by Ned White

Created on: November 24, 2009   Last Updated: November 25, 2009

When considering the possible relationship between quantum theory and spirituality, one first needs to agree on basic definitions. Quantum theory, elaborate and strange as it is, can be readily defined through its principles and equations. Spirituality is another matter altogether.

Dictionaries and online sources, like Wiktionary, define the term variously as concern for that which is unseen, intangible, or noncorporeal. If we were to say that spirituality is concern for matters of the soul, we would be begging the question, since "soul" and "spirit" are close synonyms and difficult to pin down in their own right. If we accept dictionary definitions that aren't circular, we should be on safer ground.

The key word in the definition, it seems to me, is "concern," a state of consciousness where one's attention is drawn to things that are nonphysical. What the definitions leave out is that the result of this attention often has profound effects on one's feelings, emotions, and ideas, whether it's a belief in a single God or many gods, various forms of transcendentalism, or any state of consciousness that is experienced as extraordinary and personally compelling.

It is natural that some (or many) would argue for the wholesale separation of spirituality from science - in this case, quantum theory. In the West, we've been trained for several hundred years in all manners of reductionism, taking the physical world apart and reducing its components to the smallest size possible and putting everything into separate boxes. Matters of the soul and matters of the atom should follow this tradition and share no common ground. One is diffuse, indescribable, unquantifiable. The other is...(oops!) also diffuse, indescribable, unquantifiable (at least in part).

The arrival of quantum theory in the early 20th Century effectively killed reductionism in physics once and for all. The tiniest inseparable things then known - protons, neutrons, electrons and photons - could not be seen, put in a box, or even fully measured. A single photon itself had a split personality: it was a "wave" of energy with a mathematical function until it was observed or measured, when it transformed itself into a single particle. A single photon also had the magical power to move along any number of possible wayward routes to get to its destination - a wave of probability - until it finally hit a detecting device and was observed.

The most widely embraced view of the implications of quantum theory, the Copenhagen

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