Foundation of Physics, Vol. 15, No.

6, 1985

Book Review

The Miracle of Existence. By Henry Margenau. Ox Bow Press, Wood-

bridge, Connecticut, 1984, viii + 143 pp., $16.00 (cloth).

As stated at the outset, this book attempts a synthesis of science,

philosophy, and religion. Recently there have been many books attempting
such a synthesis, but in my opinion Margenau's book is in quite a different
class, being distinguished by his profound knowledge of quantum physics
and by a courageous attempt to develop on this basis a modern idealist
philosophy. Leibnitz, Berkeley, and Kant are the forerunners in
Margenau's creative thinking, so that at the end of the book he
imaginatively sees Kant and Berkeley shaking hands!
In Chapter 1 he advocates abandoning "the contractive view of reduc-
tionism," which has been based on prequantum physics, and focusing on a
new principle, "transcendence with compatibility," which relates to novel
ideas in physics and biological science. Such concepts as order,
organization, and information are "stepping stones" from the inanimate to
the living world. Of particular interest is the way in which Margenau uses
the Pauli exclusion principle to illustrate transcendence with compatibility.
For example, the lithium ion has a nucleus of 3 protons and 4 neutrons
surrounded by an orbit of 2 electrons. The addition of a third electron
makes a lithium atom. In a manner quite unknown, it "knows" it cannot
join the other two electrons in the inner orbit, and "seeks" the next orbit.
This transaction depends on information with no accompanying mass or
energy transfer. Margenau develops the Pauli exclusion principle in com-
plex examples of quantum mechanics to illustrate further the principles of
transcendence with compatibility in the laws of symmetry.
In Chapter 2, biological evolution is considered in the light of the
quantum theory, which necessitates the discarding of determinism or strict
causalism, for "materialism in Haecket's and Simpson's sense is dead."
Instead there are numerous nonmaterial entities called fields. Of particular
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738 Book Review

significance is the probability field of quantum mechanics that carries

neither energy nor matter. It will play a key role in Chapter 8. Margenau
concentrates on the various efforts to escape from the rigid evolutionary
dogma of chance and necessity. Such terms as emergence, epigenetics, and
teleonomy conceal the directive or purposive character of evolution. So he
quotes with approval Dobzhansky's basic statement that "Evolution is
God's method of creation. The cosmic, biological, and cultural evolutions
are ultimately parts of a single creative process." This is the theme of the
final chapter.
A central feature of the book is the Mind-Body problem and the
nature of Mind, which is treated in Chapters 3 to 8, culminating in Chap-
ter 8. The problems considered in these chapters arise because Margenau
accepts the reality of a Mind or Consciousness. For example, he states that:
"Consciousness is a primitive and so is undefinable. It is at once the most
immediate personal experience and the source from which all knowledge
springs." A wide range of consciousness or awareness is recognized. For
example, there is little in ordinary sensing of automatic actions; but on the
other hand "self-awareness or direct experience of the self is a most
intimate aspect of consciousness." Finally, at the end of Chapter 6, he
states: "The final step is simple. I take mind to be synonymous with con-
sciousness and soul with self." This is essentially the position that I have
diagrammed in several books, where the term Mind embraces the whole
subjective World 2 of Popper and there is a central core continuing
throughout life which is labeled Psyche, Ego, Self or Soul, accoding to the
language of discourse. Despite these similarities, Margenau feels that the
dualism of mind on the one hand and brain on the other is unsatisfactory
for the surprising reason that the material brain or body is multiplex--a
multitude of immaterial fields as well as matter, so the term pluralism is to
be preferred to dualism or monism.
As a physicist Margenau is concerned with the manner in which our
sensory experience gives us the vision of an external world of objects with
all their distinguishing properties (called reification) and futhermore the
scientific explanations in ever more abstract terms. What tends to be
overlooked in Fig. 1 is that every perceptual experience is derived from the
sensory input in the light of a lifetime of learning, i.e., reification is learnt.
The complementary Fig. 2 presents valuable insights into the various levels
of the mind. It is stated that all mental states including perceptions are
quantifiable only in an extremely rudimentary manner and hence that there
are no satisfactory rules of correspondence between mental states and the
external world. However, in experimental psychology, especially in vision
research, very precise measurments are possible and theories can be
developed and tested rigorously. There is a continuous and remarkable
Book Review 739

progress in quantification of experience in both spatial and temporal

parameters.
In Chapter 7, "The Mind--Conjectures Based on Physics," there are
valuable criticisms of the many attempts to account for mind as a property
of the physical brain with, for example, the introduction of the concept of
hidden variables, and the enigmas arising therefrom. Other examples are
more extreme, particularly in relation to the paranormal phenomena of
extrasensory perception.
By contrast, in Chapter 8, "The Mind Viewed as a Field," Margenau
introduces the revolutionary conjecture that a probability field of quantum
mechanics has properties closely resembling the concept of mind or con-
sciousness. Such a probability field has neither mass nor energy. Further-
more, in the brain the constituents are small enough to be governed by
probabilistic quantum laws and the mind as a probabilistic field is "not
required to contain energy in order to account for all known phenomena in
which mind interacts with brian." In all dualist philosophies, from Descar-
tes to the present neo-Cartesianism, there has been the fundamental defect
that no scientific explanation could be given for the postulated interaction.
This conjecture of Margenau is thus of fundamental significance.
These philosophical issues lead on to religious themes, at first at the
personal level (Chapter9), and a most ambitious Chapter 10 on "A
Universal Mind," which in the West we call God. It is argued that "The
universe must ... have been created, together with the laws that regulate it.
This leaves us with two possibilites: (1) a designer, a knower, was respon-
sible for its genesis; he designed it like a clock, which is still running. But
the clockmaker disappeared or died; (2) the clockmaker still exists and
knows the course of the universe. I accept the second alternative.... This
conclusion makes me feel justified in introducing a Universal Mind, a mind
that knows, and is perhaps a personal manifestation of, the World For-
mula." By this is meant a valid theory accounting for everything that has
happened.
Then follows a profound account of the properties of the Universal
Mind compared with the limitation of the human mind. There is much
wisdom in this section, and I am grateful for the statement: "We are all
parts of the Universal Mind and yet we act and feel as different
individuals." The final summary must be quoted as it presents the author's
idealist philosophy: "Thus, to sum up the enigma of existence, only the
Universal Mind, the cosmic consciousness, possesses existence in full
unlimited measure. The Universal Mind confers existence on conscious
beings in varying degrees, and these beings create, out of the minds
bestowed on them and in accordance with principles imposed by the
Universal Mind, everything else they call real or existing."
740 Book Review

In my opinion this is one of the great books of our age, so great that it
rises far above some detailed criticisms that I could have offered. It should
be read by all thinking people.
John C. Eccles
CH6611 Contra (T1)
Switzerland
Foundations of Physics, Vol. 15, No. 6, 1985

Book Review

General Relativity and Matter: A Spinor Field Theory from Fermis to Light-
Years. By Mendel Sachs. With a Foreword by Clive Kilmister, Reidel, Dor-
drecht, The Netherlands, xx + 208 pp., $39.00 (cloth).

Many notable thinkers, from Heraclitus to Jung, have maintained that

dualism--the conflict of the opposites--is an intrinsic feature of "the way
things are." The majority of physicists would probably maintain that the
most famous such clash in their subject, of waves and particles, had been
harmoniously resolved by quantum theory into a complementary
relationship between these individually divergent views of the nature of
physical being. As we know, however, Einstein never reconciled himself to
this situation, and his spirit lives on in this new book by Mendel Sachs
who reaffirms the thesis that it is the conceptual structure of con-
tinuum/field that constitutes the correct foundation upon which to build a
mathematical description of the physical world.
It should be said from the outset that this is not a trivial book, and to
read it should be a rewarding experience for anyone who is concerned with
understanding the most fundamental features of the physicist's world view.
And this is so even if, like myself, he has already committed himself to the
belief that it is quantum theory that provides the correct paradigmatic
structure for understanding the nature of things. In fact, "things" are
precisely what Sachs does not believe in. Or, to be more precise, he will
only grant them the ontological status of being the residue of a pure field
theory in which a separation of observer and system has been performed
for purely pragmatic, phenomenological reasons.
Arguing via a cogent Machian analysis of special and general
relativity, Sachs propounds the idea that the entire physical world is to be
described, as a closed system, by a set of nonlinear field equations. A cen-
tral feature of his discussion is the use of a quaternionic picture to describe
the nonlinearly self-coupled set of spinorial fields that constitute the basic
"matter content" of this theory. The gravitational field itself appears in the
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742 Book Review

usual way as the line element in a pseudo-Riemannian space-time, except

that it has 16 rather than 10 components and is written as the square of a
quaternionic valued one-form on the manifold. I found it difficult to con-
vince myself that this was anything other than the usual tetrad picture of
general relativity, but the author maintains otherwise. In any event, what is
not usual is his subsequent identification of the, usually surplus, extra six
components with the electromagnetic field. The ensuing theory is, in best
Machian style, of the Feynman-Wheeter absorber type.
The discussion of these topics is a good one, albeit ideosyncratic in
places (there is no reference to Penrose's major contributions to the theory
of two-component spinors in general relativity), and the reader will enjoy
them in their own right. However, even the most determined classical
physicist cannot ignore the resounding practical successes of quantum
theory, and Sachs is obliged to give some idea of how the familiar quantum
mechanical formalism can be made compatible with his ideas. His analysis
in this direction is restricted to the linear, relativistic Dirac equation in an
external potential which he derive via a sort of classical "Hartree-Fock"
approximation to his nonlinear spinorial field equations.
The book is well written and contains some very useful material on
both the conceptual and technical aspects of relativity. However, the
author's aim in preparing this work was clearly not just to provide yet
another pedagogical account of this well-trodden area, but rather to
present a radically new framework within which the whole of modern fun-
damental physics can be accommodated. And from this viewpoint, I must
admit that I am not convinced.
Many workers at the interfaces of quantum theory and general
relativity have considerable reservations about the foundations of the con-
ventional theories. For example, the Copenhagen-inspired separation of
observer from system and the emphasis on pointlike particles are two
features that are particularly hard to reconcile with the overall structure of
relativity. The author's attempt to reexamine these and the related
problems are certainly to be applauded, and my reservations about this
book stem entirely from a doubt whether his theory is sophisticated
enough to do what he would desire. A criticism often aimed at Einstein's
later work is that, by using only the electromagnetic field, he overlooked
the possibility of including other (by hindsight, non-Abelian) gauge fields
and that, as a consequence, he could never have reproduced the many suc-
cesses of modern quantum field theory. Of course, Einstein had a good
excuse: No one had thought of these things in his day, and there was no
experimental evidence to support such a complicated extension of his
theory. But this does not apply to Sachs, and this must form my major
objection to his book. He writes as if the major developments in elementary
Book Review 743

particle physics over the last twenty years had never been, and this
inevitably renders his ideas anachronistic. His demonstration of the
appearance of quantum theory yields only the linear first-quantized Dirac
field, and it is very difficult to see how he could include a genuinely quan-
tum field-theoretic structure (or something of equivalent power) without
radically altering his theory. It is also very unclear, at least to me, that the
quaternions in his equations play anything more than a purely technical
role. If, as he claims, they do have a deeper significance, then it is a pity
that none of the recent, and pertinent, work on Clifford analysis or the
Kahler-Dirac equation was cited. Indeed, there is a noticeable lack of
references to other people's work, and this also reduces the believability of
this theory.
In summary, this is a well written and interesting book that deserves
to be read by those concerned with the fundamental structures of physics.
However, it is also a single-track account of one man's ideas which ignores
both the theoretical and experimental developments in the outside world,
and I doubt somehow that the much-sought "Unified Field Theory" will be
discovered in such an introspective way.
C. J. Isham
Imperial College of Science and Technology
The Blackett Laboratory
London SW7 2BZ, England