VIRTUAL REALITY - (A Post In Which Miss Dreamy says not to worry - she doesn’t know what any of it means either...)

The language of physics is pre-eminently mathematical - the necessary foundation of all other enquiries. Speculation takes a new direction. Propositions become self-evident. Necessity precedes analysis. If therefore necessity anticipates and conditions thought, it is not perhaps surprising to find that when logic by its force or use of necessity precedes and conditions reality, reality should be seen to assimilate.

And that, precisely, is what I myself mean by virtual reality: the dynamic embodiment of a conclusive idea. The raw material of creative thought one might almost say, rather than a mere interpretative model of the universe. By the simplest possible definition, a particle, such as a photon, can suddenly come into existence out of nothing. Or, in terms of the simplest possible definitive case, the virtual particle
excludes all but the most pertinent aspects of objective reality and material fact. Though it would be rash to assume that such transitory particles - and not just photons, but electrons, protons and all the other ephemera of the
sub-nuclear domain - exist only in relation to the function they perform, we can
hardly doubt that the ‘participatory’ effect of intelligence plays its own
transforming part in the process.

It is true, most educated persons
already know, that owing to quantum indeterminacy, virtual particles can
materialize out of “empty” space as a matter of course. But it should also be
common knowledge by now that the mere mention of quantum indeterminacy implies a
recognition of the interdependence of matter and the pattern of scientific
knowledge thus envisaged. To their credit, scores of physicists treat
intelligence as the ultimate kinetic catalyst. Less imaginative, an “older”
tradition of constituent physics runs the risk of essentially treating
intelligence as the contingent consequence of material facts.

On this distinction, indeed, rests a substantial part of my case.

For the
traditionalist, in denying any participatory quality to quantum-mechanical
theories, and in proving them to be rooted in facts, does not fail to resurrect
a determinism which maintains that intelligence, being nothing more than the
rationalization of a predetermined design, is pure derivation and powerless to
alter the sequence of events. That is as it may be. But the utopia of modern
elementary particle physics has no difficulty in perceiving that virtual
propositions are contingent, perhaps, but not illusory; that they belong to the
conceptual, not the interpretative mode. That, even considered as virtual, it is
nevertheless perfectly proper to say they are ad hoc concept, connected to a
world of reality in a manner in which it becomes essential to the proper
appreciation of authenticity to realize that the inherent dynamism is not in the
thing but in the thought. For the truth is that even though human consciousness
is by no means fully engaged in the intangible details of the action, the
processes of thought are powerfully at work.

Created purposefully and
unmistakably by an idea, it does give the virtual universe a measure of
suggestion that tends to match up to the expectations, the imagery and the
vocabulary of the mind. For even dimensions so remote and inanimate - and that
does not mean illusory - that one is bound to reflect whether they have any
existence at all, do carry in their insignificance the seeds of further
innumerable universes...

Dreamy