by Tenebris

Created on: November 17, 2009

The law of attraction states that conscious and unconscious thoughts shape a person's reality. The more our thoughts are drawn toward a desired or feared event, the more likely it is to come to pass.

Various versions of the law of attraction have been floating around for most of humanity's history. It lies at the heart of virtually all magical systems: As I will, so mote it be. It has echoes in Hindu and Buddhist reincarnation, where our own wants and needs dictate who our next parents will be. In modern times, the law of attraction was named and popularised by the 2006 film and book "The Secret".

The law of attraction is not a mathematical part of quantum physics. Although it cannot be tested or otherwise examined using the scientific method, its proponents point to Schroedinger's equation and the observer effect of quantum physics, suggesting that the law of attraction is a logical extrapolation.

The observer effect means that no introduced element can be fully independent of a system. To measure, observe, or evaluate a system is to interact with it and thus to influence it. In physics as in many other sciences, it has long been established that the method of measuring affects what will be seen. If a beam of light is aimed at a pair of double slits used for observing wave patterns, it produces a classic wave pattern. If the same beam of light is aimed at a sheet of paper where the effect of individual photons could be seen as speckles, those speckles will appear. This is why the law of attraction holds that we find what we seek.

Even to detect an electron, a photon must have encountered that electron first. The interaction of photon and electron alters the electron, however: so it can't be known what the electron would have done without that interaction.

The effect is even more basic than that. To measure the temperature of a glass of water, a thermometer is inserted: which itself alters the temperature of the water.

Quantum physicists resolve the observer effect through Bell's Theorum, which argues that no system can exist independently of its observers, even if those 'observers' have no consciousness. When extrapolated to non-isolated systems, the terms 'observer' and 'observed' become entirely meaningless. Everything interacts with everything else. The entire universe is just one entangled quantum system.

Schroedinger's equations are best known through the paradox of Schroedinger's cat. This thought experiment imagines a simple situation: a cat hidden

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