On Imaginary Quantities
If you have been following these posts, dear reader, you might be under the impression that my book is full of science and philosophical deliberation. It is not. A Quantum Metaphor for Human Being is the story of a life, viewed through the irreducibly subjective lens of success and failure.
We are nothing, if not our stories. Homo narrans are we, our consciousness a ‘narrative centre of gravity’, an illusion as such, an informational construct. We are a thing which is not, but has real consequence in the physical world.
Herein lies yet another uncanny resemblance to the quantum domain. There, imaginary quantities also have real consequences in the physical world. Complex numbers, or imaginary quantities, are so called because they rest on an impossibility; namely, that a negative number can have a square root. Nonetheless, they are extremely useful for solving all sorts of equations, where they tend to act as a sort of mathematical catalyst, allowing the formation of intermediary calculations, which are necessary to allow the final calculations that yield observable results free of imaginary quantities.
In quantum mechanics, however, complex numbers are an integral part – though they cannot be observed – of the evolution of the state of a particle. When it comes to muons or bosons, I cannot begin to imagine what these unobservable forces may be, but for human beings, the list goes on and on: language, music, myth, self, community, corporation, nation, god.
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Imagine a suburban bus-stop. There is a man waiting there. He looks expectantly up and down the road, as if he might take a bus in either direction, depending on which arrives first. He is not well dressed but neither is he shabbily attired. It’s hard to say what age he is.
In fact, he stands here every day around this time; when the bus arrives, punctually as it always does, he takes it as far as the nursing home on the edge of town, where he visits his dementing mother. Afterwards, he walks the short distance to his club, where there is usually something to do or someone to share a cup of coffee with, before he returns home to cook a simple but nutritious dinner for himself. He often falls asleep in front of the telly.
On this particular day, another man approaches without greeting him, and takes a seat in the shelter, where he proceeds to noisily blow and clean his large and rather noble nose with great affectation and much to-do, before returning his now-soiled silk handkerchief to the breast-pocket of his dapper jacket. Having attracted our man’s attention, the interloper looks him straight in the eye and says sanguinely: ‘God. Is a pig.’
Whatever transpires in the next few moments could conceivably be completely described as quantum interaction. Ultimately, nothing is going on except the buzz and fuzz at the sub-atomic level. True as this may be, to understand what happens next, one would need some idea of gods, and pigs, and some inkling of cultural context and personal proclivities.
A scene like this could evolve, after some surprised hesitation, into laughter and merriment. Or it may peter out in the raising of an eyebrow. It could, on the other hand, result in insult and lead to anger, to raised voices and huffing and puffing. Or violence.
As it happens, the bus pulled up before the hero of our story could fully register what had just taken place, so that he alighted in a slight daze. Once sitting, he looked blankly out of the window at the nattily attired blasphemer, who had not moved, and was now thoroughly absorbed by the cleaning of his left ear by way of an immaculately manicured pinky. As the bus shuddered on its way again, the devoted son was roused from his reverie and found himself wondering whether a pig-god was better, or worse, than a dead god.
A Quantum Metaphor for Human Being by Ciarán Ó Néill is available to order now