an object as such. They are only meaningful in the context of the object’s interaction with the observer. In the words of Heisenberg, ‘What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.’ Fritjof Capra
• The 2014 findings confirm the evidence of all past experiments that point to wave-particle complementarity being an intrinsic attribute of space-time. The progressive understanding though of how information underlies and pervades the appearance of such complementarity is crucial to realizing how the environment and observer are integrally interconnected with any and all experiments. In other words, there’s no separate “objective” reality, and the entirety of our Universe is an integrated, coherent, and in-formational entity. There is literally no “environment” apart from the consciousness of the “observer.” Jude Currivan and Ervin Laszlo
• Nothing is more important about the quantum principle than this, that it destroys the concept of the world as ‘sitting out there’, with the observer safely separated from it by a 20 centimeter slab of plateglass. Even to observe so miniscule an object as an electron, he must shatter the glass. He must reach in. He must install his chosen measuring equipment. It is up to him to decide whether he shall measure position or momentum. To install the equipment to measure the one prevents and excludes his installing the equipment to measure the other. Moreover, the measurement changes the state of the electron. The universe will never afterwards be the same. To describe what has happened, one has to cross out that old word ‘observer’ and put in its place the new word ‘participator’. In some strange sense the universe is a participatory universe. John Wheeler

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The very act of observing would seem to change reality

• The act of observing something can apparently alter its reality.  Mark Alpert
• In physics, the observer effect is the theory that the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon. … An especially unusual version of the observer effect occurs in quantum mechanics, as best demonstrated by the double-slit experiment. Alessandro Fedrizz
• When you observe the world around you, you physically change that world by the mere act of observation. Bernard Kastrup
• The latest experiments in the field of quantum mechanics have rendered all but untenable the notion that there is anything objective at all. Observation not only determines the world perceived at present, but also retroactively changes it, so that its history becomes consistent with what is measured now. Bernardo Kastrup
• Then things get weirder still. According to the standard way of treating the quantum calculus, the act of making a measurement on the particle kills off all pieces of the wave function, except the one your instruments register. The wave function is said to collapse as all the smeared-out, potential positions or velocities vanish in the act of measurement. It’s like the Schrödinger equation, which does such a great job of describing the smeared-out particle before the measurement is made, suddenly gets a pink slip. You can see how this throws a monkey wrench into a simple, physics-based view of an objective materialist world. How can there be one mathematical rule for the external objective world before a measurement is made, and another that jumps in after the measurement occurs? For a hundred years now, physicists and philosophers have been beating the crap out of each other (and themselves) trying to figure out how to interpret the wave function and its associated measurement problem. What exactly is quantum mechanics telling us about the world? What does the wave function describe? What really happens when a measurement occurs? Above all, what is matter?  Adam Frank
• How can there be one rule for the objective world before a measurement is made, and another that jumps in after the measurement? Adam Frank
• In physics, the inescapable fact that the simple act of observation changes the nature of a physical system caused virtually all the founders of modern physics, including Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Albert Einstein, to think deeply about the strangely privileged role of human consciousness. Dean I. Radin
• Old Newtonian physics claimed that things have an objective reality separate from our perception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes. Marianne Williamson
• The observer is only a problem if the very act of looking creates a change in the thing you are looking at. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• Reality is observer-determined – it’s a spatio-temporal process, which fortunately means that things must change.  Robert Lanza
• The act of observation physically changes what is observed – changing that world instantly as it perceives it.  Bernard Kastrup
• We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Werner Heisenberg

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Matter would seem to manifest as tangible particles (reality) only when it is observed

• Observers are necessary to bring the universe into being. Amit Goswami
• Nothing is real to us until we perceive it. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• It is a primitive form of thought that things exist or do not exist. Arthur Eddington
• The universe does not seem to exist without a perceiver of that universe. Amit Goswami
• No phenomenon is a physical phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. John Wheeler
• There is no object in space-time without a conscious subject looking at it. Amit Goswami
• Instead of discovering particles, physicists may actually be creating them. Jahn and Dunne
• There is no single underlying reality that is independent of our observations. Anthony Lambert
• It takes an observer to cause a superposition to collapse into a specific state. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• The world is real as long as there is an observer. Shree Priya
• The properties of an object (mass, size, charge, momentum, amplitude) only come into existence when it is observed. Bernardo Kastrup
• We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago. John Wheeler
• If there were no intelligent observers in the physical universe, the physical universe would cease to exist. Joseph Selbie
• Measurement by an intelligent observer collapses the waveform. No observer, no collapse; no observer, no matter. Amit Goswami
• The reality we perceive with our five senses isn’t really definite and concrete until we observe it. Before observation, it consists of vague, ambiguous possibilities that we’ve come to call the “quantum world.”  Bernardo Kastrup
• It does not make sense to decide whether a particle can be described by its wave or particle behaviour until a measurement has been made. Tim Wogan
• The intelligent-observer paradox: a matter wave takes on the behavior of matter only when it is measured by an intelligent observer.  Joseph Selbie
• Things exist because they are perceived. The observer is woven into the very fabric of reality. Nothing is real to us until we perceive it. Anthony Lambert
• Quantum physicists such as Bernard d’Espagnat talk about a ‘veiled reality’ that we can hardly even imagine, which appears as solid physical objects only when observed. Keith Ward
• Observations not only disturb what has to be measured, they produce it… We compel [a quantum particle] to assume a definite position. We ourselves produce the results of measurements. Pascual Jordan
• Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced. John Keats
• Quantum waves are like Platonic archetypes in the transcendent domain of consciousness, and the particles that manifest upon our observation are the immanent shadows on the cave wall. Amit Goswami
• Countless acts of observation give substance and reality to what would otherwise be ghosts of existence.  Deepak Chopra
• If subatomic particles only come into existence in the presence of an observer, then it is meaningless to speak of a particle’s properties and characteristics as existing before they are observed. Niels Bohr
• Like Platonic archetypes, coherent superpositions exist in the never-never land of a transcendent order until we collapse them, bringing them into the world of manifestation with an act of observation. Amit Goswami
• Perhaps the most important, and the most insidious, assumption that we absorb in our childhoods is that of the material world of objects existing out there—independent of subjects, who are the observers. Amit Goswami
• Niels Bohr was among the first to conclude that physical objects do not have an independent, objective reality. He stated categorically that physical objects only appear when we observe them—and his assertion has never been disproven. Joseph Selbie
• Most of us believe deeply in a physical reality, consisting of objects in spacetime that existed prior to life and observers; no observer is needed, we believe, to endow any object with a position, spin, or any other physical property. Donald Hoffman
• Werner Heisenberg , a titan of early 20th-century physics, suggested that underlying all matter is an indivisible and unseen realm, for which he coined the term Potentia, and from which objects spring into existence when observed by an intelligent observer. Joseph Selbie
• Actually, quantum phenomena are neither waves nor particles but are intrinsically undefined until the moment they are measured. In a sense, the British philosopher Bishop Berkeley was right when he asserted two centuries ago ‘To be is to be perceived.’” Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• The late physicist John Wheeler concluded that the apparent oddity of quantum mechanics was built on an even grander and odder truth: that the universe as a whole festers in a state of uncertainty and snaps into clear, actual being when observed by a conscious being — that is, us. Corey S. Powell
• It was easy to think that the mathematical objects involved with Newtonian mechanics referred to real things out there in some intuitive way. But those ascribing to psi-ontology – sometimes called wave function realism – must now navigate a labyrinth of challenges in holding their views. Adam Frank
• All of the above paradoxes are explainable, are understandable, if we are to give up that precious assumption that there is an objective reality “out there” independent of consciousness. It says even more, that the universe is “self-aware” and that it is consciousness itself that creates the physical world. Amit Goswami
• Ever since the 1920s, physicists have puzzled over the strangely privileged role of the observer in quantum theory. A particle exists in a fuzzy state of uncertainty…but only until it is observed. As soon as someone looks at it and takes its measurements, the particle seems to collapse into a definite location. Corey S. Powell
• Observers are powerful players in the quantum world. According to the theory, particles can be in several places or states at once — this is called a superposition. But oddly, this is only the case when they aren’t observed. The second you observe a quantum system, it picks a specific location or state — breaking the superposition. Alessandro Fedrizzi
• Physicists have gone on to prove, thousands of times, that until measured by an intelligent observer, everything—whether energy such as light, or matter such as atoms—behaves in a wavelike manner until measured by an intelligent observer. The inescapable conclusion: An intelligent observer plays an essential role in the formation of matter. Joseph Selbie
• Physicists have found compelling evidence that the only time electrons and other “quanta” manifest as particles is when we are looking at them. At all other times they behave as waves. This is as strange as owning a bowling ball that  traces a single line down the lane while you are watching it, but leaves a wave pattern every time you blink your eyes.  Michael Talbot
• Electrons are too remote from ordinary personal reality. Suppose we ask, Is the moon there when we are not looking at it? To the extent that the moon is ultimately a quantum object (being composed entirely of quantum objects), we must say no—so says physicist David Mermin. Between observations, the moon also exists as a possibility form in transcendent potentia. Amit Goswami
• The only way to be 100% sure of where a particle is, is to observe it. Up until the point that you observe it, the Copenhagen Interpretation says that the particle is there and is not there. It is only when you observe the particle that you know if it’s there or not there. While this makes sense in quantum physics, it does not make sense in classical (real world) physics. Wikipaedia
• The KS Theorem shatters another belief that Einstein had about reality. In 1935, in a famous paper with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, he claimed that “If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty (i.e., with probability equal to unity) the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of reality corresponding to that quantity.” Donald Hoffman
• There is compelling evidence that the only time quanta ever manifest as particles is when we are looking at them . For instance, when an electron isn’t being looked at, experimental findings suggest that it is always a wave. Physicists are able to draw this conclusion because they have devised clever strategies for deducing how an electron behaves when it is not being observed. Michael Talbot
• Albert Einstein once said “I like to believe that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it.” But according to the double-slit experiments, the moon isn’t there unless one is looking at it.  The old puzzler, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there does it make a sound?” had a new answer: If no one is there, there is no sound, there is no tree, there is no forest, there is no earth, there is no thing.  Joseph Selbie
• The act of knowing, of observing, or measuring, that is, interacting with the environment in any way, creates an entangled state and a knot in the quantum continuum described as a “collapse of the wave function;” a knot of energy that is a kind of blemish in the continuum of the quantum field. This quantum knot bunches up at the point of observation, at the assigned value of measurement and can be entangled. Consciousness perceives a blemish in the continuum, but which is still part of the continuum, even though it is perceived as distinct. Rhawn Joseph
• Physicist Kick Herbert, a supporter of this interpretation, says this has sometimes caused him to imagine that behind his back the world is always “a radically ambiguous and ceaselessly flowing quantum soup.” But whenever he turns around and tries to see the soup, his glance instantly freezes it and turns it back into ordinary reality. He believes this makes us all a little like Midas, the legendary king who never knew the feel of silk or the caress of a human hand because everything he touched turned to gold, “Likewise humans can never experience the true texture of quantum reality,” says Herbert, “because everything we touch turns to matter.  Michael Talbot
• What about the big bang? Didn’t it happen 13 billion 799 million years ago, before any observers? Isn’t it a fact of objective reality, not merely an interface description of an observer? At least one physicist has argued that the universe has no history apart from observers, that “histories of the universe … depend on what is being observed, contrary to the usual idea that the universe has a unique, observer independent history.” That physicist was Stephen Hawking who, in collaboration with the physicist Thomas Hertog, favored a “top-down” cosmology that starts with the observer, rather than a “bottom-up” cosmology that assumes a god’s-eye view. Donald Hoffman
• A universe without consciousness would be like a stage play without an audience. Philosophically, we cannot say that the stage play exists when not correlated with objects in consciousness. Physically, Wigner’s interpretation states that, without a conscious audience, the stage play would forever remain in an amorphous realm of possibilities outside material reality. Bernardo Kastrup
• The properties of matter do not have stand alone existence.  Bernardo Kastrup
• The truly cosmological question can now be answered: How has the cosmos existed for the past fifteen billion years if for the bulk of this time there were no conscious observers to do any collapsing of wave functions? Very simple. The cosmos never appeared in concrete form. I propose that the universe exists as formless potentia in myriad possible branches in the transcendent domain and becomes manifest only when observed by conscious beings. Amit Goswami

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Perception of reality can differ from one agent to another

• A fact, as established by a measurement, should be objective, such that all observers can agree with it. But in a paper recently published in Science Advances, we show that in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts. In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective. measurements in quantum mechanics are subjective to observers. Alessandro Fedrizz
• Each observer’s experiments admit a consistent description, but a simultaneous description of both observers is inconsistent. Raphael Bousso
• Reality differs from one agent to another. This is not as strange as it may sound. What is real for an agent rests entirely on what that agent experiences, and different agents have different experiences. Fuchs, Mermin, and Schack
• Quantum states vary from observer to observer. So does spacetime itself. Donald Hoffman
• Some physicists conclude that quantum theory counsels a profoundly new view of the world. As the physicist Carlo Rovelli puts it, “My effort here is not to modify quantum mechanics to make it consistent with my view of the world, but to modify my view of the world to make it consistent with quantum mechanics.” The way that Rovelli updates his worldview is to reject “the notion of an absolute, or observer-independent, state of a system; equivalently, the notion of observer-independent values of physical quantities.” Donald Hoffman
• If different observers give different accounts of the same sequence of events, then each quantum mechanical description has to be understood as relative to a particular observer. Thus, a quantum mechanical description of a certain system … cannot be taken as an ‘absolute’ (observer-independent) description of reality, but rather as a formalization, or codification, of properties of a system relative to a given observer…. In quantum mechanics, ‘state’ as well as ‘value of a variable’—or ‘outcome of a measurement’—are relational notions. Carlo Rovelli

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This all implies we live in a participatory universe that must take observers (minds) into account

• This is a participatory universe. John Archibald Wheeler
• We don’t, according to Wheeler, passively observe a preexisting objective reality, we actively participate in constructing reality by our acts of observation. Donald Hoffman
• Quantum physics makes it undeniable that we live in a participatory universe. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense this is a participatory universe. John Archibald Wheeler
• What really matters for me is … the more active role of the observer in quantum physics … According to quantum physics the observer has indeed a new relation to the physical events around him in comparison with the classical observer, who is merely a spectator. Wolfgang Pauli
• Some physicists insist that quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without taking into account the minds of observers. They argue that minds cannot be reduced to physics because physics presupposes the minds of physicists. Rupert Sheldrake
• The most radical shift wrought by quantum mechanics was the explicit introduction of mind into the basic conceptual structure. Human experience was elevated from the role of ‘a detached observer’ to that of ‘the fundamental element of interest. Henry P. Stapp, Ph.D.
• It is not that we are discovering reality, but participating in its creation. Michael Talbot
• “Observership” is a prerequisite for any useful version of “reality.” John Archibald Wheeler
• In the beginning there were only probabilities. The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it. Martin Rees
• Rather than trying to sweep away the mystery of mind by attributing it to the mechanisms of matter, we must grapple with the intertwined nature of the two. Adam Frank
• Quantum physics, which has shown that perception does in some cases appear to have real causal power. Particles have no properties independent of how you measure them—in other words, they require a conscious observer. Ziad Masri
• The Copenhagen interpretation tells us that the formation of matter is random and indeterminate and relies solely on the presence of an intelligent observer to determine its final form. Bohm’s math, however, established that while form-determining hidden properties cannot exist in our three-dimensional universe, they could exist in nonlocal two-dimensional pre-space. Joseph Selbie
• The universe does not exist ‘out there,’ independent of us. We are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to be happening. We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense, this is a participatory universe. Physics is no longer satisfied with insights only into particles, fields of force, into geometry, or even into time and space. Today we demand of physics some understanding of existence itself. John P. Wheeler III

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Consciousness (as the observing mind) would seem to play a central role in manifesting reality

• Unlike Bohm, Jahn and Dunne believe subatomic particles do not possess a distinct reality until consciousness enters the picture. “I think we have long since passed the place in high energy physics where we’re examining the structure of a passive universe,” Jahn states. “I think we’re into the domain where the interplay of consciousness in the environment is taking place on such a primary scale that we are indeed creating reality by any reasonable definition of the term.”  Michael Talbot
• The i’s and the t’s of physical reality are not dotted and crossed until you actually look up into the sky. The Moon has a definite existence only after it has been pulled out of the realm of mathematical probability and into the observer’s web of consciousness.  Robert Lanza
• The existence of what we call physical reality is dependent upon consciousness. Scott Owen
• From two different perspectives—namely, a philosophical hypothesis derived from the science of perception and an interpretation of quantum mechanics—consciousness seems to play a primary role in determining what happens in reality. Bernardo Kastrup
• Consciousness is the agency that collapses the wave of a quantum object, which exists in potentia, making it an immanent particle in the world of manifestation. Amit Goswami
• The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is proof that consciousness plays a central role in determining the character of the physical world. If nothing is real until it is observed, consciousness cannot arise from electrochemical events in the brains of animals like ourselves; rather, it must be part of the very fabric of reality. Sam Harris
• In the early to mid-twentieth century, many physicists came to the conclusion that consciousness was the underlying foundation of reality. One of the most compelling reasons for this conclusion was the discovery of the intelligent-observer paradox. It can be argued that the paradox of the intelligent observer is to scientific materialism what the paradox of the constancy of the speed of light is to Newtonian physics. Joseph Selbie
• Consciousness is the appearance of a world. If you are conscious, a world appears to you. Thomas Metzinger
• Chalmers pointed to the vividness – the intrinsic presence – of the perceiving subject’s experience as a problem no explanatory account of consciousness seems capable of embracing. Chalmers’s position struck a nerve with many philosophers, articulating the sense that there was fundamentally something more occurring in consciousness than just computing with meat. But what is that ‘more’? Adam Frank
• Consciousness is the crux of the physics of God: It is in consciousness that science and religion come together, and it is through an understanding of consciousness that we can reconcile the apparent conflicts between them. Acceptance of consciousness as the foundation of the cosmos, however, does not come easily. Joseph Selbie
• Energy is entwined with consciousness on both a personal and a cosmic scale. Dawson Church
• Suppose we define consciousness as the agency that affects quantum objects to make their behavior sensible. Amit Goswami
• The presence of the mind, the body and the world, however peaceful or agitated, is only possible because of this witnessing presence of Consciousness.  Rupert Spira
• The virtually inescapable conclusion now is that consciousness does create reality. If that is the case, it makes it far less plausible to view consciousness as merely an epiphenomenon of the brain. Consciousness needs to be something greater than a mental illusion created by brain chemistry. Consciousness is the primary stuff. Bernard Haisch
• It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness. Eugene Wigner
• To cut to the chase, quantum mechanics is telling us that consciousness creates reality. Bernard Haisch
• Both of the two great revolutions in twentieth-century physics—Einstein’s Theories of Relativity and Quantum Theory—revealed that observation played an important role. They also challenged the assumption that there is a material reality. Previously it was thought that the physical reality existed independent of our observation it. Shroedinger’s wave function and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle revealed this was not the case. As a result, several physicists of the time—Einstein, Bohr, Shroedinger, Eddington, Pauli—became interested in the role that mind and consciousness played in the cosmos, but this interest faded over time and few contemporary physicists seek to include consciousness in their model of reality. Peter Russell
• A contemporary of Einstein, Niels Bohr, an eminent Copenhagen physicist, was one of the founding fathers (together with Heisenberg and Born) of the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is one of the prominent approaches to understanding the principles of the unusual quantum world—in particular to describe how an observation, or measurement, results in the collapse of the wave function. Another interpretation of quantum mechanics called the von Neumann–Wigner interpretation, originally formulated by the foremost mathematician John von Neumann in 1932, goes one step further and considers the consciousness of the observer as the element that causes the wave function to collapse.  Tony Nader
• At the atomic level, ‘objects’ can only be understood in terms of the interaction between the processes of preparation and measurement. The end of this chain of processes lies always in the consciousness of the human observer.  Fritjof Capra
• The Awareness Principle transcends ‘science’ as we know it today, because it recognises that the most basic scientific ‘fact’ or ‘reality’ of all is not the ‘objective’ existence of a universe of matter and energy but a subjective awareness of such a universe, as shaped by different organising field-patterns or species of awareness. Peter Wilberg
• The other plausible interpretation of quantum mechanics is that some form of collapse does take place, in the sense that the material world assumes only one of the many possible configurations entailed by the wave function. To this day, it is a mystery what the causal agency of wave function collapse is. Indeed, since no material reality manifests until after collapse takes place, it seems that whatever causes collapse must come from outside material reality. This is what led renowned mathematician John van Neumann, Nobel-laureate physicist Eugene Wigner and many others to postulate consciousness as the causal agency of wave function collapse. After all, as we have seen when discussing the explanatory gap, consciousness has an immaterial quality that seems utterly unrelated to the properties of matter. Actually, consciousness is the only fact of nature we know of that has this immaterial quality. It seems to be the only obvious, observable (at least from within) fact of nature that remains outside the scope of our scientific models, including quantum models themselves. As such, it could hypothetically cause wave function collapse from outside the material aspects reality. Bernardo Kastrup
• When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not ‘measuring’ the world, we are creating it. Niels Bohr
• When one observes matter, one is not only finding out it’s properties but also bringing them into existence.  Bernardo Kastrup

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The observer and the observed seem to exist only as an inseparable pair

• Our ordinary conception of the world as a complex of things extended in space and succeeding one another in time is only a conventional map of the universe—it is not real. It is not real because this picture painted by symbolic-map knowledge depends upon the splitting of the universe into separate things seen in space-time, on the one hand, and the seer of these things on the other. In order for this to occur, the universe necessarily has to split itself into observer vs. observed. Ken Wilber
• Separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible. Werner Heisenberg
• Thus modern physics shows us once again-and this time at the macroscopic level-that material objects are not distinct entities, but are inseparably linked to their environment; that their properties can only be understood in terms of their interaction with the rest of the world. The basic unity of the cosmos manifests itself, therefore, not only in the world of the very small but also in the world of the very large; a fact which is increasingly acknowledged in modern astrophysics and cosmology. Fritjof Capra
• There is no way to remove the observer—us—from our perceptions of the world . . . In classical physics, the past is assumed to exist as a definite series of events, but according to quantum physics the past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities. Stephen Hawking
• The universe and the observer exist as a pair. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of the universe that ignores consciousness. I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers.  Andrei Linde
• Subject and object are not separate—so-called objective reality is projected by our subjective Consciousness.  Joseph P. Kauffman
• The observer, observed, and the process of observation are inseparable. Deepak Chopra
• Since the time of French philosopher, mathematician and scientist René Descartes, science has subscribed to a materialistic worldview, where physical reality and consciousness are wholly separate and don’t interact with one another. The idea of a separate observer and observed universe doesn’t exist in quantum physics. Not only does quantum physics disrupt the whole idea of subject-object separation, but it opens a door that many physicists are uncomfortable with: we may not be living in an “objective” reality after all! In fact, our consciousness is so interconnected with reality that we may be living in a set of interconnected subjective realities. Rizwan Virk
• The common division of the subject and object, inner world and outer world, body and soul, is no longer adequate and leads us into difficulties. Werner Heisenberg
• The observer cannot be left out of the description of the observation. John Archibald Wheeler
• The observer, who is a conscious entity, is participating in the outcome of the results of physical phenomena, at least at the subatomic level. Rizwan Virk

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Some even argue the observer and observed can be seen to be one entity

• Consciousness is simultaneously the substance and the witness of whatever appears. Rupert Spira
• Consciousness and its object are always one, beyond the realm of subject and object. Rupert Spira
• Consciousness is one with every object. In fact, in the ultimate analysis, there are no objects. There is only Consciousness taking the shape of our experience from moment to moment. Rupert Spira
• An experience consists of the creation of an object, the substance of the object and the knowing of the object. These three are one, simultaneously. Rupert Spira
• Both relativity and quantum theory imply the need to look on the world as an undivided whole, in which all parts of the universe, including the observer and his instruments, merge and unite in one totality. David Bohm
• What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances). The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.  Erwin Schrödinger
• Our experience is one seamless totality. Consciousness and the thought, sensation or perception are one experience. Rupert Spira
• There is no universe without perception. Consciousness and the cosmos are correlative. They are one and the same. Robert Lanza
• Quantum theory thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated “building blocks,” but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in an essential way. The human observer constitute the final link in the chain of observational processes, and the properties of any atomic object can be understood only in terms of the object’s interaction with the observer. Fritjof Capra
• Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist. Erwin Schrodinger
• The experiencer (mind) and the experience (matter) exist as one single system. Anthony Lambert
• The universe bursts into existence from life, not the other way around. Or, perhaps more graspably, there dwells an eternal correlativity of nature and consciousness.  Robert Lanza
• The Universe is not a collection of objects, but is an inseparable web of vibrating energy patterns in which no one component has reality independently from the entirety. Included in the entirety is the observer. Paul Davies
• I would say that in my scientific and philosophical work, my main concern has been with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular as a coherent whole.  David Bohm

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This all implies the world of matter cannot exist independently of consciousness…

• Without perception, there can be no reality. Robert Lanza (Biologist)
• What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances). The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist. Erwin Schrödinger (Physicist)
• As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as the result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together…. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter. Max Planck
• The physical world is entirely abstract and without actuality apart from its linkage to consciousness. Arthur Stanley Eddington
• The world has no substance and has no existence independent of Consciousness. Bentinho Massaro
• If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there, does it make a sound? An observer, an ear, and a brain are every bit as necessary for the experience of sound as are the air pulses.  Robert Lanza
• It is not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness. Eugene Wigner
• In truth, there can be no break between the observer and the observed. If the two are split, the reality is gone. Robert Lanza
• It is not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.  Eugene Wigner
• Once one fully understands that there is no independent external universe outside of biological existence, the rest more or less falls into place. Robert Lanza (Biologist)
• The behaviour of subatomic particles—indeed all particles and objects—is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves. Robert Lanza (Biologist)
• The universe and the observer exist as a pair. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of the universe that ignores consciousness. I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers. Andrei Linde (Physicist)
• Ultimately there is no inner, nor outer; the light of consciousness is both the creator and the creature, the experiencer and the experience, the body and the embodied. Take care of the power that projects all this and your problems will come to an end. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is that our bodies are in the picture.’ Erwin Schröedinger (Physicist)
• Without any organism, what if anything is really there? Existence must begin with life and perception.  Indeed, what could existence mean, absent consciousness of any kind?  Robert Lanza (Biologist)
• Albert Einstein once said “I like to believe that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it.” But according to the double-slit experiments, the moon isn’t there unless one is looking at it. Joseph Selbie
• All descriptions of matter are descriptions of modes of human perception within consciousness. Deepak Chopra
• In modern physics, the question of consciousness has arisen in connection with the observation of atomic phenomena. Quantum theory has made it clear that these phenomena can only be understood as links in a chain of processes, the end of which lies in the consciousness of the human observer. In the words of Eugene Wigner, ‘It was not possible to formulate the laws of [quantum theory] in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.‘   Fritjof Capra
• It is only in the consciousness of the observer that objects exist at all in space and time.  Robert Lanza
• Matter cannot and does not exist independently of consciousness.  Anthony Lambert
• On the basis of everything we know today, there is nothing unreasonable about inferring that consciousness plays an on-going role in determining reality. Indeed, with Wigner’s interpretation, such an inference is possible without violating reason or the known laws of physics.  Bernardo Kastrup
• Without consciousness there would be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far as it is consciously reflected and considered by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being.  C.J. Jung
• Unlike what one would expect if the universe were independent of mind, the properties of a quantum system do not exist prior to being observed. This suggests that things only exist insofar as they are experienced. Bernardo Kastrup

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…independently of the observer or spectator

• Before matter can peep forth—as a pebble, a snowflake, or even a subatomic particle—it has to be observed by a living creature. Robert Lanza
• Before it is observed, a subatomic particle doesn’t really exist in a definite place or have an actual motion. Instead, it dwells in a strange nether realm without actually being anywhere in particular.  Robert Lanza
• Before something is measured, it does not exist. Bernardo Kastrup
• For me as a human being, I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers. We are together, the universe and us. The moment you say that the universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness. A recording device cannot play the role of an observer, because who will read what is written on this recording device. In order for us to see that something happens, and say to one another that something happens, you need to have a universe, you need to have a recording device, and you need to have us . . . In the absence of observers, our universe is dead.  Andrei Linde
• From the physics of the subatomic world, quantum mechanics, we have learned that it may be meaningless to talk about the existence of particles outside our observations. It appears that by interrogating nature at the finest level we actually play a decisive part in bringing some aspects of reality into being. David Darling
• We make the world. Without intelligent observers—us—the cosmic movie, the light-show illusion of matter, will not play. The intelligent-observer effect has been painstakingly and exactly measured, and confirmed, in thousands of double-slit experiments.  Joseph Selbie
• Without us here to witness, the universe is just pointless physics unfolding. Daniel H. Wilson
• If I remove the thinking subject, the whole material world must at once vanish because it is nothing but a phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of ourselves as a subject, and a manner or species of representation. Immanuel Kant
• You do not have an existence independent of your environment, but rather you are your environment, and your environment is you.  Joseph P. Kauffman
• You are deluded if you think that the world around you is a physical construct separate from your own mind.  Kevin Michel
• There are no external, mind-independent states of affairs. Bernardo Kastrup
• “Observership” is a prerequisite for any useful version of “reality.”  John Archibald Wheeler
• This interpretation of quantum mechanics is often referred to as ‘Wigner’s interpretation.’ According to it, without conscious observation the entire universe would be just an amorphous realm of possibilities with no material reality. Things only ‘pop’ into material existence upon an observation by a conscious observer. Therefore, still according to this interpretation, the world ‘out there’ depends upon objects in consciousness ‘in here’ for its existence. Bernardo Kastrup
• If there were no intelligent observers in the physical universe, the physical universe would cease to exist.  Joseph Selbie
• Our beliefs shape how we perceive reality to be, and the belief that shapes our current perception of reality was adopted by the worldview of Newtonian physics, which asserts that reality is objective—that there is a material universe existing outside of our experience. But this isn’t true; there is no material universe outside of you; the Universe takes form through you.  Joseph P. Kauffman
• In the absence of observers, our universe is dead.  Andrei Linde
• It has been impossible to erase the conscious observer from quantum mechanics. If anything, subjectivity has recently begun to reassert its centrality in the making of objective reality. Donna Lu
• Matter does not have defined, observable properties (mass, speed, spin, momentum etc) until it is observed. Bernardo Kastrup
• Nothing and nobody exists in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator. Hannah Arendt
• Nothing could appear, the word “appearance” would make no sense, if recipients of appearances did not exist — living creatures able to acknowledge, recognize, and react to — in flight or desire, approval or disapproval, blame or praise — what is not merely there but appears to them and is meant for their perception. In this world which we enter, appearing from a nowhere, and from which we disappear into a nowhere, Being and Appearing coincide… Nothing and nobody exists in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator. In other words, nothing that is, insofar as it appears, exists in the singular; everything that is is meant to be perceived by somebody… Plurality is the law of the earth. Hannah Arendt
• Nothing is more astonishing about quantum mechanics than its allowing one to consider seriously that the universe would be nothing without observership.  John Wheeler
• Photons or electrons do not actually exist as real entities in real places until they are observed. Robert Lanza
• The universe does not seem to exist without a perceiver of that universe. Amit Goswami
• The physical world, including our bodies, is a response of the observer. We create our bodies as we create the experience of our world. Deepak Chopra
• Violation of realism in the sense used in quantum physics means that actual definite properties of a physical system “do not exist” prior to the measurement, or expressed differently, the result of a possible measurement “does not exist” before the act of measuring it. Tony Nader

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If consciousness manifests matter and matter cannot exist without consciousness, then how can consciousness be created as an epiphenomenon of matter (the brain), as is so commonly taken for granted 

• How can matter give rise to consciousness when quantum mechanics indicates that consciousness affects and even creates matter? Amit Goswami
• It seems absurd that an epiphenomenon of matter can affect matter: If consciousness is an epiphenomenon, how can it collapse the spread-out wave of a quantum object to a localized particle when it takes a quantum measurement? Amit Goswami
• The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment. Bernard d’Espagnat
• If nothing is real until it is observed, consciousness cannot arise from electrochemical events in the brains of animals like ourselves; rather, it must be part of the very fabric of reality. Sam Harris
• Other interpretations embrace the possibility that the intelligent-observer effect indicates that there is more to reality than scientific materialism’s matter-energy interactions. They embrace the idea that thought and consciousness have an existence independent of matter and energy. It rests on the premise that thought and consciousness are not just fleeting artifacts of the biochemical processes of the brain; rather, thought and consciousness are the fundamental causative elements of the cosmos. It posits not only that thought and consciousness exist beyond matter, but that thought and consciousness create matter. Joseph Selbie
• It is remarkable that mind enters into our awareness of nature on two separate levels. At the highest level, the level of human consciousness, our minds are somehow directly aware of the complicated flow of electrical and chemical patterns in our brains. At the lowest level, the level of single atoms and electrons, the mind of an observer is again involved in the description of events. Between lies the level of molecular biology, where mechanical models are adequate and mind appears to be irrelevant. But I, as a physicist, cannot help suspecting that there is a logical connection between the two ways in which mind appears in my universe. I cannot help thinking that our awareness of our own brains has something to do with the process which we call “observation” in atomic physics. That is to say, I think our consciousness is not just a passive epiphenomenon carried along by the chemical events in our brains, but is an active agent forcing the molecular complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another. In other words, mind is already inherent in every electron, and the processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call “chance” when they are made by electrons. Freeman Dyson
• If consciousness creates matter (through the observer effect observed in quantum physics), how can matter create consciousness? Anthony Lambert

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The implications of quantum physics are troubling to many…

• That a conscious observer is required to convert the superposition of states of a quantum system into the single observable outcome has always troubled physicists. If quantum physics is really a fundamental theory of reality, it shouldn’t need to invoke conscious brains and measuring devices. Instead these macroscopic objects should emerge naturally from the theory. Many solutions have been proposed, but none have found acceptance. Christoff Koch
• When the “observer effect” was first noticed by the early pioneers of quantum theory, they were deeply troubled. It seemed to undermine the basic assumption behind all science: that there is an objective world out there, irrespective of us. If the way the world behaves depends on how – or if – we look at it, what can “reality” really mean? Philip Ball
• We only know that we are here observing the world. What happens when nobody observes it is a mystery.  Deepak Chopra

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…particularly because it challenges the mainstream view of matertialism that believes that matter, not consciousness, is the ultimate reality

• Materialism believe that all objects have stand alone existence whether they are observed or not. Quantum physics shows this is a false assumption. Bernardo Kastrup
• Matter-energy interactions alone have yet fully to explain the deepest and most important mysteries: the origin and organization of life, the nature of consciousness, and why an intelligent observer is necessary for matter to take form. Joseph Selbie
• Quantum mechanics holds that matter may not be as innocent of mind as the materialist would have us believe. For example, a subatomic particle can exist simultaneously in multiple locations, is pure possibility, until it is measured—that is, perceived by a mind. Only then and not a moment sooner does it drop into reality as we know it: acquire fixed coordinates in time and space. The implication here is that matter might not exist as such in the absence of a perceiving subject. Needless to say, this raises some tricky questions for a materialist understanding of consciousness. The ground underfoot may be much less solid than we think.  Michael Pollan
• Quantum physics long ago undermined the very notion of physical objects—at its foundation, the universe isn’t solid, tangible, or fixed. Therefore, the old science of an external physical universe has been mortally wounded by the new science of quantum physics. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• That action, however, poses a problem only for material realism. In this philosophy, consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter, and it seems impossible that an epiphenomenon of matter could act on the very fabric of which it is built—in effect causing itself. Amit Goswami
• The anomalous nature of the intelligent-observer effect has a similarly profound effect on scientific materialism. Its paradigm-changing implications, too, cannot be overstated. The intelligent-observer paradox turns scientific materialism on its head. The oft-demonstrated fact that the matter-wave will not behave as matter unless observed by an intelligent observer has led many eminent physicists to the conclusion that matter does not create consciousness—consciousness creates matter.  Joseph Selbie
• The external world of physics has thus become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. Arthur Eddington
• The intelligent-observer paradox turns scientific materialism on its head. The oft-demonstrated fact that the matter wave will not behave as matter unless observed by an intelligent observer has led many eminent physicists to the conclusion that matter does not create consciousness—consciousness creates matter. Joseph Selbie
• We tend to mistakenly think that we are conscious within an unconscious universe that exists independently of us. Eric Wayne
• Traditional science assumes, for the most part, that an objective observer independent reality exists; the universe, stars, galaxies, sun, moon and earth would still be there if no one was looking. Deepak Chopra

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The observer effect implies a universe that is fundamentally mental, not physical, in nature…

• The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual. Sir James Jeans
• There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds . . . In truth there is only one mind. Erwin Schrödinger
• Reality is not made up of material substances that endure through time, but serially-ordered events, which are experiential in nature. Philip A. Pecorino
• Reality is the result of mind in action. Bernard Kastrup
• Reality is the unfolding of mind; that is, the unfolding of the observer in the process of observation. Bernard Kastrup
• The content of the mind is the ultimate reality, and only an act of observation can confer shape and form to reality—from a dandelion in a meadow to sun, wind, and rain.  Robert Lanza
• There is no reality above and beyond that created by the integration of all consciousnesses, and the holographic universe can  potentially be sculpted in virtually limitless ways by the mind.  Michael Talbot
• We must restart science on an entirely different footing, beginning with the brute fact that our minds exist, and determining, from there. Donald Hoffman
• The latest experiments in the field of quantum mechanics have rendered all but untenable the notion that there is anything objective at all. Significantly, this is entirely consistent with many of the world’s religious myths, which suggest that the world is a self-referential mental creation. Bernardo Kastrup

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… pointing to idealism (a mental universe) as opposed to materialism (a physical universe)

• Quantum Mechanics seems to favor idealism over realism to such an extent that physicists with strong physics backgrounds are promoting idealism (among these are John Wheeler, Frijtof Capra, and Fred Alan Wolf).  Martin E Moore
• According to Bohm, what happens in space-time is nevertheless determined by what happens in a nonlocal reality beyond space-time. If this were the case, then our free will and creativity would ultimately be illusions, and there would be no real meaning in the human drama. The idealist interpretation promises just the opposite: life is saturated with meaning. It’s a bit like the difference between a movie and a stage improvisation. The action and the dialog in the movie are fixed and determined, but in the live improvisation, variations are possible. Amit Goswami
• Democritus, some 2,500 years ago, propounded the philosophy of materialism, but shortly thereafter Plato gave us one of the first clear statements of the philosophy of monistic idealism. As Werner Heisenberg noted, quantum mechanics indicates that, of the two minds, Plato and Democritus, that have most influenced Western civilization, Plato may be the ultimate winner. The success that Democritus’s materialism has enjoyed in science for the past three hundred years may be only an aberration. Quantum theory interpreted according to an idealist metaphysics is paving the road for an idealist science in which consciousness comes first and matter pales to secondary importance.  Amit Goswami
• What remains is in any case very different from the full-blooded matter and the forbidding materialism of the Victorian scientist. His objective and material universe is proved to consist of little more than constructs of our own minds. To this extent, then, modern physics has moved in the direction of philosophic idealism. Mind and matter, if not proved to be of similar nature, are at least found to be ingredients of one single system. There is no longer room for the kind of dualism which has haunted philosophy since the days of Descartes. Sir James Jeans
• Quantum mechanics evidences that there is no such thing as a mere ‘observer (or register) of reality.’ The observing equipment, the registering device, ‘participates in the defining of reality.’ In this sense the universe does not sit ‘out there.’ John Wheeler
• I trust my intuition that the idealist interpretation of quantum mechanics is the correct one. Of all the interpretations, this is the only one that promises to take physics into a new arena: the arena of the brain-mind-consciousness problem. Amit Goswami
• In view of the way that quantum physics has demolished material realism, monistic idealism may be the only viable monistic philosophy of reality. Amit Goswami
• Monistic idealism is the correct philosophy for science in view of quantum physics. Amit Goswami
• Note that Heisenberg himself almost came up with the idealist metaphysic when he introduced the concept of potentia. The important new element is that the domain of potentia also exists in consciousness. Nothing is outside consciousness. This monistic view of the world is crucial. Amit Goswami
• Our current understanding of matter alone is unlikely to explain the nature of mind. It seems just as likely that the opposite will be the case. Adam Frank
• The universe does not seem to exist without a perceiver of that universe. Amit Goswami
• All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth – in a word, all those bodies which compose the frame of the world – have not any subsistence without a mind. George Berkeley
• All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. Edgar Allen Poe
• No physical reality can exist without being perceived subjectively in mind. As I argued then, the implication is that mind cannot be reduced to matter, for the paper suggests that matter cannot exist without mind being there in the first place. Bernardo Kastrup
• There is no proof of a world independent of perception. Yet me assume it is there.  Rupert Spira
• There is no such thing as material substance in the world. George Berkeley
• To be is to be perceived. George Berkeley

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Consciousness, not matter, appears to be the ultimate reality that gives rise to all else

• Consciousness cannot be reduced to matter – for it appears that it is needed for matter to exist in the first place – but must itself be fundamental. Bernardo Kastrup
• I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness.  Dada Gunamuktananda
• It’s not that consciousness is in all ; consciousness is all things. Scott Owen
• John von Neumann (1903–1957), who is considered to be one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century and who was also a scientist on the Manhattan Project, asserts that consciousness doesn’t merely affect reality; consciousness creates reality.  Joseph Selbie
• Matter is derived from mind, and not mind from matter. The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation
• The known physical or material world..  arise from, and [is] ‘made of,’ a transpersonal part of consciousness that extends far beyond our individual awareness. This way, consciousness is the sole ‘substance’ of all existence. Now, because that transpersonal part of consciousness obviously escapes the range of our introspection, we may call it the ‘obfuscated mind.’ Thus, according to this view, physical or material reality is an experiential manifestation of the obfuscated mind, triggered by our interaction with it through (quantum mechanical) observation. Bernardo Kastrup
• The von Neumann–Wheeler–Wigner interpretation (vNWWI) rests on the premise that thought and consciousness are not just fleeting artifacts of the biochemical processes of the brain; rather, thought and consciousness are the fundamental causative elements of the cosmos. It posits not only that thought and consciousness exist beyond matter, but that thought and consciousness create matter. John Selbie
• While the Copenhagen, the many-worlds, and a handful of other quantum physics’ interpretations stay within the bounds of scientific materialism, there are other equally reputable interpretations that go beyond the limitations of scientific materialism. These other interpretations embrace the possibility that the intelligent-observer effect indicates that there is more to reality than scientific materialism’s matter-energy interactions. They embrace the idea that thought and consciousness have an existence independent of matter and energy. John Selbie

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The observer effect thus agrees with what spiritual mystics have been saying for millenia…

• I am the witness, and through my witnessing, nature is producing; all that is sentient and all that is insentient.  Swami Vivekananda
• I am the witness, the same eternal witness of all. I see, therefore nature exists. I do not see, therefore she does not. Not one of us could see or speak if this infinite unity were broken for a moment.  Swami Vivekananda
• When that witness itself, which is ‘I am’, subsides, what remains?  With the witness gone, all other things have disappeared too.  Nisargadatta Maharaj
• There can be no universe without the witness, there can be no witness without the universe. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• Without an experiencer, the experience is not real. It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience. An experience which you cannot have, of what value is it to you?  Nisargadatta Maharaj
• Without awareness of reality, how can reality exist? Sri Ramana Maharshi
• You, Consciousness, are prior to experience. You, Consciousness, are not the result of an experience. All experience is a result of You.  Rupert Spira
• We started with the concept that the world contains the body, which in turn contains the mind, which in turn contains a little invisible spark of Consciousness, which at best is considered to be a by-product of the world and at worst is overlooked altogether. We end with the understanding that Consciousness is the ever-present Reality of all things and that everything appears within it and as an expression of it. Rupert Spira
• Will anything be apparent to you, if there be no consciousness? Even to say that nothing is apparent to you (as in sleep) requires the light of consciousness.  Tripura Rahasya
• With our thoughts we make the world.  Gautama Buddha
• To be everything must be witnessed. Nisargadatta Maharaja
• Therefore, if ‘I’ is Experiencing and if the world is made of our Experiencing of the world, then ‘I’ and the world, the object, are one. Rupert Spira
• Wherever the life is, the world bursts into appearance around it.  Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Without awareness of being, or consciousness, there is nothing. Are there objects? Who knows? If no one is aware of the objects, their existence or nonexistence becomes completely irrelevant. Michael A. Singer
• There is no world apart from the mind.  What appears as the world is only the mind.  Ribhu Gita
• In Eastern mysticism, this universal interwovenness always includes the human observer and his or her consciousness, and this is also true in atomic physics. Fritjof Capra
• It is known as Omnipotence, because whatever appears depends solely on Consciousness for its existence. Whatever appears emerges out of, is sustained by and is dissolved into Consciousness. Consciousness creates everything out of its own Being.  Rupert Spira
• No object has its own independent existence. All objects borrow their apparent existence from the reality of consciousness. Rupert Spira
• Nothing exists to you without your being there to experience its existence.  Nisargadatta Maharaj
• Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. Awaken to the witness, embrace the witness and live with all your being. William S Burroughs
• Nothing is perceived except perceptions themselves, and nothing exists outside of consciousness. Robert Lanza
• Nothing you perceive around you—not this page, not this room, not this house—has any reality except through you. Deepak Chopra
• Outside you there is no eternal sky, no changeless star and no reality. A Course in Miracles
• Q: Ultimately all is experience. Whatever we think, feel, do, is experience. Behind it is the experiencer. So, all we know consists of these two, the experiencer and the experience. But the two are really one — the experiencer alone is the experience. Still, the experiencer takes the experience to be outside. In the same way, the spirit and the body are one; they only appear as two.  Nisargadatta Maharaj
• That which we witness, we are forever changed by, and once witnessed we can never go back. Angeles Arrien

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…and seems to imply life has a cosmic purpose after all

• The pivotal role of observers in quantum theory is very curious. Is it possible that the human race has a cosmic purpose after all? Did the universe blossom into an untold number of realities, each containing billions of galaxies and vast oceans of emptiness between them, just to produce a few scattered communities of observers? Is the ultimate goal of the universe to observe its own splendor? Mark Alpert
• The universe only collapses into existence when observed by an observer (i.e. experienced by consciousness.) This implies that experiencing, at least in part, is the very purpose of existence. Anthony Lambert
• Our essential role in the existence of the physical universe has been confirmed over and over by science’s intelligent-observer experiments— a matter wave only behaves like matter when observed by an intelligent observer. Joseph Selbie
• Mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our understanding. Freeman Dyson
• The experimentally confirmed and confounding need for the presence of an intelligent observer in order for the matter-wave to behave like matter is a profound hint, provided by science, that we are far more than physical bodies, far more than biological machines, far more, even, than holographic projections of our energy bodies. We are one with the infinite intelligent consciousness that creates Reality.  Joseph Selbie
• And what of us? Suddenly, we had grown central to every physical process, but no one had fully acknowledged this. The quantum pioneers had discovered that our involvement with matter was crucial. Subatomic particles existed in all possible states until disturbed by us – by observing or measuring – at which point, they’d settle down, at long last, into something real. Our observation – our human consciousness – was utterly central to this process of subatomic flux actually becoming some set thing, but we weren’t in any of the mathematics of Heisenberg or Schrödinger. They realized that we were somehow key, but they didn’t know how to include us. As far as science was concerned, we were still on the outside looking in. Lynne McTaggart
• For a parallel to the lesson of atomic theory … [we must turn] to those kinds of epistemological problems with which already thinkers like the Buddha and Lao Tzu have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our position as spectators and actors in the great drama of existence. Niels Bohr

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The multiple worlds interpretation is an alternative to the Copenhagan interpretation which argues for a collapse of the wave function

• In the quantum world, an elementary particle, or a collection of such particles, can exist in a superposition of two or more possible states of being. An electron, for example, can be in a superposition of different locations, velocities and orientations of its spin. Yet anytime scientists measure one of these properties with precision, they see a definite result—just one of the elements of the superposition, not a combination of them. Nor do we ever see macroscopic objects in superpositions. The measurement problem boils down to this question: How and why does the unique world of our experience emerge from the multiplicities of alternatives available in the superposed quantum world? Many of the founders of quantum mechanics, notably Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and John von Neumann, agreed on an interpretation of quantum mechanics—known as the Copenhagen interpretation— to deal with the measurement problem. This model of reality postulates that the mechanics of the quantum world reduce to, and only find meaning in terms of, classically observable phenomena—not the reverse. This approach privileges the external observer, placing that observer in a classical realm that is distinct from the quantum realm of the object observed. Though unable to explain the nature of the boundary between the quantum and classical realms, the Copenhagenists nonetheless used quantum mechanics with great technical success.  Peter Byrne
• Quantum physics deals in probabilities, not certainty, and the mathematical wavefunctions we calculate within the theory will contain pieces describing multiple possible outcomes right up until the moment of measurement. And yet, we experience only a single reality, with any given measurement having one and only one outcome.  The traditional way of handling this is via “wavefunction collapse,” which gives measurement an active role in the process. In collapse interpretations, the usual equations of quantum physics apply during intervals between measurements of the state of a quantum system, but during the measurement process itself, something else happens that takes the system from a spread-out quantum superposition into a single classical reality. This brings with it a whole host of problems associated with defining what counts as a measurement, and how this “collapse” is brought about, and so forth, but for many physicists, that was regarded as a necessary concession to reconcile empirical reality with the enormously successful predictions of quantum physics. Chad Orze
• What quantum theory seems to insist is that at the fundamental level the world cannot supply clear “yes/no” empirical answers to all the questions that seem at face value as though they should have one. The calm acceptance of that fact by the Copenhagen interpretation seems to some, and with good reason, to be far too unsatisfactory and complacent. The MWI is an exuberant attempt to rescue the “yes/no” by admitting both of them at once. But in the end, if you say everything is true, you have said nothing.  Philip Ball

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According to the multiple worlds interpretation, a new parallel universe splits off every time the wave function collapses

• Others took a more extreme view. In the many-worlds interpretation espoused by the American physicist Hugh Everett, the authority of the wave function and its governing Schrödinger equation was taken as absolute. Measurements didn’t suspend the equation or collapse the wave function, they merely made the Universe split off into many (perhaps infinite) parallel versions of itself. Thus, for every experimentalist who measures an electron over here, a parallel universe is created in which her parallel copy finds the electron over there. The many-worlds Interpretation is one that many materialists favor, but it comes with a steep price. Corey S Powell
• The attraction of the many-worlds interpretation, for instance, is its ability to keep the reality in the mathematical physics. In this view, yes, the wave function is real and, yes, it describes a world of matter that obeys mathematical rules, whether someone is watching or not. The price you pay for this position is an infinite number of parallel universes that are infinitely splitting off into an infinity of other parallel universes that then split off into … well, you get the picture. Corey S Powell
• Two general interpretations of quantum mechanics are popular today, as discussed by physicist Erich Joos.  The first is the so-called ‘many-worlds’ interpretation, attributed to physicist Hugh Everett III. According to this interpretation, the collapse of the wave function is not real, but merely an illusion. All possible realities comprised in the wave function actually manifest physically, but each in a different parallel universe. This way, our universe is thought to be constantly ‘branching out,’ like a tree, into different versions of itself, each manifesting a different one of the possibilities of each moment. Since we ourselves are part of reality, multiple versions of ourselves are postulated to occupy different parallel universes. The memories you hold right now reflect the path this version of you took along the different branches of the tree. For instance, in the branch of the tree you occupy right now, you have picked up this book and are now reading it. In a different branch of the tree, in a parallel universe, another version of you is doing something else right now, with no memory of having picked up this book.  Bernardo Kastrup
• If every quantum decision creates different universes, then there must be an infinite number of universes with slightly different choices made along the way—including those with different versions of ourselves that have made different choices in life. Rizwan Virk
• Another problem concerns the nature of reality before conscious minds existed. Without anything to do the collapsing, the universe might have looked very weird – perhaps something like the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory, which holds that everything that could happen does, in an infinite number of parallel universes. According to this idea, every time a decision is made, the universe splits in two, with one outcome in one and the other in the other. Pre-conscious reality may have been a multiverse with every possible outcome happening somewhere. Donna Lu
• The many-worlds theory attempts to resolve the quandaries that are posed by the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat by postulating that the universe splits into two branches: one with a dead cat and a lamenting observer, the other with a live cat and a happy observer. Try, however, to use this theory for resolving the paradox of quantum nonlocality. A measurement here of a correlated electron still splits the world of its partner over there at a distance and yet instantly. Thus this interpretation seems to compromise locality and, hence, does not uphold material realism after all. Even though it does not help support material realism, the many-worlds theory should certainly be considered a viable alternative to the idealist interpretation. But the many-worlds alternative (like the nonlocal hidden-variables theory) abandons many of the revolutionary aspects of the Copenhagen interpretation. In contrast, monistic idealism takes off from where the Copenhagen interpretation becomes fuzzy; it declares explicitly that the quantum waves, or coherent superpositions, are real but exist in a transcendent domain that is beyond and in addition to material reality.  Amit Goswami
• The many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory says that if an observation (or measurement) regarding the location of a quantum object is performed then the particle or object will actually manifest in many different places—arguably at the same time but in different parallel universes. Tony Nader
• The Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics holds that there are many worlds which exist in parallel at the same space and time as our own. The existence of the other worlds makes it possible to remove randomness and action at a distance from quantum theory and thus from all physics. The MWI provides a solution to the measurement problem of quantum mechanics. Lev Vaidman
• The many-worlds interpretation implies that there are most likely an uncountably infinite number of universes. It is one of many multiverse hypotheses in physics and philosophy. MWI views time as a many-branched tree, wherein every possible quantum outcome is realised. This is intended to resolve some paradoxes of quantum theory, such as the EPR paradox  and Schrödinger’s cat, since every possible outcome of a quantum event exists in its own universe. Bryce S. DeWitt
• The many-worlds interpretation removes the observer-dependent role in the quantum measurement process by replacing wavefunction collapse with quantum decoherence. Since the observer’s role lies at the heart of most if not all “quantum paradoxes,” this automatically resolves a number of problems, such as Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, the EPR paradox, von Neumann’s “boundary problem”, and even wave-particle duality. Lev Vaidman
• The fundamental idea of the MWI, going back to Everett 1957, is that there are myriads of worlds in the Universe in addition to the world we are aware of. In particular, every time a quantum experiment with different possible outcomes is performed, all outcomes are obtained, each in a different newly created world, even if we are only aware of the world with the outcome we have seen. The reader can split the world right now using this interactive quantum world splitter. The creation of worlds takes place everywhere, not just in physics laboratories, for example, the explosion of a star during a supernova. Lev Vaidman
• It is the most extraordinary, alluring and thought-provoking of all the ways in which quantum mechanics has been interpreted. In its most familiar guise, the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) suggests that we live in a near-infinity of universes, all superimposed in the same physical space but mutually isolated and evolving independently. In many of these universes there exist replicas of you and me, all but indistinguishable yet leading other lives.  Philip Ball
• According to MWI, every one of the vast number of possibilities—of where and in what form a matter-wave could manifest—actually do manifest. MWI’s adherents posit that although it appears to us that only one possibility manifested, and that therefore there was a single waveform collapse manifesting a single outcome, in fact all the other possibilities also manifested, and that, when they did, they caused our universe to branch into as many new universes as there were possibilities. Got that? MWI theorizes that every possibility manifests—no matter how improbable—and that in the moment of manifesting, each possibility causes the entire universe to branch or bud into an entirely new, separate, and nearly identical universe. John Selbie
• Sean Carroll argues that the many-worlds theory is the most straightforward approach to understanding quantum mechanics. It accepts the reality of the wave function. In fact, it says that there is one wave function, and only one, for the entire Universe. Further, it states that when an event happens in our world, the other possibilities contained in the wave function do not go away. Instead, new worlds are created, in which each possibility is a reality. The theory’s sheer simplicity and logic within the conceptual framework of quantum mechanics inspire Carroll to call it the “courageous” approach. Don’t worry about those extra worlds, he asserts — we can’t see them, and if the many-worlds theory is true, we won’t notice the difference. The many other worlds are parallel to our own, but so hidden from it that they “might as well be populated by ghosts”. Robert P. Crease
• The Multiple Worlds Interpretation is the claim is that the different branches of the universal wavefunction in which the different outcomes happen and are perceived to happen are effectively separate universes. There’s a “world” in which Professor Schrödinger opens his box to find a live cat, and in that universe he goes on to share the good news with his buddy Wigner, and there’s an entirely separate “world” in which Professor Schrödinger has his day ruined, and goes on to bum Wigner out, and so on. There’s a “world” for every possible sequence of events, and these are completely separate and inaccessible to one another. The world bifurcates whenever a measurement is made, and subsequently there are two universes with different histories evolving in parallel. Chad Orzel

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The multiple worlds interpretation is a way for traditional thinkers to stick with materialism…

• Because the intelligent-observer paradox strongly suggests that scientific materialism is fundamentally incomplete, we can understand why adherents of scientific materialism have fallen on the many-worlds interpretation with gladsome cries: They believe they’ve found a strictly interacting matter- and energy-based answer to the intelligent- observer paradox. John Selbie
• MWI is the ultimate expression of scientific materialism’s belief that all things are the result of matter-energy interactions and random chance. With all due respect, you MWI guys can keep your theory. John Selbie

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…by explaining away the apparent phenomenon of wave function collapse…

• Bohr and colleagues didn’t bring wave function collapse into the picture just to make things difficult. They did it because that’s what seems to happen. When we make a measurement, we really do get just one result out of the many that quantum mechanics offers. Wave function collapse seemed to be demanded in order to connect quantum theory to reality. Philip Ball
• After the Danish physicist Niels Bohr articulated and refined what became known as the Copenhagen interpretation — widely regarded as the orthodox view of quantum mechanics — in the 1930s and ’40s, it seemed that the central problem for quantum mechanics was the mysterious rupture created by observation or measurement, which was packaged up into the rubric of “collapse of the wave function.”  The wave function is a mathematical expression that defines all possible observable states of a quantum system, such as the various possible locations of a particle. Up until a measurement is made and the wave function collapses (whatever that means), there is no reason to attribute any greater a degree of reality to any of the possible states than to any other. It’s not that the quantum system is actually in one or other of these states but we don’t know which; we can confidently say that it is not in any one of these states, but is properly described by the wave function itself, which in some sense “permits” them all as observational outcomes. Where, then, do they all go, bar one, when the wave function collapses?  At first glance, the many-worlds interpretation looks like a delightfully simple answer to that mysterious vanishing act. It says that none of the states vanishes at all, except to our perception. It says, in essence, let’s just do away with wave function collapse altogether. Philip Ball
• Hugh Everett Everett III boldly tackled the notorious measurement problem in quantum mechanics, which had bedeviled physicists since the 1920s. In a nutshell, the problem arises from a contradiction between how elementary particles (such as electrons and photons) interact at the microscopic, quantum level of reality and what happens when the particles are measured from the macroscopic, classical level.  Everett addressed the measurement problem by merging the microscopic and macroscopic worlds. He made the observer an integral part of the system observed, introducing a universal wave function that links observers and objects as parts of a single quantum system. He described the macroscopic world quantum mechanically and thought of large objects as existing in quantum superpositions as well. Breaking with Bohr and Heisenberg, he dispensed with the need for the discontinuity of a wave-function collapse. Peter Byrne
• Hugh Everett Everett III radical new idea (the Multiple Worlds Interpretation) was to ask, What if the continuous evolution of a wave function is not interrupted by acts of measurement? What if the Schrödinger equation always applies and applies to everything—objects and observers alike? What if no elements of superpositions are ever banished from reality? What would such a world appear like to us? Everett saw that under those assumptions, the wave function of an observer would, in effect, bifurcate at each interaction of the observer with a superposed object. The universal wave function would contain branches for every alternative making up the object’s superposition. Each branch has its own copy of the observer, a copy that perceived one of those alternatives as the outcome. According to a fundamental mathematical property of the Schrödinger equation, once formed, the branches do not influence one another. Thus, each branch embarks on a different future, independently of the others.  Peter Byrne
• “Many-Worlds” came along in the late 1950’s, when a Princeton grad student named Hugh Everett III pointed out that you don’t really need to have the wavefunction collapse. Instead, you can simply have the wavefunction continue along as it was before, retaining the multiple branches corresponding to the different possible measurement outcomes. In this view, we “see” a single outcome because we’re part of the wavefunction, with everything entangled together. So, Schrödinger’s infamous cat is both alive and dead before the box is opened, and after it’s opened, the cat is alive-with-a-happy-Schrödinger, and dead-with-a-sad-Schrödinger. If Schrödinger goes on to tell his fellow cat-physics enthusiast Eugene Wigner the results, then the cat is alive-with-a-happy-Schrödinger-and-a-happy-Wigner and dead-with-a-sad-Schrödinger-and-a-sad-Wigner. And so on. This fixes the problem of needing a mysterious collapse mechanism, but at the cost of carrying around all these extra versions of ourselves and our experimental subjects.   Chad Orzel
• According to a hypothesis devised by quantum physicist Hugh Everett, we live in a universe — or more accurately a multiverse — where timelines are constantly branching off and creating distinct and coherent worlds, each experienced by a different version of you. Quantum physicists have used the MWI to reconcile an uncomfortable shortcoming of the Copenhagen Interpretation, namely the assertion that unobserved phenomenon can exist in dual states. So instead of saying that Schrödinger’s cat is both alive and dead, Many Worlders would say the cat has simply “branched” off into two different worlds: one in which it is alive and one in which it is dead.  George Dvorsky

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…and thus eliminating the need for an intelligent observer to collapse matter into being

• A newer interpretation, one that appeals especially to scientific materialists and that has attracted popular interest as well, is the many-worlds interpretation (MWI). The many-worlds interpretation is particularly attractive to scientific materialists because it offers the possibility to eliminate altogether the need for an intelligent observer. MWI posits that it only appears to us that an intelligent observer is necessary to cause the matter-wave to take on its particle form while, in fact, there is no intelligent-observer effect at all. John Selbie

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The multiple worlds interpretation implies the entire universe is described by a gigantic wave function that contains within it all possible realities

• The MWI implies that the entire universe is described by a gigantic wave function that contains within it all possible realities. This “universal wave function,” as Everett called it in his thesis, begins as a combination, or superposition, of all possible states of its constituent particles. As it evolves, some of these superpositions break down, making certain realities distinct and isolated from one another. In this sense, worlds are not exactly “created” by measurements; they are just separated. This is why we shouldn’t, strictly speaking, talk of the “splitting” of worlds (even though Everett did), as though two have been produced from one. Rather, we should speak of the unraveling of two realities that were previously just possible futures of a single reality. Philip Ball

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According to the multiple worlds interpretation, different realities unravel into different universes

• If all the possible outcomes of a quantum measurement have a real existence, where are they, and why do we see (or think we see) only one? This is where the many worlds come in. Bryce DeWitt, in 1970, argued that the alternative outcomes of the measurement must exist in a parallel reality: another world. You measure the path of an electron, and in this world it seems to go this way, but in another world it went that way. Philip Ball
• The many worlds interpretation raises all kinds of puzzling questions about the multiple versions of reality, and about the multiple versions of you that exist in them. Sean Carroll has some answers.  If new universes are constantly popping into existence, isn’t something being created from nothing, violating one of the most basic principles of physics? Not so, according to Carroll: “It only looks like you are creating extra copies of the universe. It’s better to think of it as taking a big thick universe and slicing it.  Corey S. Powell

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According to the multiple worlds interpretation, there are countless versions of ourselves

• After a measurement takes place, there are two (or more) versions of the observer where before there was one. “The act of making a decision,” says Tegmark — a decision here counting as a measurement, generating a particular outcome from the various possibilities — “causes a person to split into multiple copies.” Both copies are in some sense versions of the initial observer, and both of them experience a unique, smoothly changing reality that they are convinced is the “real world.” At first these observers are identical in all respects except that one observed this path of the electron (or whatever is being measured) and the other that path. But after that, who can say? Their universes go their separate ways, launched on a trajectory of continual unraveling. Philip Ball
• The MWI tells us that we have multiple selves, living other lives in other universes, quite possibly doing all the things that we dream of but will never achieve (or never dare to attempt). There is no path not taken. For every tragedy, like Gwyneth Paltrow’s character being hit by a van in the many-worlds-inspired 1998 movie Sliding Doors, there is salvation and triumph.  Who could resist that idea? Philip Ball
• The concept of a single person extending from birth to death was always just a useful approximation. The world duplicates, and everything within the world goes along with it.  Sean Carroll
• The MWI also upsets our notion of individuality. We all experience our lives as a coherent and discrete journey through what appears to be space and time. In reality, however, the self is an exponentially expanding set of instances that are branching off from moment to moment. As a result, we should not think of ourselves as individuals, but rather as multiplicities. The reason for this illusion is that multiple experiences cannot be observed, so we’re left with the impression that we’re just a single person.  George Dvorsky
• If the MWI is true, then there must be a near-infinite (or infinite!) number of versions of you, each of them experiencing the world as individuals separate from and oblivious to each other. Consequently, the sheer volume of alternate life-paths has to be staggeringly large. Since birth, you — or what you think is you — have been branching off into different worlds with each passing superposition. The complete set of “you” is like a massive root system that’s growing exponentially, with each root representing a new timeline. Because the MWI implies constant variability based upon probabilities, each new instance of you should be distinct, observing a world in which an alternative outcome has transpired. Subsequently, there are versions of you who are still with former romantic partners. Many of your alternate selves are happier and more successful than you are, and vice-versa. There may even be “evil” versions of you, a la Star Trek. The possibilities are practically endless, so long as the basics of physics haven’t been violated. George Dvorsky

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The multiple worlds interpretation helps preserve deterministic thinking…

• The appeal of the many-worlds interpretation to orthodox physics is its role in preserving a form of deterministic thinking, a core value of orthodox science. A deterministic universe is one where the present and future would have been entirely determined at the moment of creation. To be a little more formal about what I mean, a deterministic universe is such that all its future states could be, in principle, exactly calculated from a complete knowledge of the universe’s present state and its laws. In such a universe, everything you think, every decision you believe to make, everything you experience, would be the inescapable consequences of a predictable interplay of subatomic particles. The universe, and everything that happens within it, would be predetermined the same way that the trajectories of balls in a billiard game are entirely pre-determined at the moment the cue stick hits the cue ball. But quantum wave function collapse violates determinism, since the reality that actually materializes at each moment cannot be predicted even in principle. Bernardo Kastrup
• What this boils down to is the interpretation of probabilities in the MWI. If all outcomes occur with 100-percent probability, where does that leave the probabilistic character of quantum mechanics? And how can two (or for that matter, a thousand) mutually exclusive outcomes all have 100-percent probability? Philip Ball
• Interpretations of quantum mechanics that consider wave function collapse to be in some way real recognize a single universe. However, they require us to part with the notion that such a single universe is deterministic. Bernardo Kastrup

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…although some argue it implies a certain indeterminism to existence, albeit in an unintuitive way

• Also, the MWI would imply a certain indeterminism to existence, albeit in an unintuitive way. Whenever we ask ourselves, “Could I have chosen a different course of action?,” the MWI would strongly imply that the answer is most definitely yes. What’s more, not only could you have chosen a different course of action, an alternate version of you actually did! As for why you chose differently, or why you fared a certain way on a test or sporting event, it all boils down to how the quantum events affected objects at the classical scale — including the cogitations of your brain. George Dvorsky

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The multiple worlds interpretation, some argue, can be used to explain away the Goldilocks problem (the apparent finetuning of the universe for life to exist)

• MWI also appears to solve for scientific materialists materialists what is called the Goldilocks-universe problem. As mentioned in a previous chapter, it has been convincingly argued that hundreds of conditions—from the absolutely precise strength of gravity to the existence of an excited state of carbon-12 called the Hoyle State—all have to be just right, like Goldilocks’s porridge, in order for our universe to unfold as it did and for life to arise within it. The many-worlds interpretation gives scientific materialists a way around the Goldilocks problem, as well as around the intelligent-observer paradox. John Selbie

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The multiple worlds interpretation may be crazy sounding but it is popular among many physycists…

• As crazy as it sounds, most working physicists buy into the many-worlds theory.  Sean M. Carroll
• A poll of 72 “leading quantum cosmologists and other quantum field theorists” conducted before 1991 by L. David Raub showed 58% agreement with “Yes, I think MWI is true”. Frank Tipler
• For decades,  Hugh Everett’’s colleagues mostly brushed aside his explanation, treating it more like a ghost story than serious science. But nobody has found any flaws in Schrödinger’s equation; nor can they explain away its implications. As a result, many contemporary physicists — including David Deutsch at Oxford University and Max Tegmark at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — have come to agree that the many worlds interpretation is the only coherent way to understand quantum mechanics.  Corey S. Powell
• Some 60 years after its introduction, the MWI remains a highly controversial subject. In a 2013 poll of quantum physicists, only a fifth said they subscribe to the MWI (as compared to the 42% who fall into the Copenhagen camp). That said, the list of thinkers who describe themselves as Many Worlders is an impressive one, and includes such eminent thinkers as quantum physicist David Deutsch, theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson, and physicist Sean Carroll.  George Dvorsky

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…and many who believe in the multiple worlds interpretation are very invested in it

• The MWI illustrates just how peculiarly quantum theory forces us to think. It is an intensely controversial view. Arguments about the interpretation of quantum mechanics are noted for their passion, as disagreements that can’t be settled by objective evidence are wont to be. But when the MWI is in the picture, those passions can become so extreme that we must suspect a great deal more invested in the matter than simply the resolution of a scientific puzzle. Philip Ball
• The MWI is surely the most polarizing of interpretations. Some physicists consider it almost self-evidently absurd; “Everettians,” meanwhile, are often unshakable in their conviction that this is the most logical, consistent way to think about quantum mechanics. Some of them insist that it is the only plausible interpretation.  Philip Ball

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It is important to note that the multiple worlds theory is distinct from the cosmological multiverse theory

• Physics describes different kinds of multiverse. The easiest one to comprehend is called the cosmological multiverse. The idea here is that the universe expanded at a mind-boggling speed in the fraction of a second after the big bang. During this period of inflation, there were quantum fluctuations which caused separate bubble universes to pop into existence and themselves start inflating and blowing bubbles. Russian physicist Andrei Linde came up with this concept, which suggests an infinity of universes no longer in any causal connection with one another – so free to develop in different ways. String theory, which is a notoriously theoretical explanation of reality, predicts a frankly meaninglessly large number of universes, maybe 10 to the 500 or more, all with slightly different physical parameters.  Rowan Hooper
• The many-worlds interpretation is distinct from the multiverse hypothesis, which envisions other universes, born in separate Big Bangs, that have always been physically disconnected from our own.  Philip Ball

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The multiple worlds interpretation has its detractors

• The value of the many worlds, then, is that they close off an easy way out. It was worth admitting them in order to discover that they are a dead end. But there is no point then sitting there insisting we have found the way out. We need to go back and keep searching. Philip Ball

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Detractors argue the multiple worlds interpretation is extremely extravagant as it has to take into account an infinite number of universes…

• This process of duplication seems to have no end: you have to erect an entire parallel universe around that one electron, identical in all respects except where the electron went. You avoid the complication of wave function collapse, but at the expense of making another universe.   Philip Ball
• This picture gets really extravagant when you appreciate what a measurement is. In one view, any interaction between one quantum entity and another — a photon of light bouncing off an atom — can produce alternative outcomes, and so demands parallel universes. As DeWitt put it, “Every quantum transition taking place on every star, in every galaxy, in every remote corner of the universe is splitting our local world on earth into myriads of copies.”  Philip Ball
• According to MWI, our universe of the moment, and all the other universes that have already branched before it, and those that will branch after it, will all continue to branch into yet more universes as new sets of quantum possibilities arise in each universe. In infinitesimally short order, the number of universes created becomes indescribably large: 10 to the trillionth? Oops, now it’s 10 to the quadrillionth, and so on and on. Numbers like 10 to the 10^10,000,000th are used to describe the number of separate universes that could exist. It’s a rather profligate theory to say the least. John Selbie
• The primary assertion of the MWI is that all of existence is composed of a quantum superposition of an uncountably large — or even infinite — number of universes. If this interpretation of existence is true, then there must be an absolutely astounding number of alternate worlds.  George Dvorsky

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…thus contradicting the principle of parsimony or Occam’s Razor

• Parsimony: The quality of being careful with money or resources. Oxford Dictionary
• Principle of parsimony: The scientific principle that things are usually connected or behave in the simplest or most economical way. Lexico
• Occam’s Razor: The principle (attributed to William of Occam) that in explaining a thing no more assumptions should be made than are necessary. Merriam’s Dictionary
• If you are not a physicist, your first impulse may be to discount the many-worlds interpretation as laughable. This would be understandable but unwarranted. Indeed, starting from the mathematical framework we know to be true, ‘many-worlds’ seems to be the interpretation that follows in the most direct way. However, from a scientific perspective, the main problem with the many-worlds interpretation is the lack of parsimony. An accepted rule-of-thumb in science is that a good theory is one that requires the least complex explanation for an observed phenomenon. The many-worlds interpretation, from a certain point of view, proposes the most complex explanation of nature that can be conceived; namely, that everything that could possibly happen actually does.  Bernardo Kastrup
• I do not believe that we have to live with the many-worlds interpretation. Indeed, it would be a stupendous number of parallel worlds, which are only there because physicists couldn’t decide which of them is real.  Gerard ‘t Hooft

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However, believers argue this is not a reason to dismiss the theory

• Let’s dispense with a wrong objection. Some criticize the MWI on aesthetic grounds: People object to all those countless other universes, multiplying by the trillion every nanosecond, because it just doesn’t seem proper. Other copies of me? Other world histories? Worlds where I never existed? Honestly, whatever next! This objection is rightly dismissed by saying that an affront to one’s sense of propriety is no grounds for rejecting a theory. Who are we to say how the world should behave?  Philip Ball

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Detractors argue the multiple worlds interpretation gives undue importance to quantum events

• The idea that every little quantum “measurement” spawns a world “gives an undue importance to the little differences generated by quantum events, as if each of them were vital to the universe.” This  is contrary to what we generally learn from physics: that most of the fine details make no difference at all to what happens at larger scales. Roland Omnès

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Detractors argue the multiple worlds interpretation creates a problem of causation

• There are, however, fundamental problems with the many-worlds approach. While MWI avoids the intelligent-observer paradox and the Goldilocks-universe problem, it creates a gigantic problem of causation. Proponents propose that every possibility, however unlikely and however insignificant, has sufficient causal power to create an entire universe. For the many-worlds interpretation to be valid, a nebulous, indefinable, and unmeasurable quantity—possibility—must have infinite power of causation. John Selbie

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Detractors argue the multiple worlds theory doesn’t account for gravity

• Oxford’s Roger Penrose argues that the whole idea of many worlds is flawed, because it’s based on an overly simplistic version of quantum mechanics that doesn’t account for gravity. “The rules must change when gravity is involved,” he says. In a more complete quantum theory, Penrose argues, gravity helps anchor reality and blurry events will have only one allowable outcome. He points to a potentially decisive experiment now being carried out at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Leiden University in the Netherlands that’s designed to directly observe how an object transforms from many possible locations to a single, fixed reality.   Corey S. Powell

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Detractors argue the multiple worlds theory borders on being nihilistic

• On the human side of things, MWI is completely nihilistic. It proposes absolute meaninglessness. Everything that possibly could happen, happens. In my universe of the moment, moment, I keep writing this sentence, while in the zillion other universes where some version of me exists, I do other things. In some universe, Hitler became the good guy and the Allies were the oppressors. In some universe, Jesus stayed a carpenter. In some universe, Beethoven was tone deaf and Einstein was an idiot. In some universe, Rush Limbaugh is president. In some universe, I am president. In some universe, I was killed by my mother. In some universe, I killed my mother. In some universe, we live like savages. In some universe, we live like saints. In most universes, there is no life at all and intelligence never arises. John Selbie
• The MWI tells you not to trust empiricism at all: Rather than imposing the observer on the scene, it destroys any credible account of what an observer can possibly be.  Philip Ball
• What the MWI really denies is the existence of facts at all. It replaces them with an experience of pseudo-facts (we think that this happened, even though that happened too). In so doing, it eliminates any coherent notion of what we can experience, or have experienced, or are experiencing right now. We might reasonably wonder if there is any value — any meaning — in what remains, and whether the sacrifice has been worth it. Philip Ball
• MWI claims to explain why it looks as though “you” are here observing that the electron spin is up, not down. But actually it is not returning us to this fundamental ground truth at all. Properly conceived, it is saying that there are neither facts nor a you who observes them. Philip Ball
• In MWI, there is no correlation at all between action and result, cause and effect. Causality is thrown out the window. There is no self-determination. Nothing you do makes any difference. You are not an individual but rather a fleetingly momentary collection of accidentally combined possibilities. John Selbie

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• How can consciousness be decisive in shaping the reality of the physical world? Does this not imply the primacy of consciousness over matter? Amit Goswami
• How can there be one rule for the objective world before a measurement is made, and another that jumps in after the measurement? Corey S Powell
• If consciousness creates matter (through the observer effect), how can matter create consciousness. Anthony Lambert
• Why would we be in a probabilistic world where making a choice (or having an observation) collapses a probability wave to a single timeline or probability? Rizwan Virk
• Which came first – the observer or the particle?  Vanna Bonta
• What exactly is quantum mechanics telling us about the world? What does the wave function describe? What really happens when a measurement occurs? Above all, what is matter?  There are today no definitive answers to these questions. There is not even a consensus about what the answers should look like.  Corey S Powell
• What does [the observer effect] mean about the nature of reality? Does it mean that nature is inherently non-deterministic? Does it mean that what we keep or destroy today can affect the outcomes of events that should already be determined in the past? Does it mean that the observer plays a fundamental role in determining what is real? Ethan Siegel