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Reflection in the Waves
Breakthroughs in Mimetic Theory
Edited by William A. Johnsen
Reflection
in the Waves
The Interdividual Observer
in a Quantum Mechanical World
Pablo Bandera
East Lansing
Copyright © 2019 by Pablo Bandera
p
Michigan State University Press
East Lansing, Michigan 48823-5245
28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
G
Michigan State University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative and is
committed to developing and encouraging ecologically responsible publishing
practices. For more information about the Green Press Initiative and the use of
recycled paper in book publishing, please visit www.greenpressinitiative.org.
To my wife,
without whom everything else
would be unthinkable.
Contents
Introduction · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ix
Notes · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 205
Index· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 217
Introduction
ix
scientific community, which has acquired a kind of allergy to
philosophical questions. It has acquired this allergy, however,
not from any inherent incompatibility with philosophy, but
as a reaction to the persistent and increasing relevance of
philosophical questions that keep imposing themselves on
scientists. The enormous amount of literature relating science
and philosophy, which has been steadily growing in recent
years, testifies to this basic synergy. And yet the prevailing
attitude of many modern scientists toward philosophy,
and especially toward any reference to the human or to the
divine, is decidedly negative. An allergic reaction becomes
more acute, more violent, as it gets more surrounded by the
allergen. This, I believe, is essentially what we have been
witnessing for the last hundred years or so, with occasional
uncontrollable fits such as Stephen Hawking’s proclamation
that “philosophy is dead.”1
Nonetheless, as science has become more “modern,” the
range and depth of philosophical questions have increased.
For example, as soon as one enters into a discussion of quan-
tum theory and its strange implications, one feels compelled
to answer a fundamentally philosophical question: Are we
x
dealing here with a problem of ontology or a problem of
epistemology? Do the strange implications of quantum
theory say something about the world itself or merely what
we know about the world?
There is a temptation to assume the latter and console
ourselves with the idea that the universe is not really arbitrary
or irrational, only mysterious and elusive. This has in fact
been the explicit position of many physicists, beginning
with Werner Heisenberg. But even if we speak of quantum
theory as describing only what we know about the observed
physical system, this is not intended to mean what we are
capable of knowing today, with our present technology or
with the current limitations of our brains. It is what we can
know in principle—what nature allows us to know, and
therefore what is inherently knowable. The “uncertainty”
quantified by Heisenberg is meant to describe the objective
world, not the subjective observer. This is especially evident
when one considers that Heisenberg’s original term Un-
bestimmtheit does not primarily mean “uncertainty,” which
suggests a limitation or confusion of the mind, but is more
correctly translated as “indeterminacy.” Despite his appeal
xi
to epistemology, Heisenberg understood that, after all, it is
not we who are uncertain but the world.
As tortured and confused as this philosophical question
has been since Descartes, it has been the bane of modern
physics since Schrödinger introduced his infamous cat.2
At the heart of all the strangeness of quantum theory lies a
struggle to understand the connection between the subject
and the object of an observation—between the observer and
the observed. This is, of course, one of those big questions
that have been discussed and debated in philosophical circles
for many years, with implications well beyond the scope
of this short monograph. Nonetheless, in my brief study
I will need to address this and a few other big questions of
science and philosophy, but only just enough to clear the
path forward as we follow the light that quantum theory
and mimetic theory shed on each other.
For example, the tug-of-war between subject and object
has been fueled by another debate that shows no sign of
abating anytime soon. Modern physicists agree on the critical
role of the observer but are starkly divided on the question of
who or what this observer is. The word “observer” naturally
xii
brings to mind the image of a human person, with eyes that
see and ears that hear. But while some have argued for the
necessary humanity, or at least consciousness, of the ob-
server, most modern physicists reject the notion that we
humans are special in any physically significant way. As a
method of enquiry or a path to genuine understanding, this
debate has been woefully disappointing. We have already
seen it run repeatedly to its extremes: on the one hand a
sterile reductionism, on the other a vague monism or poorly
veiled pantheism. The present study will try to take both
physics and the human person more seriously than that.
There is another topic that has played a smaller role in
the philosophy of science but is of central importance for
our purposes here. This is the intriguing similarity between
the probabilistic wave function in quantum theory and the
Aristotelian concept of potentia. These parallels were first
noticed by Werner Heisenberg and have been elaborated in
different ways by a number of other physicists and philoso-
phers. Most approach the subject from the perspective of a
generic observer—that is, without considering any special
qualities of the specifically human observer. But I believe the
xiii
parallels between probability and potentia are much more
profound and revealing when the latter is understood, not
merely in Aristotelian terms, but in the fuller sense devel-
oped by Thomas Aquinas. To do this, we must indeed take
into account certain unique qualities of the human observer.
All of these big questions can be tied together in a coher-
ent and powerful way when one considers an insight that is
in fact not discussed or debated in any scientific literature
at all. I am speaking of the common assumption, taken for
granted by both classical and modern science, that the act
of observation is characterized by a direct independent rela-
tionship between the observer and the object of observation.
That is, despite the complexities developed over the last
century around the nature of observation and the “measure-
ment problem,” we still ultimately rely on the rather intuitive
notion that “my observation” is indeed “mine,” independent
of anyone else’s, and relates me directly to the thing I’m ob-
serving. All models of observation assume this fundamental
connection between me and my object and then describe
how other objects and observers are or aren’t related to it.
As we will see, it is precisely this simplistic assumption that
xiv
quantum theory calls into question, and this will force us to
reevaluate what it means to be an observer and what it means
to be observed. But the point is not that quantum theory is
wrong, much less that quantum mechanics is somehow not
real, or not really “quantum mechanical.” The point is that
quantum mechanics is trying to tell us something, and our
rather limited understanding of the nature of observation
has prevented us from seeing what that something is.
The philosophical problems of quantum theory are
considered problems of the modern world and a product
of the twentieth century. But their roots stretch back much
further, at least to the thirteenth century, and really all the
way back to the first century ad. But we should take things
one step at a time and start from the beginning, which in this
case is toward the end, when the line between classical and
modern physics was being drawn in bold strokes. It was at
this recent point in history when we first noticed the beacon
being signaled from the unreachable depths of nature—a
beacon of warning, but also ultimately of hope.
xv
1
The Collapse of the Rational World
1
disturbing picture was formed. The curve started out well
enough, climbing faithfully according to expectations. But
then, as it entered the shorter wavelengths of ultraviolet
light, the curve, in utter rebellion against the established
laws of physics, turned downward and decreased swiftly to
zero. There was no explanation for it. It was impossible. And
yet the results were stubbornly repeatable, and the truth of it
(whatever that truth was) was unavoidable. This seemingly
simple blackbody was telling us something—something like,
“Welcome to the twentieth century; things are going to be
different around here.”
It came to be known as the “ultraviolet catastrophe”
because it was in this region of the blackbody radiation
plot that our understanding of the world proved to be
fundamentally wrong. There was nothing to be done about
the experimental results themselves. So instead, the German
physicist Max Planck reformulated the old equations around
a crucial and original hypothesis: perhaps the atoms of a
blackbody do not absorb or emit energy continuously, as we
thought, but do so only in discrete amounts, which Planck
called “quanta.” It was a guess, with no scientific precedent,
2
but it made the mathematics match experimental results
perfectly.
When Planck presented his results to the scientific com-
munity in 1900, it was not obvious to anyone (including
Planck) that this was anything other than an ad hoc solution
to a particular mathematical problem. But a few years later,
in the context of yet another experiment that showed a
similar disregard for the laws of physics, Albert Einstein
applied Planck’s hypothesis to light itself (as opposed to the
atoms of a blackbody), postulating the existence of quanta
of light which he called “photons.”1 Suddenly, this notion
of “quantization” became, not just an isolated peculiarity of
blackbodies, but a property of one of the fundamental build-
ing blocks of nature. This powerful new idea attracted and
inspired the best scientific minds of the time, so that by the
third decade of the new century the distinction was already
made between “classical physics” and “modern physics.”
Just as classical physics has its fundamental equations
(Newton’s laws of motion, Maxwell’s equations of electro-
magnetism, etc.), the new physics has its equation as well.
This is Schrödinger’s equation, and it is, oddly enough, a
3
wave equation. That is, the solution to Schrodinger’s equa-
tion, called the “wave function” or “state function,” is not
a single number such as 10 meters of length or 25 degrees
centigrade. It is a wave-shaped distribution over a range
of numbers, as shown in figure 1. The equation works very
well and can be used to predict a wide variety of physical
phenomena with uncanny accuracy. So it seems we have
the right equation. The question is, what does this equation
mean? If we use Schrödinger’s equation to calculate, say, the
position of a particle within a certain volume of space, what
does it mean to say that the particle’s position is distributed
over this volume? Intuitively we would like to point to the
particle and say, “It is there.” The new physics seems to be
telling us we can’t point anymore, we can only wave our
hands. In fact, in quantum theory we do not generally speak
of the position of a particle. Instead we say that the particle
is in “superposition,” referring to this range of physical states
contained within the wave function that together make up
the overall state of the particle.
In 1928 Max Born came up with an explanation that
ultimately formed the foundation of our new understanding
4
Figure 1. A Simple Example of the Quantum Wave Function
5
get an answer like “5,000 feet above the ground.” This is a
complete description of the vertical position (or altitude) of
that object. It is not 4,000 feet above the ground, or 6,000
feet, but 5,000 feet. There is no more to say about the altitude
of this object. Similarly, Schrödinger’s equation is intended
to be a complete description of the state of a system. It is
not that the particle is really here, even though the wave
function says it might also be over there. The wave function
is not wrong or superfluous. In other words, we do not use
Schrödinger’s equation (or Newton’s) to tell us where the
particle isn’t, we use it to tell us where the particle is. But if the
wave function is a probability distribution, then where the
particle is is where it might be. These two concepts—where
something is and where it might be—are strangely confused
together. There seems to be a fundamental ambiguity inher-
ent in the very state of the particle, and in the state of any
physical system.
This ambiguity was quantified by Werner Heisenberg in
his famous uncertainty principle. By combining some of the
new ideas developed by people like Einstein and Louis de
Broglie, Heisenberg derived a set of mathematical relations
6
that effectively imposed a hard physical limit on what was
fundamentally knowable in nature. These relations have a
simple form, for example:
Δx ∙Δp ≥ ħ/2.
7
collaborative work in Copenhagen in the late 1920s became
the philosophical foundation of quantum theory. The basic
ideas have been developed and molded into several varia-
tions, but because of their origins they are rather broadly
referred to as the Copenhagen school of thought. Despite
its scandalous implications, it remains to this day the most
widely accepted interpretation of quantum theory.
Many of the great pioneers of the new physics, including
Schrödinger, Einstein, and de Broglie, rebelled strongly
against this interpretation. Einstein’s succinct response to
the suggestion that the universe is indeterminate was “God
does not play dice” (to which Bohr replied that Einstein
should stop telling God what to do). There has been no
shortage of memorable arguments and anecdotes over the
last hundred years as physicists and philosophers have tried
to make sense of the new science. But it was Schrödinger
who produced the most enduring and well-known image
of quantum theory—the image of a helpless cat in a box.
In 1935 he proposed a thought experiment to show how
this new understanding of atomic physics can lead to “quite
ridiculous cases”2 when applied to everyday macroscopic
8
systems. This now-famous experiment goes as follows: There
is a box, with no windows of any kind so that no one outside
the box can see its contents once it is closed. Inside there is
a small amount of radioactive material with a half-life of
one hour. This means that after one hour there will be a
50 percent chance that the material will have decayed and
emitted an atomic particle, which would then be detected
by a nearby Geiger counter. The Geiger counter in turn is
connected to a small hammer in such a way that, if a radio-
active decay is detected, the hammer will come down onto a
vial of cyanide, smashing it and releasing the deadly poison
into the air. Finally, lying next to this contraption inside
the box, blissfully ignorant of its impending doom, is an
innocent cat. Let us now close the box and wait for precisely
one hour. At that time, what can we say about the “state” of
the cat? Is it alive or dead?
Most reasonable people would answer quite simply that
there is a fifty-fifty chance that the cat is dead, since there is
a fifty-fifty chance that a radioactive particle was emitted.
Therefore, the cat is either alive or dead. A quantum physi-
cist, however, would disagree. He would point out that the
9
wave function describing the state of the cat is comprised
of both possibilities (or probabilities) of live cat and dead
cat, and this is a complete description of the cat’s state at that
moment in time. The cat, then, is not either alive or dead, it
is somehow alive and dead simultaneously. It is this “blurred
model”3 of nature that Schrödinger did not trust.
But even our quantum physicist would have to agree that,
when the box is opened and we look inside, we can only see
either a dead cat or a live cat. Abstract speculations of some
sort of hypostatic union within the mysterious confines of
a system we cannot see may be acceptable in theory, but
ultimately our own eyes cannot deceive us. Once the box
is opened, the wave function of the cat can no longer be
a combination of possibilities but must suddenly become
either one thing or the other. This in quantum mechanics is
called the “collapse” of the wave function, and it is perhaps
the most scandalous element of quantum theory.
In classical physics, when two observers perform identical
experiments under identical conditions, the results of both
experiments are expected to be the same. The physical world
does whatever it does according to the preset laws of nature,
10
regardless of any observer that may or may not be watching,
and this leads to predictable, or at least repeatable, results.
If the two results are not the same, then at least one of them
is simply wrong.
The disturbing suggestion of quantum theory is that,
if two identical experiments yield different results, they
may both in fact be correct. The wave function of a system
reflects a combination of possible measurement results, and
it collapses to only one of those possibilities the moment it
is observed or measured. But the state to which the system
collapses is not determined by any causal natural laws. It is
a completely arbitrary outcome of the fact that someone
just looked at it. It doesn’t really happen for a reason, it just
happens. Consequently, even though both systems and
both experiments are identical, their wave functions may
collapse to two different values once they are observed by
their respective observers.
It started out as a sort of half-joke of Schrödinger’s, a
mocking finger pointing out something “ridiculous,” but
the scientific world was compelled to take it seriously. It has
become a central feature of quantum mechanics, its character
11
fading from ridiculous to intriguing, and is discussed today
with that intellectual coolness reserved for notions that are
fairly obvious. It is perhaps the reflection of a vague resent-
ment that we have given the whole issue the rather prosaic
title of “the measurement problem.”
This “problem” is scandalous for two reasons. Firstly, it
makes quantum theory seem not only strange but suspicious.
It says that the world really is probabilistic and uncertain and
indeterminate, but only when no one is looking. Moreover,
because this collapse of the wave function manifests itself
as something completely arbitrary, it is essentially unex-
plainable. Again: it doesn’t really happen for a reason, it
just happens. If we can characterize the observer, and we
can characterize the physical system, it seems that we should
be able to characterize the relationship between the two.
And yet a clear understanding of this relationship, and any
explanation of why there should be this collapse in the first
place, is conspicuously missing from quantum theory.
True, quantum theory “explains” the result of a particular
experiment in terms of the probability of its occurrence,
as calculated using Schrödinger’s equation. But relying on
12
this sort of explanation has strange consequences, even for
the concept of probability itself. From the classical point of
view, probability is a way of handling complex processes on a
macroscopic scale. It uses statistical relations to calculate the
expected outcomes of a number of sample measurements,
and a minimum number of samples is required for a calcu-
lation to be considered “statistically valid.” For example, I
can say that when I flip a coin it has a 50 percent probability
of being heads (or, more correctly, a probability of 0.5). By
this I mean that, if I flip the coin many times, it will turn
up heads about half of the time. Or similarly, if I flip many
coins at once, about half of them will turn up heads. What
actually causes each coin to turn up either heads or tails is
a combination of various factors—the initial force on the
coin, its angle relative to the person’s hand, air resistance,
and so on. In principle, with enough computing power one
could bypass probability theory altogether and determine
which coins will turn up heads by directly calculating these
factors on each coin.
This is not the case for a “quantum mechanical” system
such as, for example, an electron orbiting the nucleus of
13
an atom. It turns out that an electron only exists in certain
discrete orbits, or energy states, within an atom. Quantum
mechanics can be used to calculate the probability of the
electron being in one of these states. But remember that the
wave function is a “complete” description of the state of a
system. Unlike classical probability, we are not referring to
a statistical sample of many electrons but to the energy state
of that one electron only. The particular orbit of the electron
is not determined by external forces or factors, but by its
inherent probabilistic nature. Classical physics would like to
think of the electron orbiting the nucleus as it does a satellite
orbiting the earth. The orbit of a satellite is a function of its
angular momentum; a faster velocity will result in a wider
orbit. By contrast, there is no external force that would allow
the electron to be in some intermediate energy state. It only
exists in certain states, and these can only be calculated as
probabilities. When we are asked what actually causes the
electron to be in a particular state, we are at a loss. Because of
this Bohr insisted, much to Einstein’s dismay, that quantum
theory forces us to question even the fundamental concept
of causality.
14
There is therefore a paradoxical relation in quantum the-
ory between the complexity of a system and its probabilistic
nature. As one moves away from a macroscopic system of
complex components toward a quantum mechanical system
of elementary particles, the system strangely becomes more
probabilistic. It is as if probability were attempting to acquire
an independent existence by denying its own meaning.
The second reason that the measurement problem is so
scandalous arises from the natural tendency to equate the
notion of an observer with that of a human being. After all,
an observer is the subject of an observation (as opposed to
the object of observation), and a subject is subjective, which
implies a human person. But the implication that the state
of a physical system should be so intimately dependent on
the person observing it, should in fact collapse as if under
the weight of a glance, offends our scientific sensibilities,
which have always imagined that the world is majestically
indifferent to our humanity. We have grudgingly accepted
the idea that the physical world depends on an observer,
but the notion that it depends on a human being is going
too far.
15
Nonetheless, the fact is that it was the introduction of an
inherently nonprobabilistic conscious mind into a probabi-
listic physical system that created a measurement problem in
the first place. It was not the Geiger counter in Schrödinger’s
experiment but the person looking at the Geiger counter
(or at the cat) that made the difference. The central role of
human consciousness has been emphasized by a number
of physicists over the years, including John von Neumann,
Eugene Wigner, John Wheeler, and others. Wigner created
one of the more provocative images by introducing a subtle
variation to Schrödinger’s thought experiment, in which the
cat is replaced by a human being. These arguments generally
take the implications of this experiment to the extreme, sug-
gesting that the physical world itself is not really real, but is in
a sort of undefined state of superposition unless and until a
human person observes it and brings it into concrete reality.
Of course, this has opened the door to a wide range of
metaphysical arguments, some of which admittedly push
the limits of credulity. The implications of “quantum con-
sciousness” seem to suggest that subjective human beings
somehow create reality itself, and in fact Wheeler has coined
16
the term “participatory anthropic principle” to express this
basic idea. In other words, not only does the tree make no
sound when it falls in the forest, it does not even exist unless
someone is there to observe it. The majority of the scientific
community is generally put off by such dubious metaphys-
ical implications. But this does not make the measurement
problem any less of a problem.
The term “consciousness” is in fact misleading. It seems
to me that the key characteristic of the observer in the
measurement problem is that he or she is self-conscious or
self-aware, as suggested, for example, by the physicist Henry
Stapp.4 Only a self-aware observer is capable of observing
himself as well as the physical system.5 A person is therefore
essentially in a perpetually collapsed state, so to speak, which
is ultimately a nonprobabilistic state.6 His ability to observe
himself and the physical system, and himself within the phys-
ical system, means that the system must be related to him
in some nonprobabilistic way. For quantum mechanics this
means that the system suddenly stops being probabilistic—it
collapses to a single well-defined state—as soon as the person
observes it.
17
The general trend in physics, however, is to avoid the
subjectivity of the subject, and this has degraded over the
years into a purely materialistic understanding of the ob-
server. Most quantum theorists deny any technical difference
between a human observer and any inanimate measurement
device such as a clock or a ruler. It seems to me that this at-
tempts to deal with the measurement problem by avoiding it
altogether. The measurement problem, after all, is ultimately
a reflection of the old problem of relating epistemology to
ontology—the knowledge of the observer to the state of the
object. It is no coincidence that most of the greatest figures
in quantum theory have felt compelled to write books and
papers on the philosophical implications of their work. But,
of course, one does not speak of the subjective knowledge of
a clock or the epistemology of a ruler, which gives the im-
pression that we can simply talk about clocks and rulers and
ignore everything else. Even if things like subjectivity and
knowledge are dismissed as philosophical or unscientific,
they nonetheless pertain to the specifically human observer.
In this case, at least, these concepts may be extremely relevant
to understanding the measurement problem.
18
The decision to either accept or reject the uniqueness
of the human observer is mostly a matter of opinion. There
is no solid mathematical or “scientific” proof in quantum
theory for either position. Most physicists that reject the
observer’s humanity admit quite freely that they do so basi-
cally from a personal bias, or because they don’t see a reason
to complicate things with all this business of minds and
consciousness.7 It is interesting that the scientific community
feels comfortable with such blatantly subjective arguments
but insists on more objectivity from anyone defending the
opposite opinion. It seems intuitively obvious to most people
that there is something unique about the human person that
categorically separates him from inanimate objects, and this
is evidenced by the fact that scientists keep arguing about it.
If anything, one would think the onus is on the materialist
to prove otherwise.
As we’ve said, there is no conclusive argument one way or
the other. But if we insist on reducing the human observer
to a purely “objective” measurement device, we run into
an insurmountable obstacle. After drawing every physical
and mathematical parallel between human and inanimate
19
observers, there is in the end one difference that remains:
the human observer can be wrong. This dubious distinction
is absolutely unique to the subjective human being and is
usually the reason given for ignoring him in an experiment.
Subjectivity is a source of error, but precisely because of this
it is also the source of the human observer’s uniqueness.
This ability to be wrong is not true of any nonconscious
measurement device. We are used to speaking about a certain
meter or gauge being wrong, but by this we mean that the
device did not operate according to a (human) person’s
expectations or intended design. Perhaps it was installed
incorrectly in the system or was calibrated for a different
experiment. Either way the error is not in the device itself;
it is in the experimenter’s knowledge of the device. In fact,
we know we have found the source of the “error” when we
discover a situation for which the device’s measurement is
correct: if the calibration is off, then a correct measurement
by the device would produce the “wrong” result for this
experiment. A device only measures what it is built and
set up to measure, say, the number of photons striking a
screen or the presence of a magnetic field. But it does not
20
know anything about the object producing these effects, and
consequently can say nothing right or wrong about it. As the
philosopher Martin Heidegger puts it, a purely objective or
“mathematical” observation attempts to establish the being
of a thing by “skipping over” the thing itself and recording
only the facts of the thing.8
For example, a Geiger counter measures the energy
generated by a nuclear particle striking a detector, and this
is used by nuclear engineers to determine the presence of
radioactive material such as uranium-235. But if we could ask
a Geiger counter, “Is there a piece of uranium-235 in front
of you?” it would have no idea what we were talking about.
It would never ask, “Is there really an object in front of me,
and if so, what is it?” This is the nature of any purely objective
measurement device. It cannot give a wrong answer because
it never asks any questions, it only makes statements. Only
a human being asks questions.
One may object that we are merely referring to the fact
that human beings interpret their observations and may
make mistakes when doing so. As strictly objective observers,
however, they are no different from any other measurement
21
device. The implication is that one can separate a person’s
subjectivity from the act of that person’s observation. But
this is a bit like saying that elephants are no different from
mice, once you remove the fact that elephants are larger, have
trunks, and don’t have whiskers. If we remove subjectivity
from the human observer, we, of course, have no problem at
all. We also no longer have a human observer.
The measurement problem demonstrated by Schröding-
er’s thought experiment is not the result of the person’s in-
terpretation after having looked inside the box. The problem
arises because the human observer, unlike the Geiger counter
in the box, observes his own observing, and therefore knows
what he is looking at. This “knowing” is a judgment on the
truth of the observation, a ruling on the question of whether
the cat is truly alive or truly dead. It is not a separate operation
that is done after the fact, but a fundamental characteristic
of human observation itself.
I will speak more about knowledge and truth later on.
For now I simply want to preserve a certain clarity of intu-
ition—that intuition that allows us to see, even in the face of
very clever arguments, that a cat is still a cat. Discussions and
22
mathematical representations of the measurement problem
have gotten more and more complex over the years in efforts
to understand it. But in general we are not bothered so much
by the complexities of quantum mechanics, and in fact take
some comfort in them, in the consoling notion that complex
problems should indeed be difficult to understand. No,
what is especially striking about the measurement problem
is not its complexity but its stark simplicity, and this is what
really bothers us—that something as straightforward and
innocuous as looking at an object should be the cause of such
strange effects. It’s a bit silly and unbelievable, like a cheap
magic trick. It’s true that a certain natural phenomenon
may seem like magic, an object of fear and wonder, if the
underlying complexities of the physical laws are not known.
A magnet appears to cause a piece of metal to move “for no
reason.” The collapse of the wave function has a similarly
simplistic and magical quality, with electrons occupying one
state or another “for no reason.” If we think of the act of
observation or measurement as tying a rope to the object
and holding fast to the other end, the mechanism of col-
lapse shows that it is a magician’s trick rope that somehow
23
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Mustard, so commonly used with cold ham or other meat and in
salad dressing, is sometimes of benefit in stimulating the appetite,
but when used in large quantities, or continuously, it may irritate the
stomach. This irritant quality may be used to advantage, when it is
deemed necessary, as a counter-irritant on the skin, as in the well-
known mustard plaster. A teaspoonful of mustard to a pint of
lukewarm water is an effectual emetic in cases in which it is
necessary or advisable to empty the stomach.
Capers, the flower buds of a bush grown in the East, are put up in
vinegar and used in sauces for mutton.
Cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves are useful in flavoring foods; they
take the flat taste from hot water and impart a pleasant spiciness.
Many can take milk when flavored, and the slight amount necessary
is in no way injurious.
Preserved ginger is of value for flavoring cereal foods and gruels
for invalids.
Vinegar, used in excess, reduces the alkalinity of the blood and
aids in the destruction of red blood corpuscles. It may thus produce
anemia when used in excess.
The acetic acid contained in cider vinegar aids the softening of the
muscle fiber of meat and thus facilitates its digestion. Because of its
preservative qualities it is used in pickling vegetables and various
kinds of fish.
Vinegars made from grapes or other fruits are wholesome.
Flavored vinegars, as tarragon, from the herb of the same name, are
useful as appetizers.
Vinegars artificially made from commercial acids are sometimes
injurious.
Tomato Catsup, Worcestershire, and Tabasco sauces are not
harmful if used moderately and with due regard to enhancing not
destroying the flavor of the food with which they are used.
PRESERVATION OF FOODS
This subject is of ever-growing importance. The study of the
preservation of foods has added much to the store of human
knowledge. By this means it is possible for those living in districts
remote from the supply, those who cannot afford to buy them fresh,
and those who have no cellars in which to store them, to have
vegetables and fruits at all seasons of the year.
Nutritious foods can be prepared in such small bulk and of such
excellent keeping quality that explorers, whether to the arctics or the
tropics, can be kept in first-class physical condition, enabled to
withstand fatigue, and be removed to long distances from the base
of supplies without great hardship.
The decomposition of food is occasioned by bacterial action. Air is
necessary to the growth of bacteria. If the air is excluded the
ordinary bacteria are prevented from exerting their deleterious
action.
Heat, as in canning, prevents the formation of bacterial products.
Cold, in refrigeration, by inhibiting bacterial activity is also an
excellent preservative.
Other methods in use are smoking, salting, drying, sterilizing,
various antiseptics, and the exclusion of the air, as in coating eggs or
meat for transportation to other countries.
Eggs are preserved for a long period by excluding the air, which
otherwise penetrates the shell. A solution of water glass (silicate of
sodium), dry oats or salt are used for this purpose.
All food intended for preservation should be kept in a clean, cool,
dry, dark place.
Drying, cooking, and sealing from the air will preserve some meats
and fruits, while others require such preservatives as sugar, vinegar,
and salt. The preservative in cider vinegar is acetic acid, in wine
vinegar tartaric acid.
All preservatives which are actual foods, such as sugar, salt, and
vinegar, are to be recommended, but the use of antiseptic
preservatives, such as salicylic acid, formaldehyd, boracic acid,
alum, sulphur, and benzoate of soda, all of which have been used by
many canning merchants, is fraught with danger. By the efforts of the
United States Department of Agriculture the use of such
preservatives has been largely done away with by the most reliable
packers and canners. However, unscrupulous dealers may use this
means of disguising fruits and vegetables not in good condition.
There can be no doubt, that, whenever possible, the best method
is for the housewife to preserve her own food by drying, canning,
preserving, and pickling, with fruits and vegetables which she knows
are fresh. This, however, is not always practicable.
Since economy in food lies in obtaining the greatest amount of
nutriment for the least money, the preparation of simple foods in the
home, with care that no more is furnished for consumption than the
system requires, is the truest economy.
More brands of prepared food are not so much needed as purity of
elements in their natural state.
In the effort to emphasize the importance of pure food in amount
and quality, pure air and pure water must not be overlooked. Much
infection is carried by these two elements.