Robert Anton Wilson & the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics!!!
(originally published on January 18, 2023 on my website Quantum Entanglement and Robert Anton Wilson (chapelperilous.us)
Happy RAW Day! In celebration of today, I chose to write a bit about Wilson’s use of ideas and metaphors he gleaned from Quantum Physics. Wilson’s ability to write about the most update experiments and discoveries of 1977 in his book Cosmic Trigger vol 1 is one reason why that book remains an underground American classic. That Wilson sought to integrate his far-out experiences through the lens of Quantum Entanglement make him quite an interesting writer.
Over the course of researching and writing Chapel Perilous: The Life and Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson I got to see where RAW was ahead of the curve. As a journalist he broke stories that later got massive traction. In Cosmic Trigger he did the same when he presented the most current experiments in the field, by discussing the work of John Clauser and Alain Aspect.
In 2022, Quantum Entanglement continued to be all the rage in physics. Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physics went to three experimental researchers who spent their career testing the work of Irish physicist John Bell. John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger’s reception of the most prestigious prize in science has provided the institutional mark of distinction. Quantum Entanglement, or Non-Locality, is now all the rage in Physics, but there was a time when the study of it was considered fringe, weird, and a waste of time.[i] According to MIT professor David Kaiser’s book How the Hippies Saved Physics it was a ragtag bunch of far out Berkeley physicists in the mid-70s that are single-handily responsible for today’s second quantum revolution. (The first quantum revolution gave birth to transistors and laser. Today, thanks to the work and study of Entanglement humanity is entering the world of Quantum Computing and everything else that will bring.) Of the three winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize, John Clauser was one of the wild-eyed “hippies” in the Berkeley area in the mid-seventies. He represents a whole community of physicists and researchers who brought philosophy back into physics. It is no surprise then that Robert Anton Wilson was in the mix.
According to Saul-Paul Sirag, Quantum Physicist, writer, and close friend of Wilson’s during the 1970s, Wilson was “the first” popular writer to properly explain the results of the experiments by John Clauser and Alain Aspect.[ii] When Sirag told me this, I thought it was worthwhile to look at that chart Wilson published in Cosmic Trigger vol 1, where he explained the current state of Entanglement theory and experiments as of 1976. It was actually Sirag who first provided Wilson the chart in ’76, but Wilson added his own literary flare when he discussed the chart in his mind bending 1977 classic.
Again, according to Sirag, Wilson had provided the most up-to-date research in Quantum Entanglement studies in the form of a book aimed at popular reading audiences. RAW had the scoop! Before Gary Zukav wrote about Dancing Wu-Li Masters and Fritjof Capra published the Tao of Physics, RAW was the first to accurately discuss the experiment that have now won the Nobel Prize.
In 1976, Wilson spoke at a workshop produced by the Physics/Consciousness Research Group, whose cire members were Sarfatti, Wolf, and Sirag. The event was held at Pajero Dunes, and Wilson spoke about Leary’s 24 “slots” of personality, which was an early model for what became commonly known as the 8-circuit model of intelligence.[iii] Somewhere around that time, Sirag gave Wilson a copy of the chart, which explained the most interesting interpretations of the results of Bell’s Theorem.
One of the great things about Wilson’s work was his adroit discussions of Quantum Physics, mostly Entanglement, in such a way that physicist John Gribbin was convinced RAW was a physicist himself. To the value of his readers Wilson’s discussion of very dense scientific concepts educated readers in how to engage with Quantum Physics. Wilson speculated wildly in Cosmic Trigger about the roots of the experience he had during his residency in “Chapel Perilous.” It was because he sought to discuss such far out experiences of the paranormal and his psychedelic experiences utilizing concepts of Quantum Physics is just one reason why Cosmic Trigger vol 1 is a true literary classic. However, much like the hippies who saved physics, Wilson’s achievement in providing the first presentation of Clauser and Aspect’s experiments, I think, has not yet been properly acknowledged.
Sirag and Wilson’s chart provides an amazing map to dig deep into. The chart flows chronologically from left to right on the page, beginning with the first quantum revolution. Some major breakthroughs in all that began when Max Planck was hired by a German light company to make a better light bulb! Then Einstein in 1905 discovered the photoelectric effect which forwarded the notion of light as Quanta, or quanta of particles of light were then referred to as photons. More discoveries were made!
But then after 30 years of mind blowing experiments after another, Einstein sought to out a stop to the madness with his, and Rosen and Podolsky’s, EPR Paradox. Although Einstein helped put it together, he was never satisfied with Quantum Mechanics. Einstein’s disappointment with The Copenhagen Interpretation and their prevailing view of reality was that it failed in the task of natural science. The goal of natural science is to provide significant aspects of nature that are independent of observers or their observations. Instead, QM was only focusing on measurements. The theory did not have anything to say about what was likely to be true in the absence of observation. That there could be laws only when one looked, and no laws when one wasn’t looking marked QM as “irrealist,” as in not in accordance with the doctrine of realism Einstein believed in.
This is where Bell’s Theorem comes in. John Bell’s 1964 mathematical demonstration showed that if Quantum Mechanics is valid any two particles once in contact will continue to influence each other, no matter how far apart they may move. This violates special relativity, unless the influence between the particles is not employing any known energy.
The structure of Bell’s proof was its assumption that a local reality exists. With some arithmetic Bell showed that this locality assumption leads directly to a certain inequality.[iv] Bell’s Inequality which the experimental result must satisfy. Whenever these experiments are done they violate Bell’s Inequality. Hence the local-reality assumption is mistaken. Conclusion: Any Reality that violates the EPR experiment must be Non-Local. A Non-Local Interaction jumps from body A to body B without touching anything in between. With observations like that Wilson would later make claims that things like Voodoo injury was an example of a non-local interaction
Before moving further into the chart, I’d like to circle back to the experiment that kicked off the Quantum madness to begin with. Fundamentally, Quantum Physics begins with the study of light, and the search for a better light bulb! In 1894, Max Planck was hired by the German Bureau of Standards to help design a better carrier of light. In a series of experiments that followed, Planck investigated the qualities of heat, energy, and light. Planck assumed that light doesn’t move in a continuous wave, but in packets, or Quanta. And these Quanta are uniquely and mathematically proportional to a given frequency. This means that certain frequencies only hold certain amounts of energy. That new understanding of packets described a new physics — i.e., Quantum Mechanics. In 1905, Albert Einstein published his paper on the Photo Electric Effect — which happens when light is shone on a metal surface and electrons are given enough energy to escape — was also studying light. Using Planck’s formula, Einstein proposed that only certain wavelengths can release enough electrons regardless of light intensity. Therefore, light energy is emitted in wave packets, or photons. This discovery gave birth to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
Wilson next provides three possibilities for “reality,” based off the results of Bell’s Theorem. For years, the experiments of Clauser (The ‘Diminished effect’) and Aspect (the ‘Non-Instantaneous effect’) were two of the most curious when I first read about them in Cosmic Trigger vol. 1
So what did Clauser and Aspect, and later Zeilinger’s do in their experiments?
Clauser built an apparatus that emitted two entangled photons at a time. Both were shot at a filter which tested their polarization. After this experiment, Clauser observed some “loopholes,” areas where a Hidden Variable could still affect the outcome of the experiment. One example was his positioning of the filters he used in his experiment were positioned at fixed angles and this was not the best thing. That’s where Alain Aspect comes in. He sought to build an apparatus that would close the loopholes of Clauser’s experiment. To do this he was able to position the filters at different angles and was able to detect more photons, which provided a more accurate set of measurements. Aspect’s experiments provided even more evidence that Quantum Mechanics is correct, that there are no Hidden Variables. Many years later, Anton Zeilinger and his team added more to Clauser and Aspect’s experiments with his own. He created entangled pairs of photons by shining a laser on a special crystal, and then used random numbers to shift between measure settings, resulting in more accurate measurements for wild notion of non-locality. All three experiments has led to what’s now referred to as the “second quantum revolution.” The first brought humanity transistors and lasers. The second will manifest quantum computing, quantum encryption, and other developments that will ensure that the future will be very weird.
On RAW Day today, I like reflecting on the fact that the underground American novelist prepared readers for a wild future utilizing the most cutting-edge physics of his time. Since Clauser, Aspect, and Zeilinger are now recognized for the great work they’ve done in physics, RAW should be equally celebrated as the exciting intellectual he was for his ability to translate such dense jargon-filled areas of science and relate them in such fun and clear ways.
[i] Today Bells’ Theorem has accumulated more than 3,200 citations in professional scientific literature. It is the centerpiece of everything from quantum computing to quantum encryption, to quantum teleportation.
[ii] “Bob’s descriptions of these ideas were as correct as could be (in the 1970s) without going into the mathematical equations of QM.”
[iii] Wilson later wrote up an article about the event, which appeared in Berkeley Barb (name date) titled, “Scientists Confess Strange Encounters.”
[iv] Saul-Paul Sirag broke Bell’s theorem to me like this. Bell’s Theorem entails Bell’s inequality. This is a mathematical statement. One version is: –2 < S < 2, where S is the sum of photons detected (at the same instant) at two detector sites. The photons pass through polarizers at each site. These polarizers can be set at various angles. There is a coincidence counter that keeps track of the coincidences that occur as the polarizers are rotated through various angles. The inequality is meant to test whether the photon coincidences obey the Cosine Squared law predicted by QM. This Cosine is with respect to the angle between the two polarizers. If the experiment obeys the Cosine Squared law, then Bell’s inequality (as written above) will be violated.
