Quantum Physics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Lessons Learned from China
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This is a slightly revised chapter from my book Lessons Learned from China, on quantum physics, AI, and Chinese cosmology. Keywords: I Ching, Leibniz, Einstein, Fritjof Capra, Ken Wilber, cybernetics, spacetime.
The Tao of Einstein
In the late 17th century, the German mathematician and natural philosopher Gottfried Leibniz invented the binary code used in today’s “digital” computers. Shortly after his invention, Leibniz sent a note to Father Joachim Bouvet, a Jesuit friend who was stationed in Beijing, to explain his new arithmetic. Father Bouvet replied to Leibniz’s letter by sending him a diagram of the 64 hexagrams used in the Book of Changes. He pointed out the Chinese had long used a code based on the same, binary principle. Leibniz was duly surprised and immediately wrote a second paper crediting the Chinese with having invented the first binary code.
Fast forward to the beginning of the 20th century. Scientists penetrated the atom, made possible by the harnessing of electromagnetism in the 19th century. They discovered that subatomic particles like a photon are discrete particles of energy or “quanta.” They coined the name quantum physics to study this phenomenon and were puzzled by the dual nature of subatomic particles. They could be seen as both a wave or a particle, continuous or discrete. The ambiguity made it hard to describe their behavior in classical (Newtonian) mechanics.
Niels Bohr and other pioneers of quantum physics noticed that the ambiguous behavior of subatomic particles was echoed in the way the ancient Chinese described the notion of Tao, the basis of the Chinese world view.
That was not the end of the story. In the 1940s, the American scientist Norbert Wiener developed a new computer science that he called cybernetics. Up to the 1940s, all computers had been analog machines using variable continuous (analog) signals. But Wiener and his team decided to build digital (binary) machines using Leibniz’s binary code. Binary systems were more accurate, stable and easier to program. Wiener acknowledge the importance of Leibniz to the birth of digital computing. He referred to Leibniz as the Patron Saint of cybernetics. Given that artificial intelligence is a self-learning version of cybernetics, Leibniz can also be seen as the spiritual father of AI.
The Chinese world view made its next appearance in a very different domain. In the 1950s, the literary movement broadly referred to as the Beat Generation rebelled against traditional Western values and they explored Eastern religions for new sources of inspiration. Foremost among them were Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg, authors of influential books and prolific correspondents. (“I am now reading Tao over again carefully,” Kerouac wrote to Ginsberg. “I think I’ll become a wandering Taoist Bum … wanna come?”).
The Beat Generation was a prelude to the counter-culture of the 1960s, when the hippies also turned to Eastern thought for new inspiration and prepared the ground for the New Age movement. Interest in Chinese thought, and Eastern philosophy in general, reached yet another level.
Ken Wilber, one of the most influential New Age thinkers, explained his first encounter with the Chinese notion Tao, which set the course of his career. “As I stood reading the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching, it was as if I were being exposed, for the very first time, to an entirely new and drastically different world — a world beyond the sensical, a world outside of science, and therefore a world quite beyond myself. The result was that those ancient words of Lao Tzu took me quite by surprise; worse, the surprise refused to wear off, and my entire world outlook began a subtle but drastic shift.”
Interest in Chinese thought took yet another turn with Fritjof Capra’s hugely successful book The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. Capra, an Austrian-born American physicist, described the correlation between Chinese natural philosophy and the way quantum physicists describe nature at the subatomic level. Capra had several discussions with Niels Bohr’s associate Werner Heisenberg who coined the phrase the Uncertainty Principle (i.e. we cannot know both the position and velocity of a subatomic particle at the same time). Heisenberg told Capra that Eastern thought had helped him a lot, just as it had Niels Bohr.
How to explain that brilliant and highly-educated people in disciplines ranging from mathematics, physics, and psychology make similar claims about Chinese thought? And how to explain that equally brilliant people have dismissed claims of any correlation between Western science and Eastern natural philosophy. Despite public statements by Bohr and Heisenberg, Capra’s book has been dismissed by people well-versed in theoretical physics. They tend to focus on theoretical details while ignoring the basic point of the book: a Western-centric view of nature can be enriched by an Eastern perspective. More importantly, it could even shed light on the incompatibility of quantum mechanics and Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, the most puzzling questions today in theoretical physics.
Scientists have identified four fundamental interactions or forces in nature: gravitation, electromagnetism, the weak interaction, and the strong interaction. Einstein’s General Relativity Theory addresses the first one, quantum mechanics (the Standard Model) addresses the other three. Both theories have been proven and are widely accepted yet they can’t be reconciled in a “Theory of Everything,” at least mathematically.
The debate often centers on the question whether nature is discrete or continuous. Subatomic particles can seem to act like a particle or a wave. A wave (continuous) can become a particle (discrete), and vice versa. This ambiguous phenomenon could not be explained in Newtonian mechanics. The ancient Chinese would not have been able to give a scientific answer, but they would have pointed out that waves and particles, as well as the four fundamental forces, emanate from one single force, the “something” that ignited the Big Bang. In the words of Lao Tzu: “There was something unmoving, unchanging, all-pervading, coming into existence before Heaven and Earth. I do not know its name. I give it the designation of Tao.”
In the 1980s, an avalanche of books appeared applying the notion of Tao to every conceivable domain: The Tao of Management, The Tao of Pooh, The Tao of Piglet, The Tao of Chiropractic, and even The Tao of Democracy. Many of these books border on the whimsical but they all point at the various ways we can use the yin-yang principle of Tao in nearly all of life’s concerns. Notably missing from the list is The Tao of Einstein.
Most physicists agree that Einstein was one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. His General Theory of Relativity introduced the notion of spacetime, showing that both time and space must both be taken into account to get a realistic picture of the universe. A simple example illustrates the point. When we look up in the sky at night, we may see distant stars that emitted the light we see a million years ago. The light does not tell us anything about the “state” of the star today. The star could have imploded after it emitted the light we see today.
While quantum mechanics addresses the very small, Einstein relied on the very large to explain his notion of spacetime. He predicted that the light from distant stars reaching Earth is bent or curved by the gravity of the sun. This mean the star is not at the exact position (line of sight) were we currently see the star. It will be to the left or right than the emitted light indicates. To make his calculations, Einstein used calculus and non-Euclidean geometry to predict the degree of deflection of the starlight before it reaches Earth. His calculation was confirmed during a solar eclipse in 1919, making him the most celebrated scientist since Isaac Newton.
Einstein’s realization that space and time had to be taken into account simultaneously was revolutionary. Prior to Einstein, scientists had rarely considered the relationship between time and space. In fact, they rarely discussed the notion of space. Starting with Aristotle and continuing with Newton and James Clerk Maxwell, scientists speculated instead about the nature of “ether,” that invisible something that they believed permeated the universe.
European discussion about the notion of space itself only started in the late 19th century, first by Charles Howard Hinton, the British mathematician and science fiction writer who introduced the notion of the so-called Fourth Dimension, but not until Einstein introduced the notion of spacetime did space entered the consciousness of a wider audience.
Surprisingly, the Chinese had developed their own idea about space and time some 3000 years ago. They realized early on that space and time are intrinsically related. It is an essential part of Feng-Shui, the Chinese version of an ancient art known in the West as geomancy. Like everything else in China, Feng-Shui is based on the notion of Tao. The ancient Feng-Shui masters spoke of Yu, or space-universe, and Zhou, or time-universe. Yu-Zhou represents the yin-yang universe. Yu is yin, Zhou is yang. The 12th century scholar and natural philosopher Lu Jiuyuan is said to have discovered the first known definition of the Yu-Zhou in an ancient text: “What comprises the four points of the compass together with what is above and below: this is called Yu. What comprises past, present and future: this is called Zhou.”
The Chinese typically wrapped their invention and concepts in mythological tales, as they did with the notions of space and time. The ancient classic Book of Rites contains a diagram known as the Luo Shu (diagram of the river Luo). The Luo Shu is a square divided in nine cells of equal size. The diagram was part of ancient Chinese numerology but came to play an important role in the development of Chinese architecture. Chinese ancient capitals were invariably laid out in a grid and subdivided in nine cells. It is the origin of how China would come to be known. The world was one large Luo Sho and China occupied the middle square, hence the Middle Kingdom
Luo was the name of a tributary to the Yellow River. Legend has it that Emperor Yu, the inventor of hydraulic engineering who is also credited with the invention of the Eight Trigrams, put an end to the frequent flooding of the Luo. He was rewarded for his efforts by a tortoise, which emerged from the water carrying the Luo Shu on its back. In Chinese mythology, this event is the metaphor for the creation (i.e. organization) of space (Yu). Another legend involved archer Yi, who shot down nine of the ten suns that had all risen at once. This event marked the creation of time (Zhou).
The Chinese notion of Yu-Zhou is the Tao of Einstein. The ancient Chinese united space and time through geomancy, an art rather than a science. The old Feng-Shui masters were sometimes referred to as “masters of time.” Their principle instrument was the magnetic compass. They used it to determine human’s position vis-à-vis the universe. In formulating his theory of space-time, Einstein relied on gravity, which is also part of the electromagnetic universe. Both the ancient Chinese masters of time and Einstein show us part of reality. Taking both into account could help us to understand a new reality.
