Quantum Theory and the Place of Mind in Nature

Abstract

Classical physics can be viewed as a triumph of the idea that mind should be excluded from science, or at least from the physical sciences. Although the founders of modern science, such as Descartes and Newton, were not so rash as to proclaim that mind has nothing to do with the unfolding of nature, the scientists of succeeding centuries, emboldened by the spectacular success of the mechanical view of nature, were not so timid, and today we are seeing even in psychology a strong movement towards “materialism”, i.e., toward the idea that “mind is brain”. But while psychology has been moving toward the mechanical concepts of nineteenth-century physics, physics itself has moved in just the opposite direction.