Home > Author > Jeffrey M. Schwartz >

" The discovery of nonlocality has shaken our notions of reality and the Cartesian divorce of mind from matter to their very foundations. “Many regard [the discovery of nonlocality] as the most momentous in the history of science,” the science historian Robert Nadeau and the physicist Menas Kafatos wrote in their wonderful 1999 book The Non-Local Universe: The New Physics and Matters of the Mind. The reason, in large part, is that nonlocality overturns classical ontology. In both classical physics and (as you will recall from Chapter 1) Cartesian dualism, the inner realm of the human mind and the outer realm of the physical world lie on opposite sides of an unbridgeable chasm, leaving mind and physical reality entirely separate and no more capable of meaningful and coherent interactions than different species of salamander on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon. In a nonlocal universe, however, the separation between mind and world meets its ultimate challenge. As Nadeau and Kafatos put it, “The stark division between mind and world sanctioned by classical physics is not in accord with our scientific worldview. When non-locality is factored into our understanding of the relationship between parts and wholes in physics and biology, then mind, or human consciousness, must be viewed as an emergent phenomenon in a seamlessly interconnected whole called the cosmos.” An emergent phenomenon is one whose characteristics or behaviors cannot be explained in terms of the sum of its parts; if mind is emergent, then it cannot be wholly explained by brain. "

Jeffrey M. Schwartz , The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force


Image for Quotes

Jeffrey M. Schwartz quote : The discovery of nonlocality has shaken our notions of reality and the Cartesian divorce of mind from matter to their very foundations. “Many regard [the discovery of nonlocality] as the most momentous in the history of science,” the science historian Robert Nadeau and the physicist Menas Kafatos wrote in their wonderful 1999 book The Non-Local Universe: The New Physics and Matters of the Mind. The reason, in large part, is that nonlocality overturns classical ontology. In both classical physics and (as you will recall from Chapter 1) Cartesian dualism, the inner realm of the human mind and the outer realm of the physical world lie on opposite sides of an unbridgeable chasm, leaving mind and physical reality entirely separate and no more capable of meaningful and coherent interactions than different species of salamander on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon. In a nonlocal universe, however, the separation between mind and world meets its ultimate challenge. As Nadeau and Kafatos put it, “The stark division between mind and world sanctioned by classical physics is not in accord with our scientific worldview. When non-locality is factored into our understanding of the relationship between parts and wholes in physics and biology, then mind, or human consciousness, must be viewed as an emergent phenomenon in a seamlessly interconnected whole called the cosmos.” An emergent phenomenon is one whose characteristics or behaviors cannot be explained in terms of the sum of its parts; if mind is emergent, then it cannot be wholly explained by brain.