Brief attempt about quantum and wholeness – The quantum fields

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These ideas are at the beginning of the new quantum physical world view. It posits that we can understand the microcosm and the entire universe as a vast arena of interacting fields. Previously, physicists imagined the world as divided into matter and energy. The particles contained matter, while the fields interacted with the particles, causing them to move. But now the union has been created. We dissolved the dualisms of energy and matter, or particles and field, and understood everything as quantum fields interacting with each other. This implies that all solid structures in space, including ourselves, are part of the totality. – This was an enormous step, the ultimate triumph in our attempt to understand reality, as there was no longer anything behind the material phenomena except the transformation and organization of the fields. That is all that exists in the world!

Based on a mental picture designed by Heinz Pagels in The Cosmic Code (3), we can imagine these fields as follows:

Start with a normal steel spring and imagine it floating freely in space. Keep adding more such springs until the grid fills the entire three-dimensional space. This is the infinite 3D-mattress and as a structure, it represents the quantum field in our analogy. Let us assume that it is the electron field. Touching a single spring in the grid causes it to vibrate, and this vibration represents the quantum of the electron within the field.

We can also imagine a second mattress made of another, heavier type of spring lying on the first grid. It would represent the quark field, and its vibrations correspond to the quark particles. For each type of field and particle, a separate mattress of springs completely fills the space, and the vibration of a single spring corresponds to a distinct particle type in each case.

Up to this point, we have assumed that the different superimposed spring structures representing the field types do not touch each other. But now we imagine that, for example, the quark and lepton lattices can interact with each other through an additional set of springs, the gluons. In the same way, the electron lattice is connected to the photon lattice, and this in turn to the quark lattice, and so on. This space of connected spring sets now represents the interacting quantum fields.

If one of the springs of the electron field is vibrating corresponding to an electron, it can jump to the photon field. As a result, the other field starts vibrating in the vicinity of the electron, corresponding to a photon. The photon in turn can couple to a quark, etc. All fields, which are lattices of different spring types, can interact with each other through an additional third field.

To take the analogy even further, let’s imagine that the springs are invisible. All that remains now are vibrations. Further, we imagine the individual springs to be infinitely small, so that even in a tiny space, there is room for an infinite number of them. This super 3D-mattress of tiny invisible springs is close to what theoretical physicists describe as quantum fields. All we perceive of these fields are the vibrations at individual locations in space – the quanta manifested as different particles. These particles move and interact with each other. The underlying reality of everything is a set of fields manifested in particles.

This confirmed Einstein’s assumption that everything that appears to our senses as matter is in reality only a concentration of energy in a relatively small space and that we can also regard the matter bodies as regions in space where the field is extraordinarily strong. With our particle accelerators, we do nothing but jiggle the 3-D-mattresses harder and harder to produce particle phenomena. The more energy we expend in the process, the deeper we penetrate the field structure.

All considerations end with no substance or spark of matter, only the possibility of all this. Hans-Peter Dürr expresses it as follows:

„The primary is the relation, and the matter is the secondary.“ Matter is a phenomenon that appears only with a certain coarsened view. Substance is coagulated form. Perhaps we could also say: in the end, all that remains is something more akin to the spiritual – holistic, open, alive, potentiality. Matter is the dross of this spiritual – decomposable, closed, determined, reality.“
Hans-Peter Dürr, Geist, Kosmos und Physik (4)

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