Me first. From a journal entry March 22, 1987, related to quantum measurement:
The external world may be composed of entities that don’t have definite properties until an observation attaches the property or properties. Our senses, however, are not by themselves capable of detecting these entities. So we probably should not talk about what exists and what doesn’t, since we must rely on second hand information from our measuring apparati.
We should only speak of how quantities or entities interact. That would seem to be* all we can measure—the product of the interaction of our measuring instruments with the entities of nature. It is the properties of the interaction that can be measured, that are in and of themselves the measurement.
The composite world definitely exists whether we observe** it or not. The other world, the invisible world, is something we have created from our imagination, and perhaps there is no reason to expect it to show an existence independent of our imagination.
There is a problem with this view, however. It doesn’t give us the fundamental physical entities from which the composite world is formed. And of course we are habitually prone to ask what is interacting with us when we make a quantum measurement.
Now what is meant here (there, in second paragraph) by “the product of the interaction of our measuring instruments with the entities of nature”? The joint product of the combined properties (at the moment of measurement) of the entity and the apparatus. Modern physics has concocted virtual particles to explain interactions. The particles are the media of interaction. But I think there is a better way to explain these phenomena. I don’t know what it is yet! (That’s why I need some graduate physics classes.) (end of quote. i took grad physics classes later, still don't know a better way than virtual particles, still working on it.)
*in my journal, instead of “would seem to be” I said “certainly is”. So much for my open-minded attitude in 1987.
**I said “measure” not “observe” in my journal. A measurement is a quantitative observation.
Now Thomas Merton, from chapter 30 (“Distractions”) in New Seeds of Contemplation, first published in 1961:
PRAYER and love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone.
IF you have never had any distractions you don’t know how to pray. For the secret of prayer is a hunger for God and for the vision of God, a hunger that lies far deeper than the level of language or affection. And a man whose memory and imagination are persecuting him with a crowd of useless or even evil thoughts and images may sometimes be forced to pray far better, in the depths of his murdered heart, than one whose mind is swimming with clear concepts and brilliant purposes and easy acts of love.
That is why it is useless to get upset when you cannot shake off distractions. … after a while, the doors of your subconscious mind fall ajar and all sorts of curious figures begin to come waltzing about on the scene. If you are wise you will not pay any attention to these things: remain in simple attention to God and keep your will peacefully directed to Him in simple desire, while the intermittent shadows of this annoying movie go about in the remote background. If you are aware of them at all it is only to realize that you refuse them.
The kind of distractions that holy people most fear are generally the most harmless of all. ….
If they ever had a sense of humor, they have now become so nervous that it has abandoned them altogether. Yet humor is one of the things that would probably be most helpful at such a time.
I wonder if Thomas was thinking of vulgar humor when he wrote that. I certainly enjoyed the vulgar humor in the movie Paul. And Merton was certainly thinking of vulgar distractions ("the phantasms of a lewd and somewhat idiotic burlesuque" as he says in the paragraph I left out) as being what holy people most fear.
