Paul - R P - 2006 - Subjectivist Observing and Objective Participant Perspectives On The World Kant Aquinas and Quantum Mechanics
Paul - R P - 2006 - Subjectivist Observing and Objective Participant Perspectives On The World Kant Aquinas and Quantum Mechanics
Paul - R P - 2006 - Subjectivist Observing and Objective Participant Perspectives On The World Kant Aquinas and Quantum Mechanics
To cite this article: Roger P. Paul (2006) Subjectivist – observing and objective – participant
perspectives on the world: Kant, aquinas and quantum mechanics, Theology and Science, 4:2,
151-169, DOI: 10.1080/14746700600758887
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Theology and Science, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2006
ROGER P. PAUL
to reality. Two paradigms for understanding the nature of human knowledge are considered in
relation to quantum mechanics: the subjective-observing perspective of Kant, and the objective-
participant perspective of Thomas Aquinas. I discuss whether quantum mechanics necessarily implies
a subject centered perspective on reality, and argue, with reference to d’Espagnat’s notion of veiled
reality, that quantum non-separability challenges this view. I then explore whether the objective-
participant perspective of Thomas Aquinas provides a more fruitful context for understanding
quantum mechanics. I discuss quantum measurement in terms of the transition from potentiality to
actuality, and knowledge as the latent intelligibility of the world realized. However, the negative
nature of our knowledge of quantum non-separability also challenges this perspective. Our theological
thinking in response to quantum knowledge must therefore proceed tentatively, balancing a via
positiva, with a via negativa.
What is believed about the world and reality has fundamental implications for
theology. Thomas Aquinas stated:
They hold a plainly false opinion who say that in regard to the truth of religion it
does not matter what a person thinks about the creation as long as he or she has the
correct opinion concerning God. An error concerning the creation ends as false
thinking about God.1
Over the last century, quantum mechanics has challenged common sense
notions of reality. Although there have been attempts to rescue physical realism
within quantum mechanics, for example, Bohm’s2 hidden variable approach, or
Everett’s3 relative state theory, d’Espagnat has argued that a return to near or
naı̈ve physical realism, where there is a direct correspondence between our
perceptions of the world and physical reality, is now impossible in view of this
challenge. As he remarks in a rather understated way:
If physical realism is distant, what status does our scientific knowledge have? Is
it possible to continue to trust that scientific knowledge relates to an objective
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Rather, the world, in its irreducible act of existence, impinges on the mind and
awakens our capacity to understand it. Objects in the world are the primary source of
structure and significance, with which the mind engages in the act of knowing. Here
we move away from the idea that the mind structures reality, to a partnership in
which the intellect draws out the intelligibility of the world.
Kerr asks whether the subjective-observing perspective is really the best way to
understand the basis of our knowledge. I explore this question particularly with
regard to quantum mechanics, which I suggest is something of a test case. I set out
first to explore whether quantum mechanics necessarily implies the skeptical,
subject centered attitude to the world of the subjectivist-observing perspective,
and suggest that there are difficulties in reconciling quantum non-separability
within Kant’s Copernican Revolution. In the light of these difficulties, I first
discuss d’Espagnat’s notion of veiled reality and then ask whether in fact the
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In his reply to Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen,10 Bohr11 affirms that the rules of
quantum theory should be applied consistently and rigorously to every aspect of
the process of measurement. Not only the quantum system to be measured, but
also the measuring apparatus with its choice of setting to measure a specific
observable, and the observer are in a state of superposition until a measurement is
actually made. Bohr states that in quantum mechanics we cannot speak intelligibly
about a reality that is independent of the observation, and argues for the necessity
of a radical revision of classical concepts in relation to quantum mechanics.
According to Bohr, quantum mechanics does not refer to elements of a physical
reality, but to physical phenomena, which have more to do with the perceptions,
including the results of experiments, that go to make up the data of experience.
Commenting on Einstein’s argument that quantum mechanics is an incomplete
description of reality, he wrote that we are ‘‘not dealing with an incomplete
description characterized by an arbitrary picking out of different elements of
physical reality at the cost of sacrificing other elements, but with a rational
discrimination between essentially different experimental arrangements and
procedures.’’12
Bohr often made the point that ‘‘no elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon
until it is a registered phenomenon.’’13 In other words, knowledge of quantum
systems is limited to the determinate results of measurement, those registered
phenomena that occur in the interaction between the system to be measured and
the observer. To ask what happens to the quantum system between observations
is futile, we just cannot know, except insofar as the wave function provides a set of
probabilities for the value of a chosen observation. It seems that as for Kant the
world of objects as they appear to the observer consists of appearances, so what
we know of the quantum world is the registered phenomena of observations.
154 Theology and Science
It is, however, unclear what Bohr meant by registered phenomena. In one sense,
the process that Bohr was referring to is precisely the transition from a state of
superposition to a determinate state, often referred to as the collapse of the wave
function, which occurs when a quantum system interacts with a macro-system.
A measuring device records the outcome of such an interaction in a way that can
be read, perhaps on a photographic film or as the click of a Geiger counter. The
point here is whether Bohr considered the record of the measuring device itself as
the registered phenomenon. If this is the case, then the result is not dependent on
the perceptions of a conscious observer, but is entirely a physical event. Yet Bohr
also seemed to consider that the whole system ultimately includes the conscious
observer. Indeed, Schrödinger14 stated this explicitly in his cat paradox, where the
cat would appear to be in a state of superposition until the box was opened and
the observer recorded a determinate state in consciousness. Schrödinger could
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of information out of which we construct the objects of our world. Wheeler wrote:
What we call reality consists of a few iron posts of observation between which we
fill in by an elaborate papier mâché construction of imagination and theory.20
and when they are structured in terms of the categories of thought. Knowledge is
then wholly and exclusively subjective, because there can be no knowledge of a
thing without sense impressions, nor can it be independent of the structure that the
subject brings to the matter.
If knowledge of a thing must always be within the a priori structures of thought,
what sort of relationship do these phenomena have with things in themselves?
James van Cleve23 discusses this important question in terms of the double-aspect
and double-object views. A double aspect view regards appearances and the thing
in itself as two aspects of the same reality. It has been suggested, for example, that
the thing in itself is viewed as having intrinsic properties, which do not
communicate to an observer, while an appearance of the same reality is
experienced in terms of those properties that are to do with the way that reality
relates to other things. One of the difficulties of this interpretation is that it leads to
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contradictory statements about one and the same thing. For example, the thing in
itself is not located in space, while the appearance is located in space. An
alternative view is to consider both the thing in itself and the appearance as objects
of different types, a double-object view. The problem of this view is that it implies
dualism. In order to overcome these difficulties, van Cleve suggests the notion of
appearances as virtual objects, that is to say, they are a sort of fiction constructed
out of the sense impressions of the observer. In one sense to speak of a virtual
object is just shorthand for referring to a complex myriad of sense impressions, but
in another these constituent sense impressions can be seen as constituting a
supervenient entity.
Wheeler’s ‘‘It-From-Bit’’ thesis seems to relate to van Cleve’s notion of
appearances as virtual objects. However, this interpretation of Kant raises a
central difficulty. If an appearance is a virtual object, in what sense is the thing in
itself an object, and how, if at all, do the two types of object interact? Van Cleve
seems to suggest that since a virtual object can be defined in terms of its
constituent sense impressions, the thing in itself is the only real object, albeit
unknowable. Kant seemed to allow for the fact that through our sense impressions
we have an awareness of something that is beyond our control as subjects and
impinges on our faculty of sensibility. The thing in itself is a general answer to the
question ‘‘Why do I have that particular sense impression, rather than another?’’
However, here the difficulty is how a thing in itself, which is outside space, time,
causality, and so on, can give rise to sense impressions, which are perceived in
space and time. If we can speak of the thing in itself causing sense impressions,
then we have to think of a cause that is structured neither in time nor space, nor of
the same nature as the effect that follows.
the observer until it interacts with a measuring device and an observation is made.
The observation itself, not the quantum system, then may correspond to the thing
as it appears to the observer, conforming to the essentially classical framework in
which we are able to apprehend determinate objects.
However, there is a difficulty with this accommodation, which emerges in
relation to a number of issues arising out of quantum mechanics. Here, I propose
to focus on the issues raised by quantum non-separability, but similar questions
are posed by the more general measurement problem. So for example, in a
classical system, it is in principle possible to measure all properties of system
simultaneously, but in a quantum system, non-commutative observables are
mutually incompatible. Measuring one observable excludes the possibility of
measuring another. Is this partial knowledge of quantum systems an epistemo-
logical or an ontological problem? Is our partial knowledge a consequence of
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In two spatially distant systems, a measurement on one system does not depend on
a measurement on the other.25
and position, which even if not known, can be said to be elements of reality,
whereas in the latter case intrinsic values are not allowed.
The real factual situation of the system S2 is independent of what is done with the
system S1, which is spatially separate from the former . . . one can escape only by
assuming that the measurement of S1 changes the real situation of S2, or by denying
the independent real situation as such to things which are spatially separate from
each other. Both alternatives appear to me entirely unacceptable.28
For EPR, the only conclusion was that quantum mechanics was incomplete, a
conclusion arising out of their realist viewpoint. They maintained that the
concepts of a scientific theory needed to respond and correspond to physical
reality: ‘‘These concepts are the means whereby we picture reality to ourselves.’’29
A physical theory is sufficiently complete, according to EPR, if ‘‘every element of
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state, described by a single wave function. In this situation, both photons are in a
superposition of being polarized in the vertical and horizontal axes. When
polarizing films are placed in the path of each photon, and are perfectly aligned in
either the vertical or the horizontal axis, then there is a 50% probability of each of
the photons being blocked by the films. There is furthermore a perfect correlation
between the blocking or transmitting of each of the pairs of photons in an
ensemble, so that if one photon is blocked, so is the other, and if one is transmitted
the other is also transmitted. If the axes of the two polarizing films are not aligned,
then there is only a partial correlation between the pairs of results in an ensemble.
Sometimes both photons are transmitted or blocked, but otherwise one is
transmitted and the other blocked. The proportion of correlated results depends
on the angle between the axes of polarization of the two polarizing films.
Bell’s inequalities turn on the expected correlation of results when the two
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polarizing films are not aligned. On the one hand, according to quantum
mechanics, the correlations are the consequence of the probabilities calculated
from the wave function for a particular variable. Whereas, on the other hand, if we
assume the principle of separability and also the existence of a hidden function
that determines the outcome of measurement of each of the variables, the
correlations are the result of a determinate process. Bell discovered that if perfect
correlation between results when the polarizing films are perfectly aligned is to be
maintained, the correlations predicted by quantum mechanics and by assuming
the principle of separability will be unequal.
Bell was, therefore, able to show that the expected correlations between
measurements on entangled systems of two particles arrived at by quantum
mechanics cannot be equal to the correlations between measurements on the two
particles assuming separability and, therefore, no influence or communication
other than at source. The theoretical basis for experimental testing of the EPR
argument was developed by Clauser, Horne, Holt, and Shimony.36 A number of
experimental tests37 of the so-called CHHS-Bell inequalities were attempted, but
perhaps the most convincing was that achieved by Aspect, Grangier, and Roger38
in 1982.
In this experiment, the common source emitted two photons in opposite
directions. Two switching devices, utilizing standing waves, generated by
ultrasound, in phials of water, could each direct a photon to one of two
polarization filters and photon detectors, each with a different setting. The
switches were operated when the photons were in flight, in order to exclude the
possible influence of one setting on the other prior to the production of the two
photons. The results of this beautifully designed experiment were consistent with
the predictions of quantum mechanics, and not with the assumption of
separability.
However, we must be careful about what the violation of separability actually
means. First, it must not be assumed to contradict the fundamental axiom of
special relativity, that information cannot be transmitted outside the light cone of a
frame of reference, implying that signals cannot travel at speeds greater than that
of light in vacuo. The reason for this conclusion is that the violation refers to
correlations between two systems. Two observers will each only have the results
160 Theology and Science
states and their measurements are interpreted. Bohr41 put forward the idea that
phenomena arising from the interaction of entangled states with observers
who are spatially separated are connected in some way. Bohr would deny that
this is a causal connection in which an actual physical change takes place in one
part of the system when a measurement is made in another part, but this
connectivity does suggest that quantum mechanics, through the notion of
entangled, non-separable states, reveals a holistic view of the world of human
experience.
Quantum non-separability also questions the Kantian view that knowledge
must conform to a priori forms of intuition and categories of thought. I suggest
here that the principle of separability is implied in Kantian intuitions of space and
time. We picture to ourselves things in space as being separate from each other,
and as having no instantaneous effect on each other. Our concept of causation
requires that the effect should temporally follow the cause. In the sense that
objects in themselves exist in a way that transcends space and time, the principle
of separability does not apply to them. However, its violation is something that
we do know: it has been empirically tested, and is therefore a phenomenon that
does not conform to our subjective a priori forms of intuition. The violation of
the principle of separability gives us knowledge that is not conformed to our
subjective cognitive faculties. Quantum non-separability implies that even if our
cognitive faculties structure the way we perceive things, our knowledge may
reach beyond cognition and that things in themselves are in fact self-revealing.
There is an irreducible issue concerning quantum non-separability: that our
spatial intuition seems to have reached its limits, not epistemologically, but in
making sense of new empirical data. As d’Espagnat42 points out, it is impossible to
say anything more about the meaning of non-separability than that it is a violation
of separability. It is knowledge of a negative kind.
William Stoeger S. J.43 argues that it is important to believe that quantum theory
does tell us something about the nature of the quantum world as it really is, and
Kant, Aquinas and Quantum Mechanics 161
One senses that d’Espagnat in his notions of ‘‘veiled’’ and ‘‘empirical’’ reality, is
struggling for a unified conception of the world that is true to the challenge of
quantum mechanics, and especially non-separability and the participation
of the observer in constructing the phenomenon that arise on measurement,
but that he is still confined within the dilemmas of post-enlightenment
philosophy. When we move into the objective-participant perspective of Thomas
Aquinas, not only does the language change, it is also like walking in a different
landscape.
Aquinas is very much an empiricist. We are aware of the existence of
things because we rub up against them, deal with them, work on them, and
perceive them through our senses. For Aquinas, something exists because it
has being, but that is not to say that being is a property of a thing that exists.
162 Theology and Science
Being as act of existence is not a state, it is an act; it is not static nor a definable object
of conception. So Being is a dynamic impulse, energy, act.47
What then is the nature of being as described by Aquinas? For Aquinas, the
being of a thing arises out of the union of its form and matter. The form is what
makes a thing actual, as Aquinas wrote ‘‘form causes actual existence.’’ Aquinas
refers here to two types of form, substantial and accidental, and there is a
significant difference between the two. Substantial forms are what make things
what they are in themselves, or what in union with matter makes the essence of a
thing. If the substantial form of a thing changes then the thing becomes something
else. A union of a substantial form and matter produces a subject. Accidental
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forms, on the other hand, are those properties or characteristics of something that
if they change do not change the essence of the thing. Whereas substantial forms
relate to matter, accidental forms relate to subjects.
It would misrepresent Aquinas to understand being as static, and to regard
substances having being as inert, isolated and self-enclosed objects. For Aquinas,
being is dynamic. Doing, in the sense of action and activity, naturally follows
existence, and existence is manifested and fulfilled in doing. So God, who is pure
being, rather than static and self-enclosed, is self-manifesting, self-communicating
to the world, and that by the outgoing act of self-sharing enables all that exists to
participate in being, and so causes them to be. In a similar way, things that exist
express and realize their being through action and relation. According to Kerr, his
picture of the world is of a ‘‘constant reassembling network of transactions, beings
becoming in their transactions’’ and that ‘‘it is perfectly natural to think of (even
rocks) as intrinsically and spontaneously self-communicating, self-revealing
entities, and thus as substances always in relation.’’48
According to Aquinas, for a thing to be is to participate mutually in the being of
other things, and ultimately in the being of God. Dynamic relationship is the very
nature of existing, even for inanimate things. In this view, the principle of
separability appears to be an over-simplification of the way things are. The way
quantum mechanics treats entangled systems by ascribing one unified wave
function to the whole, as we have seen, leads to the notion of non-separability.
One part of an entangled system cannot be treated separately without influencing
all the other parts. The working of quantum mechanics and specifically the
violation of the principle of separability intimates a holistic, interconnected view
of the world that relates to the rich, subtle, dynamic relational, self-communicating
universe of Thomas Aquinas.
the mind to understand the world and all that is. Correspondingly, the world
and all that is, is potentially intelligible. This is not to say that the objects of
the world are intelligible in themselves, or in contrast, that they are utterly
meaningless and lacking in significance. Lonergan50 gives the example of a
beautifully produced book but written in a totally unknown language. While we
may appreciate the book, and realize that it is a thing of great significance and
meaning, it is hardly intelligible to us. For it to become intelligible, I need to be
able to read it.
In the act of knowing, the object activates the intellectual power of the mind. It
is when the two, the active object, and the dynamic intellectual power of the mind
are brought together and interact, that the intelligibility of the world is realized in
the act of being understood:
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The intelligent in act and the intelligible in act are identical . . . Our intellectual
capacities actualized are the world’s intelligibility realized.51
The act of understanding52 involves the mind drawing out or abstracting the
form from the object so that it becomes what Aquinas calls an intelligible species.
This process of abstraction may proceed through the mind comparing and
contrasting the object with the intelligible species that already inform the mind. It
is not therefore necessarily an original act in every instance.
When Aquinas speaks of that which is abstracted from the objects of the world
by the operation of the mind’s intellectual powers, he is referring to the forms of
those objects that are separated, by that intellectual act, from matter.53 That is not
to say that the form exists in the same way as when it is conjoined to matter, but
that it becomes realized in an intelligible species of the intellect. Aquinas insists on
the notion that our access to the world is direct; it is not mediated by
representations that bridge the gap between the world and our thoughts. When
an object is known or made intelligible, it is a case of the mind actually knowing
and understanding its form, because the form is realized as an intelligible species
in the mind, while the (prime) matter remains unintelligible. In the act of knowing,
the object of thought activates the power of the mind and the mind reveals the
significance of the object or perhaps more accurately, enables the significance of
the object to be realized; it is brought more clearly into the light. The process of
knowing is thus an active collaboration between the known and the knower, as
Aquinas writes:
Knower and known are one principle of activity in as much as one reality
results from them both, namely the mind in act. I say that one reality results, for
here in mind is conjoined to thing understood whether immediately or though a
likeness.54
Kerr55 makes the point that in a subjectivist orientation it is assumed that in the
act of knowing the objects of our knowledge are untouched and unaffected. By
contrast, for Aquinas, the act of knowing not only has a bearing on the knower,
but also, by making the object intelligible it is helping to fulfill its purpose. Its
status is changed though its participation in the knower.
164 Theology and Science
and that ‘‘the transition from the potential to the actual must remain somewhat of
a mystery.’’
D’Espagnat regards potentialities as being the set of possible results of a
particular measurement made on the system using an apparatus set up in a
particular way, which can be compared to Schrödinger’s notion59 of the wave
function as an expectation catalogue relating to a particular observable of the
system. If we are to speak of the wave function in terms of potentialities, then
they are strictly potentialities of a subject, not of prime matter, and are therefore
actualized in accidental forms, not substantial forms. To say that a quantum
state exists is all that can be said of it in itself. Everything else about it that we
may be interested in can be expressed as a wave function of potentialities from
which its actuality is educed or drawn out from these latent potentialities on
measurement. The actuality that is educed is known in terms of accidental form,
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and it is this accidental form, which manifests its substantial form. The wave
function is not, therefore, the thing in itself, nor is it the prime matter, which is a
constituent of the thing, but is a catalogue of the potentialities of the thing
relating to a particular observable, or accidental form of the system. The
potentialities that are actualized in accidental forms on measurement then
correspond to the registered phenomena of Bohr and Wheeler, or the elements of
empirical reality of d’Espagnat.
Therefore, the potentialities that quantum mechanics define in the wave func-
tion are knowable because through measurement they become actualities.
Before the event of measurement, they cannot be thought of as existing, but
on measurement, becoming actual, and therefore, receiving accidental form, they
are capable of being known. Somewhere in the event of measurement can be
found, in d’Espagnat’s phrase, ‘‘the mysterious transition from the potential to
the actual.’’60
Wheeler61 refers to the act of measurement on a quantum system as being like
an act of creation in a co-constructing universe. However, we can express
quantum measurement in the language of Aquinas as an aspect of the process of
eduction of an accidental form that actualizes the potentiality of the wave
function. The potentialities available to the event of measurement are rigorously
defined by the application of the operator to the wave function; for example, only
eigen functions of the operator can become actualities. Thinking of measurement
in these terms leads us to understand the formulation of the question posed to the
quantum system by the settings of the apparatus as an aspect of the form that
actuates.
Concluding remarks
being. He wrote:
Sacred writings are bound in two volumes—that of creation and that of the Holy
Scriptures.62
and
In this life, we know God insofar as we know the invisible things of God through
creatures, as it says in Romans, chapter 1. And thus every creature is for us like a
certain mirror. Because from the order, goodness, and magnitude that are caused by
God in things, we come to a knowledge of the divine wisdom and goodness and
eminence. And this knowledge we call a vision in a mirror.63
This via positiva, or affirmative way, leads us into the joy and delight of God’s
creativity. Yet, while it is possible to affirm that we have a deep knowledge of
creation through which we may approach the divine nature, the questions raised
by quantum mechanics suggest that our knowledge is limited, and that we must
be cautious in this affirmation. As d’Espagnat points out, the discovery of the
violation of the principle of separability is knowledge of a negative kind: we only
know that the reality of the quantum world does not conform to the principle of
separability.
For Aquinas, the via positiva is qualified by the via negativa, which introduces
the notion of the contingency of all theological statements. The classic text of
negative theology64 is that of Pseudo-Dionysius,65 which puts forward the notion
of the unknowability of God. All images, words, and concepts ultimately fail to
express God. The person who approaches near to this divine darkness has to let go
even of the most sublime of divine names, because God’s incomprehensibility is
so radical. For Aquinas, the acknowledgement of divine incomprehensibility
was fundamental to his approach and enabled him to explore the divine
mystery from many angles. Kerr remarks: ‘‘there is a loose-endedness in
[Thomas Aquinas’] constantly repeated discussions of finally unresolvable
problems.’’66
Our theological thinking takes place within a conditional framework by
acknowledging the ultimate and radical divine incomprehensibility. In the light of
quantum mechanics, a further level of conditionality is introduced: that of
Kant, Aquinas and Quantum Mechanics 167
the negative nature of our knowledge of certain aspects of the quantum world. We
may learn from classical theology, which holds the via positiva in creative tension
with the via negativa, how to reconcile a sense of the objective reality of the world
with the limited and conditional nature of our knowledge.
Endnotes
1 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, II. 3, trans. Fathers of the English
Dominican Province (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1923).
2 D. Bohm, ‘‘A Suggested Interpretation of Quantum Theory in Terms of Hidden
Variables, Parts I and II,’’ Physical Review, 85 (1952): 166 – 193.
3 H. Everett, III, ‘‘Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics: Thesis Submitted to
Princeton University March 1 1957,’’ in The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum
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Mechanics, eds. B. S. DeWitt and N. Graham (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1973); idem, ‘‘The Theory of the Universal Wave Function,’’ in The Many Worlds
Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, eds. DeWitt and Graham.
4 B. d’Espagnat, Reality and the Physicist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
5 F. Kerr, After Aquinas (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 26 – 28.
6 R. Descartes, Discourse on Method and the Meditations, trans. F. E. Sutcliffe (London:
Penguin, 1968), 102 – 112.
7 S. Gardner, Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason (London and New York: Routledge,
1999), 27 – 50; R. Scruton, Kant: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 32 – 53; J. van Cleve, Problems from Kant (Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 3 – 33.
8 I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd ed., trans. N. Kemp Smith (New York: St Martin’s,
1965), Bxvi.
9 Ibid., 8: A343/B401.
10 A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, ‘‘Can the Quantum Mechanical Description of
Physical Reality be Complete?,’’ Physical Review, 47 (1935): 777 – 780.
11 N. Bohr, ‘‘Can the Quantum Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Complete?’’
Physical Review, 48 (1935): 696 – 702.
12 Ibid., 11.
13 Quoted in J. A. Wheeler, ‘‘Law Without Law (1979 – 1981),’’ in Quantum Theory and
Measurement, eds. J. A. Wheeler and W. H. Zurek (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1983), 182 – 213.
14 E. Schrödinger, ‘‘The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics (1935): A Translation of
Schrödinger’s Cat Paradox Paper,’’ trans. J. P. Trimmer, in Quantum Theory and
Measurement, 152 – 167.
15 J. A. Wheeler, At Home in the Universe (New York: AIP, 1994), 112 – 131, 23 – 46, 295 – 312;
R. P. Paul, ‘‘Relative State or It-from-Bit: God and Contrasting Interpretations of
Quantum Theory,’’ Science and Christian Belief, 17:2 (October 2005): 155 – 175.
16 J. A. Wheeler, Geons, Black Holes and Quantum Foam (New York: W. W. Norton and
Company, 2000).
17 Ibid., 16.
18 Wheeler, At Home in the Universe, 112 – 131.
19 Ibid., 18.
20 Ibid., 13.
21 R. Scruton, Kant: A Very Short Introduction.
22 Ibid., 21.
23 J. van Cleve, Problems from Kant.
24 Ibid., 10.
25 Ibid., 4: 88.
168 Theology and Science
26 J. S. Bell, ‘‘Bertlmann’s Socks and the Nature of Reality,’’ Journal de Physique (1981):
41 – 61, printed in J. S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993).
27 Ibid., 10.
28 Quoted in D. Howard, ‘‘Einstein on Locality and Separability,’’ Studies in History and
Philosophy of Science (1985): 171 – 201.
29 Ibid., 10.
30 Ibid., 10.
31 Ibid., 11.
32 Ibid., 2.
33 J. S. Bell, ‘‘Introduction to the Hidden-Variable Questions,’’ Foundations of Quantum
Mechanics (New York: Academic, 1971), 171 – 181, printed in Speakable and Unspeakable in
Quantum Mechanics.
34 J. S. Bell, ‘‘On the E-P-R Paradox,’’ Physics, 1 (1964): 195 – 200, printed in Speakable and
Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics.
35 A. Shimony, ‘‘The Reality of the Quantum World,’’ in Quantum Mechanics: Scientific
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60 Ibid., 58.
61 Ibid., 18: 23 – 46.
62 St. Thomas Aquinas, ‘‘Sermons on the Two Precepts of Charity and the Ten Precepts of
the Law,’’ in Sheer Joy: Conversation with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, ed.
M. Fox (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 2003).
63 St. Thomas Aquinas, ‘‘Commentary on the Letter to the Corinthians,’’ in Sheer Joy, 73.
64 V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James Clarke and Co.,
1957).
65 Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names and the Mystical Theology, trans. C. E. Rolt
(London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920).
66 Ibid., 5: 210.
Biographical Notes
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