French physicist wins million-pound Templeton Prize

[bananas]

http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_French_physicist_wins_million_pound_Templeton_Prize_35919.html

French physicist wins million-pound Templeton Prize
By John Wolper

Paris - French physicist Bernard Espagnat was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize, worth 1 million pounds (1.41 million dollars), the John Templeton Foundation announced in Paris on Monday.

The 87-year-old Espagnat was named the recipient of the world's most generous individual scientific award for his work in the field of quantum mechanics, particularly for his experimental proofs on Bell inequalities.

<snip>

Asked what he would do with the prize money, Espagnat told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that he would devote one-third of the money to support scientific research. Another third would go to charity, particulary to aid the homeless, while he will keep the remaining third for himself and his wife.

"Since my wife is handicapped, I want to use the money to enable us to stay in our home for as long as possible," Espagnat said. "I think it will be of some help to us. At least, I hope so."

<snip>

[Orrex]

1. Well Jeez, Bernie!

Keep at least half of it for yourself. I mean, you have a good reason.

Still, I applaud his generosity and graciousness.


Congratulations to Espagnat for his great achievement!

[and-justice-for-all]

2. Is this the same right-wing creatioist nut job..Templeton Foundation?? nt

[laconicsax]

3. "The Templeton Prize honours a living person who has made an exceptional contribution

to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works."

Can someone with an understanding of Espagnat's work explain how it "affirmed life's spiritual dimension?" I won't even pretend to understand the field enough to make a guess.

[bananas]

4. Scientific American has some reading material online

This post on the Scientific American blog has embedded links to pdf's of d’Espagnat’s 1979 Scientific American article and Mermin's 1985 Physics Today article:

http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=despagnat-takes-big-prize-for-work-2009-03-18

Mar 18, 2009 03:30 PM in Physics

d'Espagnat takes big prize for work on quantum mechanics
By George Musser in 60-Second Science Blog

<snip>

“For those interested in the fundamental structure of the physical world, the experimental verification of Bell’s inequality constitutes the most significant event of the last half-century,” Tim Maudlin, a philosopher of physics at Rutgers University, has written.

For me, the award also brings back fond memories of one of Scientific American’s most classic articles, d’Espagnat’s “The Quantum Theory and Reality,” in our November 1979 issue, which provides a step-by-step explanation of Bell’s inequalities and goes into the subtleties that my above summary glosses over. It’s not the easiest article to read, but it rewards the effort, and it inspired a streamlined explanation by David Mermin in the April 1985 issue of Physics Today, which I, in turn, further simplified for my own book.

This month’s cover story, by Columbia University philosopher David Albert and writer Rivka Galchen, delves more into the implications, many of which are not well known even by most physicists. As it happens, my colleague Ivan Oransky and I saw Galchen Monday night at the award ceremony for the Young Lions Fiction Award, for which her Pynchonesque novel Atmospheric Disturbances was a finalist. Congratulations, Rivka!

[bananas]

5. Some excerpts from a recent interview

probably answer your question:

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2009/03/physics-laureate-there-is-a-god.html

March 16, 2009
Physics laureate: 'Proof that there is a G_d?'

<snip>

'It appears that physics can only reach at what I call empirical reality which is reality just as it appears to us by means of these concepts we are able to construct. Quantum physics in particular shows that we presumably cannot go further and reach at the ultimate reality. Therefore there is a borderline between what we can really get at which are the phenomena, and those free spaces for grand intuitions devoid of classical consequences.

'Therefore ultimate reality, if it is attainable at all, I think is attainable only partly, and very partly indeed, but perhaps by intuition. In support I think that a sense of beauty gives us perhaps such glimpses, partial glimpses, of what ultimate reality is.'

'He said science had helped him justify his impression of a link between beauty and the divine.

'When we hear great classical music or look at very great paintings, they are not just illusions but could be a revelation of something fundamental. I would accept calling it God or divine or Godhead but with the restriction that it cannot be conceptualised for the very reason that this ultimate reality is beyond any concept that we can construct.'

<snip>

[Joe Chi Minh]

8. ".... but perhaps by intuition." Ultimate knowledge can only be infused knowledge, a gratuitous

gift of the Creator, who via the Holy Spirit, coordinates the strands of our intelligence, "connects the dots". Little wonder the greatest paradigm-changing physicists were almost all passionate Christians (including Galileo), or, in the case of Einstein, a theist.

Espagnat is pointing to the actual eventuality, here and now, of the atheists' worst nightmare. Reaching the mountain top, only to find that believers preceded them by thousands, nay hundreds of thousands of years.... LOL!!!!!!

[TZ]

9. You mean the ones that weren't murdered or locked up

by other "passionate christians"? Like Galileo was. LOL. YOur statement is so offbase its not funny. I can tell you something, atheists aren't afraid of imaginary critters. We are all grown up now.

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. Ha! Ha! Lucy or is it Eve's, waiting for you on the mountain top. I see her

beaming down at you, calling out, "What took you so long, suckers! ha-de-ha-de-ha!"

I was saying decades ago that, having reached the quantum level, physicists wouldn't be able to penetrate any further empirically. All they could do is seek to manage the increasing proliferation of paradoxes. No more paradigm shifts for sure, now they've reached the interface with the spirit of God. Get over it. There's a good chap.

"The only answer I am able to provide is that underlying this empirical reality is a mysterious, non-conceptualisable "ultimate reality", not embedded in space and (presumably) not in time either."

It's implicit in Creation via the Big Bang, and the source of light "dwelling" (love that word... so personal) outside of space-time. Mr Espagnat sure got that right about the wilful refusal of the scientific comunity to face up to the implications of the Big Bang and, indeed, quantum physics. If they'd said, "Well, we only know what we can measure, but that doesn't mean that, because it's all we know, it's the only knowledge worth knowing", that would have been rational and sensible. But that is precisely what the "voodoo" scientismifists have not been doing.

Well, that's not very Christian on my part to mock you and your tribe, but I've seen so much infantile mockery and vilification of religious beliefs on this board by hapless scientismificists that I expect it's salutary for you, if not for me.

[bananas]

6. Quantum weirdness: What we call 'reality' is just a state of mind

He posted this last Friday on the Guardian science blog:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/mar/17/templeton-quantum-entanglement

Quantum weirdness: What we call 'reality' is just a state of mind

A lifetime studying quantum mechanics has convinced Bernard d'Espagnat that the world we perceive is merely a shadow of the ultimate reality

Posted by Bernard d'Espagnat Friday 20 March 2009


I believe that some of our most engrained notions about space and causality should be reconsidered. Anyone who takes quantum mechanics seriously will have reached the same conclusion.

What quantum mechanics tells us, I believe, is surprising to say the least. It tells us that the basic components of objects – the particles, electrons, quarks etc. – cannot be thought of as "self-existent". The reality that they, and hence all objects, are components of is merely "empirical reality".

This reality is something that, while not a purely mind-made construct as radical idealism would have it, can be but the picture our mind forces us to form of ... Of what ? The only answer I am able to provide is that underlying this empirical reality is a mysterious, non-conceptualisable "ultimate reality", not embedded in space and (presumably) not in time either.

How did I arrive at this conclusion? My interest in the foundations of quantum physics developed at quite an early stage in my career, but I soon noticed that my elders deliberately brushed aside the problems the theory raised, which they considered not to be part of physics proper. It was only after I attained the status of a fully-fledged physicist that I ventured to take up the question personally.

<snip>

[Nihil]

7. Thanks for the links ...

... in this post and your previous one.

What a fascinating fellow he is!
:yourock: