Review - Mindful Universe, by Henry Stapp

Henry P. Stapp

I, for one, would love to believe that the mind can exist independently from the brain and that my consciousness may somehow survive death. Perhaps that is what's been motivating me to read and review volumes on quantum consciousness, like Beauregard's The Spiritual Brain and van Lommel's Consciousness Beyond Life. It's not just because I hope for something to follow death and yearn for a mindset that's independent and free of deterministic biology. It's also because the debate is literally taking on dramatic new life within neuroscience. That's where landmark authors within the subject like Henry Stapp come in.

Mindful Universe is the text every other anti-materialist would write - if only they knew as much about quantum mechanics as Henry Stapp. Densely packed with quantum concepts and yet geared for the layman, Stapp's pivotal work stands as a must-read for anyone interested in the possibility of the existence of a mind and the potential for quantum physics to explain it.

Ideas Addressed:
--Does the mind exist?
--Free will?
--How much does environmental determinism control human behavior?
--Can everything be reduced to neurotransmitters and brain-chemistry?

Makes a solid case for the influence of mental intervention on quantum processes.
These ideas are not in the mainstream yet...but they will be.
Stapp's understanding and subsequent explanation of complex concepts within physics are spot-on and detailed.

Villifies materialism. Sometimes quite unduly.
Writing style is sometimes complicated because of Stapp's penchant for squeezing multiple (and sometimes complex) ideas into few sentences.

What came first - the consciousness determining the matter, or the matter determining the consciousness?

For roughly the last half-century, neuroscience has been completely ruled by the materialist camp. This robust lobby, including many of the most famous names within the pop-neuroscience section at your local bookstore, believes that mostly everything about you can be attributed to biology. Then, that the biology which makes up your being can be reduced to chemistry. Does that sound about right? It's an idea that nobody seems to like but most within neuroscience come to accept.

Stapp illustrates the archetypal 'materialist' as someone who staunchly opposes anything in explaining behavior that cannot be measured in a test tube. But this isn't really the way it is. Many materialists who work in neuroscience - and I've actually worked in neuroscience - acknowledge that the 'mind', as a currently-immeasurable force, does exert an effect on the body and brain. Pretty much all of them have heard of the placebo effect, or they've heard about the effects of prayer on physical recovery. They know that phenomena like those exist, involing the influence of abstract thought on physical response - and that all of our thoughts and deeds are not completely determined by chance and circumstance. So when Stapp launches his initial tirade against the straw man materialist and the morally-bankrupt notion of how determinism takes away an indiviudual's personal accountability, etc etc, it is actually quite misleading. That's like writing a book about politics and claiming that 'politicians' believe in nationalizing industry and letting the government control the economy. It's simply not true, though of course that lobby does exist.

Stapp unduly lampoons contemporary neuroscience as the most extreme of all forms of determinism, as well as condemning the 'promissory materialism' of those who support the chemical argument and believe that if the argument has holes, science will fix them sooner or later. It's a promise that he mocks within Mindful Universe's opening pages. It's remarkably short-sighted for a man of Stapp's stature - however, for those materialists who endeavor to read further, you will be rewarded with a book of richly-woven ideological wonders.

First, you'll receive a layman's walkthrough of quantum physics - worthy of a book in its own right. Stapp uses concrete examples, vivd imagery and bulletproof real-life analogies to bring humanity's transition between classical and quantum physics to life.

For a brief synopsis, it should suffice to say - the 'classical' physics of Newton's day was based upon a world-view where objects exist as isolated systems influenced by other objects and are separated by empty space. Just like one billiard ball may be thrust into another, forcing it to move, so too did Newton conceptualize the universe. Objects accepting a cause, eliciting an effect and, in turn, creating a new cause somewhere else. Thus the sense of determinism that Stapp makes light of.

But quantum physics is different from classical, Newtonian physics. Classical physics has slowly become somewhat eroded and replaced by the world of the quantum. In this strange, scary world - effects seem to happen for no reason and particles appear from nonexistence all the time.

The microscopic world of the quantum thrives on uncertainty and calculations of probability, rather than 100% knowable cause-and-effect relationships. Because of the weird properties that particles exhibit when observed, including such logical quantum anomalies as superpositions, properties of complementarity, coherence, entanglement and the like - previously 'impossible' concepts like an intangible mind suddenly seem possible. This is the basis of Stapp's argument: classical physics leaves no room for a mind to influence behavior, but mounting evidence suggests that it potentially can.

Classical physics only works, claims Stapp, in the macroscopic world - not in the microscopic world where neurochemistry actually takes place. For that, we need quantum mechanics. And with all of the quantum weirdness you see at this level, many things seem influenced by forces we currently cannot measure. As you'll see soon, this indeed suggests the possibility of a 'mind'.