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This essay was rejected as an entry to the most recent Foundational Questions Institute (FQxI) contest, “How Quantum Is Life?” The author completed a physics PhD under FQxI member Kevin Knuth.
To aid in puzzling out the effects of quantum mechanics on biology, let’s consider how biology may have affected quantum mechanics. Let’s start with Hugh Evans’s Many Worlds Interpretation.
During World War II, John Archibald Wheeler worked on the Manhattan Project, hoping to produce the bomb in time to preserve the life of his brother, who was serving in the European Theater. Unfortunately, Wheeler’s brother perished. [1]
After the war, Evans studied under Wheeler and came up with an interpretation of quantum mechanics that imagined new worlds popping into existence every time a particle so much as farts. Why? The answer has something to do with the word “ontic,” but far more interesting is the question of why his committee graduated Evans on the basis of the most extravagant mental confection conceivable.
Can we imagine that Wheeler found some comfort in the idea that somewhere, his brother lived and that in some subset of those more fortunate worlds, his brother lived because Wheeler had worked a little faster or been a bit more clever? Picture Wheeler picturing Wheeler hugging his brother again after jumping a billion billion billion… Stern-Gerlachs back, across, and forward once more. Picture Wheeler’s colleagues seeing Wheeler picturing Wheeler hugging Wheeler’s brother while the colleagues consider signing the endorsement page of Evans’s dissertation.
The feeling in the backs of my eyes tells me how certain activities we loosely call science get done in the absence of experimental evidence, maybe even the absence of any hope of observational falsification of ideas we generate within the activities.
Now imagine you have an especially highly developed sense of humor. You’re the kind of guy who can walk into the men’s room of a bar in Buffalo, New York, walk out with a black eye, and tell the story years later to comedic effect in your best-selling memoirs. [2]
When you’re delivering a public lecture and want to mention a spotted cat, you don’t say “cheetah.” You don’t say “CHEE-tah” or “chee-TAH.” You say “CHEE-TAH.” [3]
Fine. Now, you have a friend you spend a while hanging out with in Brazil during the Red and Lavender Scares of the early 1950s, after you both leave the United States. Your friend tries to interest you in his ideas about how the universe works on a fundamental level. He claims that everything we observe emerges from hidden variables, meaning that the fundamental truth about ourselves lies completely shrouded in mystery. He also winds up proposing that we use a process of supportive listening to promote human well-being.
Oh, and according to your friend’s one-time fiancée, he was “fine at the macho stuff, but he didn’t have any eros.” [4]
How would you calculate the odds your friend was queer?
Now, I’m not assuming that David Bohm was queer, nor that Richard Feynman needed to calculate whether David Bohm was queer. I am considering the possibility that a person who saw the universe as acting out a nature that the universe would never allow to be seen directly, at least by people out to describe that nature publicly, might be inferring the nature of the universe by analogy to the hidden nature of himself.
Truly, none of us shows the world all we are, but some of us care deeply about the underlying reality and the discord between the apparent and the hidden. Others want mostly to get ahead in life or accomplish some other goal they regard as practical. My feeling is that men of the first kind are somewhat more likely to be queer, if not strictly gay, than men of the second kind, but I’m inferring the nature of such men by analogy to the nature of myself.
For the record, I’m confining myself to opinions on men in this instance so as not to risk giving offense, a misstep that might contravene the rules of the contest for which this essay was conceived. [5]
Feynman provided nice means for analyzing one’s own submerged nature in the case that it never quite breaches in the company of anyone else. Path integrals look at every possibility to establish what’s real — I mean, every possibility.
Are there men so straight, or strait, that they could never wonder what would happen if David Bowie, pantless as he is in his live video for “Moonage Daydream,” danced in silk chemise over to them and bestowed on their guitar the look that Bowie gives Mick Ronson’s after singing, “Put your ray gun to my head”? [6] How many different Stueckelberg diagrams would be needed to calculate the effects of all the emissions from Bowie’s eyes in that video?
Can a person think straight who needs to be absolutely sure that they are purely straight under all possible circumstances in all possible worlds? I think the so-called “Measurement Problem of Quantum Mechanics” is a consequence of the need in some folk to believe in a definite reality, an unrealistic demand of Nature when it comes from finite beings or when it comes in a universe where uncertainty is baked in, let alone from finite beings in such a universe. For just one example, how does anyone imagine they can Stern-Gerlach a spin into a definite state when they can’t even align the mechanism in the first place in a definite direction, can’t keep it exactly there against all vibration, can’t be sure they’re reading the device correctly or remembering the reading accurately, let alone that they haven’t popped into being momentarily in a void with false memories and sensations?
Didn’t Zhuangzi lay the Measurement Problem to rest well over two millennia ago by telling us that he couldn’t be sure whether he had dreamt of being a butterfly or was a butterfly dreaming of being Zhuangzi? [7] How has science so regressed that some of us finite beings insist that there exists a reality that finite beings cannot determine? Such a belief is untestable and hence unscientific. There is an arrogance abroad, and an appetite for deicide. Let’s consider this state of affairs more closely.
As an adult human being, I’m not happy to see how young some of the girls appear to be in Bowie’s audience for the performance in the “Moonage Daydream” video, [6] but I doubt that Erwin Schrödinger, whatever manner of creature Erwin Schrödinger was, would mind. We’ve known for years, from books and from articles in The Irish Times, that Schrödinger was a monster that chased little girls. [8] Have we adequately reappraised Schrödinger’s physics in light of this fact?
How many of us are unclear on the fact that Schrödinger’s cat is a joke? The cat is imagined in a room where an atom can decay to trigger a detector to trip a hammer to break a vial to release Prussic acid to kill the cat. [9] The upshot is that because the atom may exist in a superposition of decayed and not decayed, the cat may exist in a superposition of dead and alive. The point is that superposition of the states of small things may imply the superposition of states of large things, such as cats.
Why not let the cat out of the room to live safely while we perform the thought experiment on the vial? The vial is a macroscopic object that may exist in a superposition of whole and broken. The cat is superfluous and constitutes a serious complication, owing to its ability to observe its own life state. Good experimental design eliminates superfluous elements, let alone superfluous complications. Why is the cat in the gedankenexperiment at all?
Hmmm. A monster that chases little girls creates a thought experiment in which a small, helpless animal is subjected to gratuitous mortal danger. The small animal has no capacity to resist. Do I have to draw a road map? The monster’s mind has no turnings. That’s what makes it monstrous.
Oh, and a Catholic priest chased Schrödinger away from a little girl that Schrödinger intended to victimize. [8] Maybe Schrödinger long had dealings with good folk in clerical garb who tried to protect children, despite the extremely patriarchal culture of the time. Maybe Schrödinger had motives for focusing scientifically minded folk on a ridiculous scenario in which a concealed being was both dead and alive. Can any of us think of an important example in religion of a concealed being whose life state is ambiguous or is transitioning in an unusual direction?
That’s right. The Christian God, at least to the extent that the Christian God protects children, was Schrödinger’s natural enemy and therefore a likely target of Schrödinger’s writing. If anyone thinks that physicists could not have any interest in attacking God, I invite them to hang out with folks working on fundamental physics. One of the goals of fundamental physics is to minimize the number of adjustable parameters needed to understand everything. In the name of parsimony, theories are constructed to constrain God or gods as creators of this universe.
No doubt, we all remember Einstein’s famous comment that God does not play dice. I’m a bad physicist for having forgotten Bohr’s reply, “Stop telling God what to do.” [10] Fundamental physics, like extremely prescriptive and proscriptive religion, is out to limit God’s freedom. A narrowminded physics unjustifiably reduces the number of universes deemed possible, as harsh religiosity unnecessarily reduces the number of people deemed acceptable. We can better protect ourselves from monsters like Schrödinger if we adopt the ways of a good shepherd, who keeps the flock in a loosely defined region where they are safe from predators and free to live as they choose, so long as in-group sheep don’t arbitrarily assign other sheep to a group they then nudge out of the fold, causing the shepherd to leave in search of the lost sheep.
Why would we be wise to stop trying to limit God’s freedom, nail God down, bind God on Earth and therefore in Heaven?
First, it’s mean. Let’s be nice to God.
Second, have you noticed the importance of intellectual freedom to the development of science and technology? Silicon Valley abuts a center of queer life. Heisenberg’s Germany included Berlin, which was becoming the queer capital of the planet.
I draw no conclusions about anyone’s sexuality. As a theorist, I make statements about possibilities. I note that Heisenberg and his closest collaborators made progress by throwing away assumptions about how the world works. They were mostly very young and called their work boys’ physics. Their youth and determination to view reality without prejudice are sufficient inspiration for the name “boys’ physics,” [11] but as a queer man who finds patriarchal attitudes and a supporting mental rigidity trammeling fundamental physics, I am inspired by the term “boys’ physics” to search for ways that lead beyond the hegemony of the in-group sheep while keeping me within the shepherd’s approved domain and progressing in the direction of understanding and wisdom.
Wisdom is truly what’s in shortest supply. Should we be galloping forward with technological development and scientific advance? Distinguished scientists have warned of the singularity and of the existential risks of artificial intelligence, nuclear weapons, mirror life, and other balrogs we dwarves keep digging towards in search of one more vein of expensive medical treatments to extend the lives and cure the pimples of folk in rich countries. Maybe we should cool it for a while with the hard science and technology, leaving more resources available to invest in philosophy and social sciences. Clever folk might consider joining the search for what we need most, rather than dragging in more of what’s so thick on the floor that we keep tripping over it.
I worry about the balrogs we may uncover in fundamental physics, but I’m still working on it part-time because progress in fundamental work might foster wisdom. For example, the possible discreteness of spacetime has been made plausible in the past decade or two, lending credence to the idea that this universe is a simulation. Such an idea also supports the Abrahamic religions, perhaps religion in general.
In those of the Abrahamic religions with which I am familiar, God is pictured as having created everything but God. Given that quantum mechanics seems to include a random element and that physics and computer science have created increasingly realistic simulations and intelligences, why would we find it implausible to suppose that a lonely God devised a video game and is playing it as every living being, apart from monsters, to be found in it? Would such a model promote wisdom or supercharge the killing, as folk decided that their adversaries were non-player characters?
I’d at least like the atheists, some of whom I esteem highly, to stop talking about a God of the gaps. Maybe the walls and ceiling of science have mere gaps, but where the floor should be there’s a gaping pit. No one knows, except by faith, what this universe is. No one knows what time, space, or energy are. Please stop pretending otherwise, or acquaint yourself with the facts, if you’ve been selling the idea that science has obviated faith for those who insist on knowing it all.
Better yet, adopt the humility to recognize how little we know. Allow yourself to reason with your entire body. Chase homophobia, sexism, transphobia, racism, classism, excessive anthropocentrism, and other bigotries from your minds if you would make them supple enough to embrace truth. Recognize that when we can’t see the entirety of realities we would feebly attempt to comprehend, whether in physics or theology, we fill in the obscured parts with dreams. Realize that the dreams may more accurately or functionally express reality than the stretches of canvas painted from life.
Above all, let’s enjoy life a little more and connive a little less at dominating each other and Mother Nature while we get to play the games of biology, sociology, and ecology inside these cute animal bodies, shall we?
References
1 — “John Archibald Wheeler,” accessed 2025/10/28: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler
2 — Feynman, Richard; Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, pp. 164–6 of the PDF, accessed 2025/10/28: https://www.softouch.on.ca/kb/data/Surely%20You're%20Joking,%20Mr.%20Feynman!.pdf
3 — “Richard Feynman: Can Machines Think,” accessed 2025/10/28:
https://youtu.be/ipRvjS7q1DI?t=87
4 — “Maureen Doolan on David Bohm, Science, Quantum Mechanics & Consciousness — Extended Interview,” accessed 2025/10/28: https://youtu.be/owBqTEIee-k?t=588
5 — This piece was rejected for the Foundational Questions Institute (FQxI) essay contest How Quantum Is Life?
6— “Moonage Daydream,” accessed 2025/10/28: https://youtu.be/6pXoQ6iYO1w?t=162
7 — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Zhuangzi,” Section 4.8, “Perspectives on Perspectives,” accessed 2025/10/28: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhuangzi/#PersPers
8— Coffey, Rebecca; Forbes (2022/01/24) “Schrödinger’s Pedophilia: The Cat Is Out of the Bag (Box),” accessed 2025/10/28: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccacoffey/2022/01/24/schrdinger-pedophilia-the-cat-is-out-of-the-bag-box/
9— Schrödinger, E.; “The Present Status of Quantum Mechanics,” Die Naturwissenschaften 1935. Volume 23, Issue 48. Translation accessed 2025/10/28 at https://homepages.dias.ie/dorlas/Papers/QMSTATUS.pdf
10 — Rovelli, Carlo; Helgoland, p. 135. New York: Riverhead Books, 2021.
11 — Rovelli, Carlo; Helgoland, p. 6. New York: Riverhead Books, 2021.
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