332 Self and the Phenomenon of Life
b2726 Self and the Phenomenon of Life: A Biologist Examines Life from Molecules to Humanity “9x6”out of a network of abstract relationships, which are not really objects.
Both the string theory and the loop theory are currently not verifiable by
experimentation. See: Smolin L. (2006) The Trouble with Physics: The Rise
of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. Houghton
Mifflin, Boston; Smolin L. (2001) Three Roads to Quantum Gravity. Basic
Books, New York.- Penrose R.(2005) The Road to Reality. Knopf, New York.
- Barrow JD. (1992) Shaking the foundations of mathematics. New Scientist.
Nov. 21, 1992. - Dehaene S. (1997) The Number Sense. Oxford Univ. Press, New York.
- Polanyi M. (1957) Scientific outlook: Its sickness and cure. Science 125:
480–484; Polanyi M. (1969) Objectivity in science — A dangerous illusion?
Scientific Res April 28, 1969, pp. 24–26. - Quantum mechanics does not yield a definite description of an objective
reality but deals only with probabilities. The act of measurement, i.e., par-
ticipation of mind, causes the set of probabilities to randomly assume only
one of the possible values. - Planck length is the smallest possible distance that still makes sense to
physics. - A principle in quantum theory called “superposition” says that an object
is in all possible states as long as you do not check, but once you look into
it, only one appears. Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 proposed the following
thought experiment. Put a cat in a steel box along with a vial of hydrocyanic
acid and a radioactive substance. The experiment is set up so that when
one atom of this substance decays during the test period, it will trigger a
sequence of events that will break the vial and kill the cat. As long as the box
stays closed, you will not know whether this has happened, and the cat is
said to be both alive and dead, or neither alive nor dead. But once you open
the box and look, the superposition ceases (“collapse” of the states) and the
cat will be found either alive or dead in reality. Superposition occurs only in
the subatomic scale such as the electrons, but it becomes a paradox in the
human world. - What he actually wrote was, “God is the answer to the question implied in
man’s finitude.” See: Church FF. ed. (1987) The Essential Tillich. Univ. of
Chicago Press, Chicago, Chap. 1, p. 11.