There’s a gigantic double standard abroad in the world right now concerning science and what it does, or doesn’t, have to say about life. It’s a very revealing double standard, too, as these things usually are. This particular one concerns QM. And it also concerns the difference between science as a method and science as a worldview. We do have this widespread problem with science getting too big for its boots, and making pronouncements about the meaning of it all when really it’s supposed to be strictly a method. It’s meant to be about physics, not metaphysics. And this is where we have this superb example of a revealing double standard.
Consider reductionist materialism, or physicalism if you want to call it that, it’s not that important really. It’s the idea that the physical is all that exists. The overstepping the mark here is that this aspect of science ultimately says there is no meaning. But of course following scientific method led ultimately to the discovery of the weird and wonderful world of QM, which like it or not hints at an underlying unity, including that between the observer and the observed.
The problem is that meaninglessness is always predicated on a gap between the alleged outside world, and our inner world of meaning. According to QM that gap isn’t there.
But there has been a strong kickback against spiritual interpretations of QM. And this is the issue – it’s not only OK but to be actively encouraged for a psychology of scientific reductionism to tell us we’re meaningless, but any subjective, psychological, or ‘spiritual’ interpretation of science, which QM does seem to lend itself to quite readily, must be fought all the way. Now why is that? Why is it OK to tell us that we have no significance in the universe because science shows us this, but when science shows very much the opposite this must be stomped on, hard? Clearly, once again, it comes down to the playing out of psychologies, and the fact that supposed ‘scientific’ language is used doesn’t change that in the slightest.
In the end, science should stick to method. Both the ‘What the Bleep’ style misinterpretations of QM and ‘the Universe is all cold dead matter’ bollocks should be dumped. The intellect is a subset of consciousness, science is a subset of human activity, and life is a much vaster thing than either.