Fringe Physics – The Emergent Physical Universe: The Psychology of Subatomic Particles (Session 4 of 6)

The world according to classical physics was a gentle cage, for it allowed (perhaps even encouraged) us to revel in the idea of an objective universe, i.e. a universe having form and structure with no dependence on us as observers. Then came the fathers of modern physics and quantum mechanics, who royally screwed everything up.  These inglorious bastards forced us to consider that consciousness itself might be playing a role in the structure of reality, a completely unheard-of concept except for the tens of thousands of years that people had held that belief prior to the rise and subsequent dominance of the western scientific worldview.

In this session we will explore the possibility that the external, so-called “objective” world has the form it has not as an absolute and neither by accident, but because that form is a construct of consciousness. We will contemplate the implications that arise from the idea that the laws of physics are not an external prison that dictates our lives, but rather a natural expression of humanity’s consensus agreement on how to express our experiences—to others and to ourselves. We will examine the as-above-so-below parallels between what we see in the universe and what we see in ourselves, and entertain the possibility that the laws of physics are really just an expression of our own psychology. 

And we’ll have cake – but you have to bring your own because, you know, we’re meeting online.

Dr. Jeffrey Dunne is the President of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL), a charitable research organization established in the late 1990’s to build upon the foundation established by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Laboratory. In this role, Dr. Dunne runs a variety of research and outreach activities focused on exploring the nature of consciousness, particularly as it relates to space, time, and language, as well as events for sharing such understanding with people from all backgrounds. 

In addition to his role with ICRL, Jeff is a researcher and Chief Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University, working over the past thirty years in a variety of fields ranging from acoustics and cybersecurity to data science and artificial intelligence. He is also an award-winning author and playwright, with nearly two hundred plays performed over four continents. In his 2023 novel, Nexus, Jeff unites three decades of scientific experience with four decades of pursuits in philosophy and metaphysics to weave a story introducing the scientific principle of syntropy and its importance in finding balance at every scale – personal, societal, and global.

Dr. Dunne holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, as well as a M.S. and Ph.D. in Experimental Physics.