No End to Science in Sight

No End to Science in Sight

We often hear that the end of physics is just a few years away – to be described as Michio Kaku once said, “with an equation less than one inch long.” Similarly, Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg published a long essay in the New York Review of Books describing his “search for the fundamental principles that underlie everything.” He added, however, that “science in the future may take a turn that we cannot now imagine. But I see not the slightest advance sign of such a change.”

Scientists have been saying this sort of thing for more than a century. For example, in the late 1800s Lord Kelvin made the now-famous statement that physics was complete, except that “only two small clouds remain on the horizon of the knowledge of physics.” The two clouds were: first, the interpretation of the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment (which did not detect and effects of the widely hypothesized “aether”), and second, the failure of then-contemporary electromagnetic theory to predict spectral distribution of black-body radiation. These little clouds led to the discovery of special relativity, quantum, mechanics, and what we think of today as modern physics.

In 1975, at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the same Steven Weinberg declared, “What we want to know is the set of simple principles from which the properties of particles, and hence everything else, can be deduced.” Then, at Cambridge University in 1980, revered astrophysicist Stephen Hawking told his audience, “I want to discuss the possibility that the goal of theoretical physics might be achieved in the not-too-distant future, say, by the end of the twentieth century. By this I mean that we might have a complete, consistent, and unified theory of physical interactions that would describe all possible observations.” Not only did this not happen, but I posit that it is unlikely to happen. As I write this, physicists are still struggling to explain newly discovered dark matter, dark energy, and the very surprising accelerating expansion of the universe (or, is it a change in the supposedly constant velocity of light?”).

To my mind, the most shocking example of a brilliant man saying something truly silly is a quote from A.A. Muchelson, after he showed that there was no aether, but before the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics. Expressing the spirit of his time, he said, “The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.”

I believe that these “end of physics” statements are not only untrue, but misleading and logically impossible. Illustration by Elena.

The hubris of brilliant and famous scientists is still with us today. The issue is very important, because it shows what terrible trouble we can get into if we are totally lacking in awe, wonder, or spiritual questioning.

Great visionary scientists such as Einstein, Newton, and John Archibald Wheeler had no such lack. At ninety, Wheeler was still asking, “How come the universe?” In his writing, Einstein said that we “use our intellect to solve difficult problems, but the problems themselves come from another source.”

We may well ask: Will there be an end to mathematics? To biology? To history? Will the human mind withdraw from science? Does curiosity ever achieve completion? I think not. A thousand years from now, our current views of physics will seem as primitive as the phlogiston theory seems to us today. (In the eighteenth century, pholgiston was believed to be an element that caused combustion or was given off by anything burning; the notion has long since been discarded.)

Ancient spiritual and philosophical teachings with their roots in India and Tibet assert that consciousness has existed since the beginning of time. However, this consciousness has been unrecognized because of our ignorance of our own true nature. This seemingly radical idea of nonlocal connections is finding increasing acceptance in the data of modern physics, of all places. Thus, it seems appropriate to discuss the ways in which contemporary physics shows that there are “nonlocal” connections called quantum interconnectedness – that is, an instantaneous spanning of space and time. We can relate these data to similar ideas from Buddhism and other ancient mystical teachings, all of which claim that “separation is an illusion.”

Remote viewing is an example of nonlocal ability. It has repeatedly allowed people to describe, draw, and experience objects and activities anywhere on the planet, contemporaneously or in the near future. Although we do not yet know how tjis works, there should no longer be any doubt that most of us are capable of experiencing places and events that appear to be separated from our physical bodies by space and time. We can present the evidence from remote viewing experiments – our own as well as our colleagues' – showing the reality of these psychic abilities. We can describe how you can discover these abilities in ourselves and incorporate them into our lives, including detailed exercises from our remote viewing workshops.

The practice of remote viewing may reveal more to you than simply what's in a paper bag in the other room; it may reveal the nature of your limitless mind – who you really are. We can explore precognition, including what I consider to be the most important scientific fact from psychical research: It is no more difficult to describe an event that is to occur in the future than to describe an event occurring at the present moment – casting into doubt our understanding of causality itself.

We can also describe the data and techniques that people use to intuitively diagnose illness. Psychic diagnosis goes beyond the doctor who can make a correct “snap” decision as soon as the doctor sees the patient (some of them have the ability in certain cases to diagnose illnesses without ever seeing the patient, and in some other cases, distant prayer and distant healing, categorized as Distant Mental Influence of Living Systems or DMILS can be cited, as there exist the relationship between remote viewing and spirituality.

(Excerpt from Limitless Mind, a Guide to remote viewing and transformation of consciousness, by Russell Targ, author of Miracles of Mind. New World Library, California, 2004).

Remote viewing does exist. Photograph by Elena.