It has been proven experimentally that when studying subatomic particles, the observer actually alters and determines what is perceived. The work of the observer is hopelessly entangled in that which he is attempting to observe. An electron turns out to be both a particle and a wave. But how and where such a particle will be located remains entirely dependent upon the very act of observation.
Pre-quantum physicists thought that they could determine the trajectory of individual particles with complete certainty. They assumed that the behavior of particles would be predictable if everything were known at the outset—that there was no limit to the accuracy with which they could measure the physical properties of a particle. But Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle showed that this is not the case. You can know either the velocity of a particle or its location but not both. If you know one, you cannot know the other.
The experiments of Heisenberg and Bell call us back to experience itself, the immediacy of the infinite here and now, and shake our unexamined trust in objective reality. But another support for biocentrism is the famous two hole experiment, which demands that we go one step further: Zeno’s arrow doesn’t exist, much less fly, without an observer. The two-hole experiment goes straight to the core of quantum physics. Scientists have discovered that if they “watch” a subatomic particle pass through holes on a barrier, it behaves like a particle: like a tiny bullet, it passes through one or the other holes. But if the scientists do not observe the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of a wave. The two-hole experiment has many versions, but in short: If observed, particles behave like objects; if unobserved, they behave like waves and can go through more than one hole at the same time.
Dubbed quantum weirdness, this wave-particle duality has befuddled scientists for decades. Some of the greatest physicists have described it as impossible to intuit and impossible to formulate into words, and as invalidating common sense and ordinary perception. Science has essentially conceded that quantum physics is incomprehensible outside of complex mathematics. How can quantum physics be so impervious to metaphor, visualization, and language?
If we accept a life-created reality at face value, it becomes simple to understand. The key question is waves of what? Back in 1926, the Nobel laureate physicist Max Born demonstrated that quantum waves are waves of probability, not waves of material as the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger had theorized. They are statistical predictions. Thus a wave of probability is nothing but a likely outcome. In fact, outside of that idea, the wave is not there. It’s nothing. As John Wheeler, the eminent theoretical physicist, once said, “No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.”
A particle cannot be thought of as having any definite existence—either duration or a position in space—until we observe it. Until the mind sets the scaffolding of an object in place, an object cannot be thought of as being either here or there. Thus, quantum waves merely define the potential location a particle can occupy. 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. If you watch it go through the barrier, then the wave function collapses and the particle goes through one hole or the other. If you don’t watch it, then the particle detectors will show that it can go through more than one hole at the same time.
