Can science and faith work together? Can we reconcile experiment and observation with Divine wisdom?

Connecting what is experimentally observed/measured to the creations of the All-Wise One (meaning there is nothing by coincidence or meaningless) helps us interpret scientific facts with spiritual insights, offering a view that appreciates the connection between science, thought, and spiritual wisdom. Such interpretation would enrich both our knowledge and spirit. The price methods of Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE), which is a set of analyzing techniques in science and technology industries, offer us such a connection highlighting the wonders of creations by the Divine.

The journey to understanding through measurement

Measurement is a fundamental aspect of human curiosity and our quest to understand the world, going beyond simple tools like rulers or scales. It includes various testing and evaluation methods that uncover hidden details of our environment. For example, Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) is a technique used to check the safety of structures (e.g., bridges, airplanes, pipelines, etc.) by using special tools that look inside the structure without causing any damage. There are several common NDE methods, such as ultrasound, visual inspection, and electromagnetic techniques. Ultrasound NDE uses high-frequency sound waves to detect internal flaws. Visual inspection involves examining structures for flaws using the naked eye or optical aids. These methods ensure safety and reliability, connecting both the visible and invisible aspects of measurement. Our journey is not just about technical details; it is about linking the natural world with a deeper sense of purpose.

The philosophy of measurement in NDE

What do we measure? Every particle in the NDE field can give us important information as it moves. For example, ultrasonic NDE uses high frequency sound waves – outside the range of human hearing – to create images of an object’s interior. By tracking how the particles move (similar to how sound wave travels), we can determine important information based on specific rules of physics. This helps us better understand the data we collect.

Understanding the data from NDE methods is a challenging job. Think of it like when doctors use ultrasound to see inside a pregnant woman’s body. They send high-frequency sound waves into the body with the help of a gel, and by analyzing the echoes, they can see what is happening inside the patient.

Why do we measure? This question takes us back to the very essence of human inquiry. We measure to understand and predict in response to our material needs, but appreciating the complexity of creation often comes as another major outcome. Historically, scientific discoveries have sometimes conflicted with personal beliefs, like when people learned that the Earth orbits the sun. Measurement transforms subjective observations into objective data, bridging the gap between what we see and the deeper truths they reveal.

Similarly, the philosophy of measurement in NDE, one might think, is actually based on a similar search for truth, connecting, as it were, science with faith. When we observe something happening, it usually triggers a question about having a very wise and knowledgeable power behind it, the One who sets the rules of nature to make things work with such harmony and intelligence.

Let’s explore the most widely used method among electromagnetic NDE techniques – Eddy Current NDE. This method is based on a principle discovered by Michael Faraday. When you pass an electric current through a wire that keeps changing direction, it generates a changing magnetic field. This changing magnetic field can cause small loops of electric current, called eddy currents, to form in nearby metal objects. Tracking how these eddy currents flow helps us detect any defects or irregularities in the material. Early detection of these issues is important to ensure the safety and reliability of engineering structures.

Eddy Current NDE: A glimpse into the unseen

NDE is like a doctor’s gentle touch, diagnosing without cutting open. It uses technologies such as ultrasound and electromagnetic techniques to look into the heart of materials, detecting structural flaws that could lead to future failures. For example, Eddy Current Testing (ECT) uses electromagnetism to scan for irregularities, ensuring the reliability of metal components and aircraft parts without leaving a mark. ECT detects surface and near-surface flaws in conductive materials by inducing and measuring electrical currents (Mussatayev et al., 2024). Any flaws in the material disrupt the flow of eddy currents, which can be detected by sensor, as shown in Figure 1.

For example, when eddy currents flow through undamaged material (see Figure 1), the movement is smooth and shows no sign of disturbance. However, when a defect was present between 60 and 80 mm, the sensors picked up a clear, symmetrical change in voltage readings.

Recent advances in science and technology are making such measurements even more precise. For instance, new machines can automatically adjust themselves during composite manufacturing (Nguyen et al., 2023). Researchers have also shown that sound waves can lift, move, and spin tiny objects in the air—an innovation that could greatly improve how certain medicines are delivered in the future (Marzo et al., 2015).

The dance of particles: A reflection of Divine order

Every particle, wave, and pulse of energy in the NDE process reflects an underlying order. These particles move according to precise laws, hinting at a greater orchestration. It is a dance choreographed by the Creator, displaying creativity and direction that invites us to ponder the purpose behind existence.

Studying how particles move in NDE methods helps us understand their formation and behavior. Despite their many tasks, the movement of particles provides crucial insights in understanding the feature of interest in material under the test. Just like a tiny seed contains all the “program codes” for a huge tree, the systematic and repetitive movement of particles reveals information about the hidden aspects of the material world to engineers.

One can speculate three possible explanations as to why particles can perform so many functions:

• Each particle knows everything. In this case, it would need to have infinite wisdom and power. It would have to see everything, be aware of all things, and have control over everything.
• Each particle is made to serve a greater purpose. So, the particles that perform their roles in structures and bodies do so with the permission, command, knowledge, and will of an entity with complete wisdom.
• Particles move based on general rules without needing prior knowledge.

If we applied an NDE process to these particles, the most logical explanation would be that they are created by one Creator, designed with complexity to demonstrate His power and will. This implies that only the One who creates the flow of all particles can place each particle in its position. To uncover these “hidden treasures,” humans rely on curiosity and structured measurement (metrology) to explore the natural world.

Divine Wisdom and human innovation: Exploring the Creator’s influence

Advancements in technology show that humans are inspired by the order we see in nature, and we try to use these natural laws for our benefit. It’s as if the Creator gives us the ability to understand and control things to some extent in different scientific areas. While we can’t fully understand everything because God knows all, we can still learn and explore from the laws of nature.

These are introductory insights that warrant deeper exploration, yet they illustrate important concepts about the nature of knowledge and its boundaries. Empirical knowledge, while immensely valuable for understanding the natural world, has limitations. It provides evidence of order and design, hinting at an intelligent designer, but it cannot fully capture the essence or attributes of the Divine. The concept of an intelligent Creator aligns with the argument of design, as seen in nature’s intricate systems, yet the full scope of divine attributes lies beyond empirical reach.

This perspective is enriched by philosophical discussions about the self, the soul, and their connection to the material world. Take the idea of causality, for example, which explains the link between cause and effect. A cause produces a result not because it looks like the effect, but because it has a unique property that makes that result possible—like fire producing heat because of what it is, not because it resembles heat. This way of thinking highlights the careful design behind natural phenomena and points to divine wisdom and purpose.

“As a scientist, I can move a small particle a short distance (Marzo et al., 2015).” However, God manages all the cells in my body and everything in the universe continuously. This suggests that our ego can help us understand some of God’s attributes, such as being All-Wise and All-Compassionate, with limitless knowledge and power. Imagine an endless land without boundaries; it requires an imaginary limit to comprehend its vastness. Similarly, our ego acts like a reference point in geometry, setting a limit by saying, “I can control the movement of a particle up to this point; beyond that, God controls everything.” Although this limit does not physically exist, it helps us understand, much like a thermometer indicates temperature. In this way, through the lens of this perspective, an engineer can see the nature of the universe. With our limited knowledge, we catch a glimpse of the Creator’s power and authority over creation. But if the “I” believes it exists on its own and belongs only to itself, it ends up dividing God’s sovereignty between itself and other imagined causes.

In this context, the human capacity to reason, explore, and innovate mirrors aspects of divine knowledge and wisdom. Our ability to uncover the laws of nature serves as a reflection of the Creator’s infinite knowledge and deepens our appreciation of His dominion. When approached with humility, the pursuit of science becomes a way to honor the Creator, bridging the gap between human curiosity and divine majesty.

Integrating science and spirituality

Curiosity is something humans possess to understand how nature works and to contemplate what lies behind it as Divine wisdom. The philosophy of measurement leads to questions about existence and the Creator’s rule in the cosmos. When people measure things, it is to answer specific questions in different fields. Measurement is not only a tool for understanding the physical world but also a metaphor for seeking spiritual knowledge and wisdom. For example, someone might want to explore a natural event, and through new branches of science, we can learn measurable facts about the universe. These observations connect with what we already know about the things we measure.

Finally, experts make sense of the measurements through validation and assign meaning to the scores based on theory (Adcock and Collier 2001), as shown in Figure 2. As Nursi says, the Creator made everything with a purpose, and this is a way to inspire humans to find their purpose on Earth.

Over the centuries, a rift between science and religion has emerged, but understanding the order in particle behavior can help bridge this gap. Particles operate under divine laws, reflecting the Creator’s will and power. This perspective aligns with the view of a universe created with intent, where every element serves a purpose.

A need for balance

Considering different explanations for particle behavior, the idea that particles follow divine laws without inherent knowledge harmonizes scientific understanding and religious belief. This view suggests a universe created with intent, where everything has a purpose. Integrating scientific exploration into religious education can foster deeper understanding and respect among various traditions.

Conclusion: A call for unity

In summary, the dialogue between science and faith is ancient, with moments of conflict and reconciliation. Today, they can coexist, complementing each other in the search for truth. Measurement, in its purest form, honors the Creator by unraveling the mysteries of the universe. The Abrahamic traditions share a belief in purposeful creation, which could be the foundation for a future where science and faith walk hand in hand, fostering understanding and peace.

References

• Adcock, Robert, and David Collier. 2001. “Measurement Validity: A Shared Standard for Qualitative and Quantitative Research.” American Political Science Review 95(3):529–46. doi: 10.1017/S0003055401003100.
• Marzo, Asier, Sue Ann Seah, Bruce W. Drinkwater, Deepak Ranjan Sahoo, Benjamin Long, and Sriram Subramanian. 2015. “Holographic Acoustic Elements for Manipulation of Levitated Objects.” Nature Communications 6(May):1–7. doi: 10.1038/ncomms9661.
• Mussatayev, Meirbek, Qiuji Yi, Mark Fitzgerald, Vincent K. Maes, Paul Wilcox, and Robert Hughes. 2024. “Directional Eddy Current Probe Configuration for In-Line Detection of out-of-Plane Wrinkles.” Composites Part B: Engineering 268:111048. doi: 10.1016/j.compositesb.2023.111048.
• Nguyen, Duc H., Xiaochuan Sun, Iryna Tretiak, Mario A. Valverde, and James Kratz. 2023. “Automatic Process Control of an Automated Fibre Placement Machine.” Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing 168(November 2022):107465. doi: 10.1016/j.compositesa.2023.107465.
• Nursi, Said. 2023. “Sözler.”

It was very natural that people focused on these measurements, as they were critical to everyday life. One of the first known attempts to measure length was the Egyptian cubit, developed around 3000 BC, which was based on the human body, one of the best tools then available to humanity. A “cubit” was the length of an arm from the elbow to the fingertips.

Similarly, early civilizations used what they had at their disposal to measure time, which was determined based on the regular movements of the sun. People used sundials, then candle clocks, water clocks, and sandglasses to measure time. As a result of the different methods used, the lengths of generally used time periods varied greatly from place to place – just as the units used to measure mass and length varied, too.

After the world became more interconnected, people needed a universal measure that could mean the same thing from one society to the next. In order to avoid confusion, an international standard unit of measurement, called the metric system, was created by France in 1790.

Latent constructs

During the last two centuries, the focus of measurement has shifted from observable objects to latent constructs such as traits, attitudes, and abilities. Latent constructs are based on certain theories. They can neither be observed nor measured directly. We attempt to measure them through some observable indicators, which are assumed to represent the underlying construct. For instance, the measurement of unobservable personal characteristics has challenged psychologists for centuries. Several approaches have been developed in an attempt to properly define and quantify these latent characteristics. Most of the current developments in these measurements are based on research into human sensitivity from classical psychophysics. In the 19th century, Ernst Weber, Gustav Fechner, and Herman von Helmholtz were some of the first scientists who attempted to measure human sensitivity to such sensory stimuli as lights, sounds, odors, tastes, and pressures.

Many social scientists have also been attempting to numerically identify some unobservable phenomena, such as ability, I.Q., and personality. In 1905, French psychologist Alfred Binet developed the Stanford-Binet IQ test to measure intelligence. Since then, other scholars have developed many tests for measuring intelligence. These tests are commonly used in educational and business settings.

Basic principle behind the successful measurement is to design a tool that can make it possible to obtain an accurate measure of what is intended to be measured. Despite the fact that all measurement instruments are subject to varying degrees of instrument error, psychometricians, who practice the science of measurement, and physical scientists have used different approaches to explain and reduce such errors. There are several differences between these two schools of measurement concepts. For instance, Stanley Smith Stevens (1946), an American psychologist, defined measurement as “the assignment of numerals to objects or events according to some rule.” This definition is different than physical scientists’ definition which refers to the numerical estimation and expression of the magnitude of one quantity relative to another (Michell, 1997).

Conditions to measure the unobservable

Since measuring latent objects is more difficult than measuring observable phenomena, some conditions must be met before attempting to measure these unobservable things. First, they need to be identified based on a sound theory. An underlying theory should explain the causes and results of the variations of certain abstract phenomena, as well as the phenomena’s relationship with other constructs.

The second necessary condition for an object, either physical or latent, is that there is variation. Suppose that we are attempting to measure intelligence. If a group of individuals are found to be equally intelligent, there would be no need to measure and compare.

In addition to these two conditions, mathematical models are necessary to connect the theory and its observable indicators. Since these models assume a variable that can only be measured with error, our measurements may not reflect an exact quantity.

René Descartes (1644) claimed that, “If something exists, it exists in some amount. If it exists in some amount, then it is capable of being measured.” On the one hand, this philosophy teaches us that some things may exist which we have not yet measured. For instance, before Santorio Santorio invented the first thermometer, no one could express the temperature with a numerical value. However, temperature still existed, even before the existence of humankind. Therefore, humanity’s inability to measure something does not mean that it does not exist. On the other hand, a religious person can claim that there are some metaphysical objects believed to exist but which cannot be quantified. Therefore, the existence of something does not mean that it can be quantified – or at least, not by humankind.

There are reasons to be optimistic about the measurement of unobservable objects. First, most unobservable things have observable consequences. Thus, we can estimate many latent characteristics by observing the consequences on a person’s behavior. Let’s take personality as an example. An introverted person would tend to have a hard time being in front of a group of people. Such an observation can give us some idea about a person’s level of introversion. Measurements can focus on objective, behavioral reflections of a particular trait. This can be achieved by creating an instrument that is designed to measure the desired characteristic. The patient can be given a questionnaire and answer certain questions about the trait being measured. Answers based on the patient’s self-perception could be an indication of the degree of introversion. The person’s level of self-perception plays an important role.

Nevertheless, relying only on either our or someone else’s perceptions may not be a perfect form of measurement, as it is not possible for us to perceive everything about ourselves or the world around us. Our knowledge is very limited. If we cannot quantify an object either due to its hidden constructs or our inability to measure it, this does not mean that this object does not exist or it cannot be measured.

Though Adam may never be able to precisely answer his wife’s question about how much he loves her, it’s safe to say that his love exists, even if we can’t measure it.

References

• Descartes, R. Principia philosophiae, Amsterdam 1644. Pt, 2, 57-59.
• Michell, J. (1997). Quantitative science and the definition of measurement in psychology. British Journal of Psychology, 88, 355–383.
• Stevens, S. S. (1946). “On the Theory of Scales of Measurement”. Science 103 (2684): 677–680.

It wasn’t…

Worse than that, in the third grade we had to learn about “conversion of units.” I figured it was good source of test problems. So I couldn’t escape from learning it. I admit it was difficult in the beginning. “The strange rule” said if we are to measure with a bigger scale, then we had to divide the number by ten and vice versa. Why was 120 cm equal to 1.2 m? If we knew that it was 120 already why did we bother to say it was also 1.2 in another unit? I got confused whether I should multiply the number by ten or divide by ten? (At least it was easy to multiply or divide by ten instead of another number, so I kept silent.)

In time, I realized that people used the unit to measure almost anything. Length is measured in meters, mass is in kilograms, time is in seconds. Wherever there was quantity, there was also a base-unit associated with it. Of course I never asked what a “second” was, because our teacher said everyone accepted this unit of time. Since it was a world-accepted “standard measure,” I subconsciously got the impression that the universe had a clock* and that people calibrated their time accordingly. In the same way, one kilogram was an absolute quantity in my mind by which every other mass can be measured.

As we grew up, more and more types of measures and units entered our lives: Volt, Joule, Ampere, Newton, and many others. Dealing with the “old” units of length and time was a piece of cake then. However, my faith in “standard measures” as universal remained unchanged until high school.

I was quite surprised in high school when our chemistry teacher told us that our very fundamental units of measures were actually not absolute. They were not fundamental in the sense that they, too, were defined in terms of other quantities. In fact, there is a history of “what to define as a unit” and “how to measure it.”

Let’s take time, for instance. We measure years by days and days by hours. Have we ever thought about why a year is 365 days and one day is 24 hours? Can’t we divide a year into 400 days or a day into 25 hours? Is this an artificial choice or a natural timing? It all depends on how we define a year and a day. We can identify a year by a full rotation of the earth around the sun. Also we can distinguish the beginning of day and night clearly. These are definite intervals of time dictated through our observations, and so there is not much choice other than setting one year at 365 days. Is there a similar fact behind the relation of day to hours? Not at all! It was in ancient Egypt, around 2000 BC, that days for the first time were sliced into 24 pieces of time. In the age of Babylonians, however, a day was designed to be 60 hours. Perhaps the reason for such division of the day (into 24 or 60) hours was that 24 or 60 are nice numbers which are divisible by many integers; the same reason why a full-angle is 360 degrees instead of 2π.

In the Middle Ages, for Muslims, measurement of astronomical phenomena was a very serious affair. They were very concerned about accurate timing. Determining the changing time of the five daily prayers and the beginning and ending of the month of Ramadan was more than a custom, it was a religious duty. And such calculations required high precision. This precision was exemplified in year 1000 AD by the Muslim scholar al-Biruni who gave the times of the new moons in terms of days, hours, minutes, seconds, thirds, and fourths after noon Sunday.

In the West, the first accurate time measurements were made by Roger Bacon in thirteenth century. In 1657, Christian Huygens invented the pendulum clock, which uses swinging weights to keep time. Later, Hyugens and William Clement refined the design so that clocks were accurate up to seconds. Another problem with older clocks was that although they worked fine in the local region, they lost accuracy at different parts of the globe and were thus unsuitable for navigation. The reason for the lack of accuracy was that earth’s rotation around the sun on its axis (which definitely affects the period of the pendulums) was not uniform. Several adjustments were made in the nineteenth century for better accuracy by improving the design to compensate for thermal expansion of the metal rods and air drag, which globalized the measurement of time. In 1956, the “second” was redefined in terms of the earth’s revolution around the sun, according to data gathered in year 1900. As the scientists were not completely satisfied, they re-defined the second (as the atomic second) a decade later. In 1967, the Thirteenth General Conference on Weights and Measures defined a second of atomic time in the International System of Units as:

The duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.

Measuring the length was another important task for ancient peoples. Among the earlier civilizations, the most accurate system was developed by Indus Valley Civilization. While their contemporaries were using parts of the body for measurement, as early as 2600 BC, the Indus civilization had a much finer unit system that accounted even for millimeters. Most societies continued to use their own length scale until eighteenth century.

As early as seventeenth century, with the advances in the accurate measurement of time, pendulum motion was suggested to measure standard length. In the eighteenth century, there were two main approaches for measuring the standard unit of length. One suggested defining the meter as the length of a pendulum with a half-period of one second. The other suggested defining the meter as one ten-millionth of the length of the Earth’s meridian along a quadrant, which is the distance from the equator to the North Pole. In 1791, the French Academy of Sciences selected the choice based on the meridian. After several changes in the definition in 1960, the International Bureau of Weight and Measure organized the 11th CGPM (General Conference on Weights and Measure), during which the meter was redefined as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in a vacuum. The final decision came from the 17th CGPM as: “a meter is defined as 1/299,792,458 of a light-second.”

Figure 1. Historical International Prototype Meter bar, made of an alloy of platinum and iridium, was the standard from 1889 to 1960.

As for the measurement of mass, the situation is even more complicated since scientists cannot even agree on what mass is. There are mainly two different understandings of mass based on its features. One is called inertial mass (related to the quantity of a material); the other is gravitational mass (related to gravitational pull and acceleration). Whether these two concepts are equivalent or not is still in debate though in modern theories like Einstein’s general relativity, these two definitions are equivalent. We can, therefore, leave these philosophical discussions about the concept of mass to the scientists and go back to its measurement.

Just like the measurement of time and length, scientific mass measurement gained a boost after the French Revolution. At first, a gram, defined as the absolute mass of 1 cm3 of water at 0o C, was chosen as the standard. In 1799, scientists made a slight modification to the unit of mass by re-setting the definition at 4oC since it is the temperature at which water is most stable. Later, officials noticed that this unit was too small to be a standard of everyday commercial materials, which usually appear in large amounts. In 1889, the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK), made of an alloy of 90% platinum and 10% iridium (by weight), was designed to define the standard mass (Figure 2). After the first production, several more stable replicas of IPK have been produced to replace the older ones. Today every government who subscribes to this standard must have an exact copy of IPK, and these replicas must be returned to Paris periodically as they may get rusted or dirty with time.

Figure 2. Shown above is a computer-generated image of the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK). The IPK is made of a platinum-iridium alloy and is stored in a vault at the BIPM in Sèvres, France.

These facts may sound very odd to some, as it did to me when I first heard of them. I asked myself: If all these measures are defined in terms of something else, what is the point of defining them in the first place? For example, if we can agree to use the second as some interval of time, why do we bother to count the number of oscillations of Cesium. The answer is: We cannot agree unless we use a reference time which is geography-free, climate-free, and politics-free. Only then we will be sure that I, here in Western Pennsylvania, a person on the top of Everest, or a person in a submarine under the Pacific Ocean will call the same interval of time a “second.” In other words, the oscillation of the cesium isotope was believed to be free from all possible deficiencies that are results of physical location (Australia or America), environmental change (the Amazon Forests or the Sahara Desert), and politics.

In short, sand-clocks for measuring time (think of what kind of sand in what shape of glass tube) or the arm of a king as a length unit (imagine a king who seized the throne at 13 and died at 60), or weighing with iron cylinders (common in small grocery stores in some countries) is too unreliable, too unstable, too local, and of course, inaccurate to create a standard. Especially in this age of globalization, a consensus on measurement is absolutely necessary.

It seems a bit ironic that a simple-looking concept of science, measurement, could cause such controversy. A simple way to keep track of numbers that belong to different kind of quantities evolved into an area of serious research through time. Perhaps then, I should have not worried that much about my bad math grades on a subject which troubled the scientist themselves. After all, my grades were just my teacher’s own measurement.**

O. S. Caglayan has a PhD in mathematics. He is a freelance writer. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

* This famous quotation attributed to Newton was opposed by Leibnizian view of time: “The universe is the clock.” The scientist as philosopher, Friedel Weinert, Springer; 1 edition (May 27, 2004)

** The author is indebted to his dear elementary school teacher Muazzez Ozalp for instilling in him the love of science.

References

1. G. J. Toomer. Ptolemey’s Almagest (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998)
2. The History of Time (Leofranc Holfrod-Strevens).
3. al-Biruni (1879). The chronology of ancient nations: an English version of the Arabic text “Vestiges of the Past”. London: W.H. Allen, 147-149. OCLC 9986841.
4. Matthew Bennett, Michael F. Schatz, Heidi Rockwood and Kurt Wiesenfeld, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 2002 458, 563-579.
5. Ian Whitelaw. A Measure of All Things: The Story of Man and Measurement, St. Martin’s Press, 2007.
6. http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/meter.html
7. www.bipm.org/eng/home

The quantum description of the universe is very different than the classically observed one, or our perceptions in everyday life. This new way of looking at nature has many consequences, both philosophically and practically. The modern technological development of the second half of the last century may be a very good example of the consequences of the discovery of the quantum world. Now we have a bunch of gadgets from cellular phones to long-lasting batteries, from engineered drugs to space missions, from pocket size computers to nanotechnology, a wide range of end-products of the quantum world. Certainly, these will not be the only changes in our life; quantum sciences will eventually affect the way we look at life.

One of the most dramatic potential changes in thought may arise from the discovery of the quantum entanglement of particles. Quantum entanglement can be described as non-classical correlations of different parties. It is very different than the classical description and can be explained by using the following analogy. Imagine an author writes a book of one hundred pages which includes the most precious arts or explains very important facts about the universe depending on one’s point of view. To make it more interesting or more realistic, he distributes each page of the book to one of his servants and asks them to read and understand the rules written in the book. That is, each servant has access only to one page of the book. If we assume the information on the pages is classical, every servant has one hundredth of the total information written in the book and if we let them communicate with each other, they can in principle reconstruct the written information. However, the situation is very strange in the quantum world. If the information in the book is written using entanglement principle of the quantum world, then none of the servants has any definite idea about the partial information on his page. It is as if the pages are empty. All the information about the content of the book is written on correlations of the pages, not physically on each page. So, the servants can have no idea, if they only look at their pages.

Einstein vs. Bohr

To understand this strange feature of quantum entanglement we should review the historical development of the concept. One of the earliest objections came from Einstein, who was one of the developers of quantum theory. Although he explained the photoelectric effect by introducing the concept of quantization of light, he did not believe in some of its consequences. Mainly, he was not sure about the completeness of quantum theory because of its contradictions with common sense and the theory of relativity. The famous 1927 Solvey Con ference was a turning point for debates between Einstein and Niels Bohr, who was also one of the developers of quantum theory and the Copenhagen interpretations of the theory.

Einstein tried to show this incompleteness by proposing different Gedanken (thought) experiments. Each of these questions was answered rigorously by Bohr. However, Einstein was never convinced by Bohr about the completeness of the theory. The last one of these Gedanken experiments was one related to our concept, quantum entanglement. It is called the EPR paradox and takes its name from the authors of the famous paper “Can a quantum mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?” by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen in 1935.

Mainly, the paper was about faster-than-light communication between physically separated objects, two particles. If two particles are generated from a source affected by the existence of a conservation law, like the conservation of energy, or linear or angular momentum, the conserved property is carried by the particles independent of their separation. If the conserved quantity is observed by measuring one of the particles, the other particle arranges itself according to the result of this measurement independent of the distance between particles. According to Bohr, this arrangement happens instantaneously at the time of measurement, which conflicts with Einstein’s theory of special relativity that says nothing can travel faster than light. Apparently, the knowledge of the result of the first measurement is carried somehow to the second particle. Bohr’s reply is now called the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. He takes this property as a postulate of quantum mechanics by saying that the state of the particles includes all information about them. After this explanation Einstein never replied again.

If we look more closely at the proposed experiment, we can deduce that in reality information is not transferred faster than light because although the measurement result of the second particle is decided by the first measurement, this information is hidden for the second particle. The result of the second measurement makes sense only if the result of the first measurement reaches the second one. Otherwise, the second measurement can be described as a random outcome of possible results. Now it makes sense if we return to the book description. Here our book has only two pages. Each page is given to one servant. If they only look at their pages there is no information, which means that measurement results are random.

However, if the two servants work together and share their measurement results, then the initial information can be reconstructed.

Coins

Einstein’s point of view can be described in the following example. Imagine we have two coins with the usual heads and tails on different sides. Let us assume that there is a conservation law deduced from everyday experiments stating that if we flip these two coins we always have two opposite results; that is, if we get tails from the one that we measured, the other one is heads for sure and vice versa. In the real world, these coins can be identified as electrons, photons or atoms. Heads/tails corresponds to the spin components for electrons, polarization directions for photons or ground/excited states for atoms. Now, imagine these two coins are separated by a large distance.

Einstein says that as soon as separation occurs the result of flipping is decided but this result is hidden from us. One can measure or learn it by performing a measurement or looking at each coin. Moreover, looking at only one coin is enough to determine the measurement result of the other coin, since the results are correlated. Conjecturing that the side of the coin is determined at the time of measurement is against the causality principle of the theory of relativity which says that cause and effect cannot be simultaneous. However, I am of the opinion that reality is closer to what Bohr described. That is, the result of the measurement is decided at the measurement time not at the separation time. Before the measurement, each coin shows both heads and tails at the same time. The information, deduced at the point of measurement when one of the coins is measured, is transferred faster than light, in other words, at infinite speed.

The nature of each coin is also very strange before the measurement because it includes both sides at the same time with equal probabilities, but a classical coin has only one side at one time, either heads or tails. Here the classical coin means the flipped or measured coin. This property of the quantum world is called parallelism. As in the famous case of Schrödinger’s cat, sometimes two extreme situations can happen at the same time. Schrödinger’s cat is a very special cat which is dead and alive at the same time, like a quantum coin. However, when one measures such a cat, that is, observes the cat, its nature collapses to one of the known situations, either a dead cat or a live cat. This measuring process happens systematically due to interactions with its surroundings and is called decoherence.

Although the quantum world is very strange and different than the classical world, it encapsulates more reality than we experience in our everyday life. In the near future, we can expect that ways of looking at the world will be different than the present mechanical, deterministic, and materialistic view because of the unexpected outcomes of the quantum world. If you know how to look, you can already feel this change.

“Ever since the beginnings of modern science, four or five hundred years ago, scientific thoughts seem to have moved humankind and consciousness further from the centre of things. More and more of the universe has become explicable in mechanical, objective terms and even human beings are becoming understood by biologists and behavioral scientists. Now we find that physics, previously considered the most objective of the sciences, is reinventing the need for the human soul and putting it right at the centre of our understanding of the universe!” (Rae 2004)

The last century has witnessed a new scientific approach with the development of the quantum theory. The theory has been tested to such a degree that it has become the scientific theory on which the most experiments have been carried out of all time. Probably this is partly due to the fact that it is the most mind-provoking theory to date. Nevertheless, the new theory has passed all these tests and has been confirmed as being more complete in explaining the cosmos than any previous theory. The quantum theory has shown that the old approach of a mechanical universe was an oversimplification employed to explain the physics of the universe. One of the most important consequences of this is that the quantum theory refutes the main foundations of positivist philosophy. This philosophy sees the universe consisting of what we can observe or measure, with everything beyond not being real. This denial also applied to knowledge that came from religions, and this resulted in the present conflict between religion and science. However, today even modern science says that the universe cannot be limited to what we observe. The very basic principles of quantum physics show the possibility that the vast majority of life or the states of life are beyond the scope of our observations and that we have no way of knowing about them via physical means.

Although positivist philosophy dates back to the 16th century, it was August Comte who defined it in a systematic way in the mid-19th century. The Harper-Collins dictionary defines Positivism as “the view that all true knowledge is scientific.” Positivism includes the view of reductionism which claims that everything in the universe, including astrophysical systems, complex biological systems, social movements, cultural values, and belief systems can all be reduced to simple physical and chemical events. Probably one of the most unfortunate outcomes of this approach was the questioning of belief systems with the tools of the scientific method. In one of his articles Fethullah Gulen says:

“The massive influence of positivism and materialism on science and on all people of recent centuries makes it necessary to discuss such arguments. As this now-prevalent “scientific” worldview reduces existence to what can be perceived directly, it blinds itself to the far vaster invisible dimensions of existence.”(Gulen 2006)

Such arguments against religion that spring from materialism have gone worldwide, and all religious faiths have been questioned. Even the faithful has been confused by these arguments, consciously or unconsciously. Although scientific knowledge should be only one source of knowledge, it was considered to be the only source. In Huston Smith’s words, this was a “blank check” to science to make decisions (Smith 2001).

It should be clarified that the early founders of both classical and modern physics did not perceive science in a positivist way. Copernicus and Newton at the birth of classical physics and Einstein, Dirac, and Planck at the birth of modern physics, all had religious convictions and envisioned science as a part of knowledge. Einstein was even accused of being a theologian in disguise by some scientific historians. It was the positivist philosophy which took advantage of the scientific developments and used it against religion, resulting in the apparent conflict today. However, new developments in science have proven that the basic assumptions of positivism are no longer valid from a modern perspective. Thus positivism should be nothing but an outdated ideology.

From quantum physics to metaphysics

Quantum mechanical behavior emerges when one observes phenomena at microscopic scales. One of its novelties can be seen in that it offers a more comprehensive atomic model. The new atomic model has very important applications to our life, ranging from making lasers to producing computer chips. The early understanding of an atom was that there was a nucleus at the center and electrons circulating around it, like in the planetary systems (the Bohr model). Although this was a great achievement at the time it was proposed, later scientists realized that classical physics cannot explain the circulation of the electron around the nucleus. In such a model the electron should lose energy and eventually collapse into the nucleus.

In the quantum mechanical definition the electron is more like a wave around the nucleus than a particle. So the electron is not really a particle orbiting around the nucleus, but rather more like a cloud that is spread evenly around. Sometimes the electron is called a particle because it acts like a particle in some experiments. As seen in this example, in a quantum mechanical measurement we cannot find an answer to “what the electron really is,” but rather we find an answer to “how it responds to a particular setup.” The actual stuff is a neither a particle nor a wave. We are rather measuring one form of its behavior which is compatible with our experimental system. Then according to the quantum theory, there is no a way to completely understand this actual stuff with measurements.

Above we gave the famous measurement problem, which forms the heart of the quantum theory. Although what we are dealing with looks like a physical problem, “the measurement problem” has far reaching philosophical consequences. The basic problem is that we need to know what this actual stuff looks like so that we can have an answer to the question of “what it really is.” However, any explanation should be able to explain the transition from a quantum physical system into the macroscopic system in which we live so that we can have a meaningful model. Otherwise, paradoxes are inevitable (you can read about the famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment if you are interested.)

The most complete and satisfying answer comes from the Copenhagen interpretation (Frayn 2000). It was proposed by Neil Bohr, one of the prominent figures in the development of the theory. Debates lasting for months or longer, especially between N. Bohr and A. Einstein, ended up with the victory of Bohr’s ideas. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, the actual stuff is neither a wave nor a particle but is something not physical; rather it exists only in knowledge. This knowledge collapses into a physical state when somebody measures it. So the new theory suggests a very abstract approach to the universe as opposed to the old mechanical model. The famous astrophysicist Sir James Jeans wrote,

“The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Human mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter.” (Jeans 2002)

Scientists think that the true picture of the actual stuff can never be completely understood in this physical universe because we are limited by our physical tools. There may be other states, but we have no tools to understand them or get to know about them since we are limited by the tools of this universe. This is the point where the new physics talks about other dimensions which are beyond the observable and measurable universe. But this is exactly what philosophy calls “metaphysics.” So we see that the new physics not only accepts the existence of other metaphysical realms, but it even says that they must exist for completeness!

The necessity of human consciousness

A concern comes to mind about what is unique in this measurement process that results in the ultimate transition from a knowledge system into a physical system. How can the detector in an experiment result in this transition? The answer from the Copenhagen interpretation is very surprising. The detector cannot be the cause for this transition, because it does not make any changes in the system before or after the measurements are carried out. That is, these tools we use to make the measurements do not change anything in the nature of the system. Not even the eyes of the observers or the brain that is making this measurement can do this, as they are no different than the experimental apparatus, except that they are more complex. They are just part of the experimental system in this chain, like mechanical detectors. The chain continues until it ends up in the human consciousness, which is something non-material as any physical identification would put it in the same category as the previous members of the chain. Then the unique role of the human action enters the system; measurement is part of the knowledge in the mind. With this measurement, the human consciousness becomes aware of it. This is the unique property that the human being has which cannot be attributed to any other objects and it plays a central role in the interpretation of the quantum theory.

We infer that human consciousness is something immaterial and behaves quite differently than any other entity in the universe. Interestingly, the distinction of the physical and spiritual side of human beings is found in the teaching of religions, which we now see in the context of modern physics. This is a very important reconciliation between science and religion and it is also reassuring that we are not like any other objects in the universe!

Is materialism coming to the end?

With the new developments in physics, a materialistic worldview seems to be a simple look at life and existence. We remember the classic statement of materialistic philosophy “I only believe what I can see or measure in the laboratory.” Quantum physics would respond to this by saying: “it is not that simple!” We see that there are no contradictions between the new physics and the teachings of religions. We do not know how God creates life in hereafter, hell, and heaven. But one thing we do know is that their existence does not contradict the modern scientific worldview. Also the realms of invisible creatures (like angels and the devil) and their interactions with our physical world cannot be understood with science. Modern physics says we should not seek knowledge of these through science. They can only be known by what is told to us in our holy books and by the prophets.

The extreme approach of materialism to the human being is that the human is the most complexly evolved biological mechanism in the universe and in theory its consciousness and other feelings can be reduced into chemical reactions. This approach is in complete contradiction with modern physics. Modern physics says the human being is totally distinguished from other beings with their non-material consciousness. So we see that modern science removes the human being from the ignorance of materialism and puts it into the center of the universe. This is the same thing that religions have been saying since the creation of Adam and Eve!

As people of the 21st century, we can see that the discoveries of modern science does not contradict faith. We see that modern science is widening its horizons by identifying metaphysics as being part of the reality. In the words of the 20th century scholar Said Nursi, “…the light of conscience is religious sciences. The light of the mind is modern sciences. Reconciliation of both manifests the truth. The student’s skills develop further with these two (sciences). When they are separated, from the former superstition and from the latter corruption and skepticism is born.” A similar statement by Einstein is “…I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

References

• Rae, Alastair. Quantum Physics: Illusion or Reality, Cambridge: 2004.
• Gulen, M. Fethullah, Questions and Answers about Islam, The Light, Inc., NJ: 2006.
• Smith, Huston. Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief, HarperSanFrancisco: 2001.
• Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen, Anchor:2000.
• Jeans, Sir James. The Mysterious Universe, The Macmillan Company, 1932.
• Henry, Richard Conn. “The Mental Universe,” Nature, 436, 7 July 2005.