Piero Scaruffi

These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"

Interpretations of Classical Physics The fact that Quantum Physics lends itself to many contradicting interpretations has been widely publicized from the very beginning. Less publicized is the fact that Newton’s Physics is no less open to interpretations. Newton’s greatest invention was the concept of “mass”. Ask ten scientists what “mass” is and you will get ten different answers. Mass is at least three things in Newton’s Physics: a measure of resistance to acceleration, a measure of how much an object attracts other objects, and a measure of how much an object is attracted by other objects (laziness, allure and weakness). Whichever of the three you choose, where does it come from? Why do objects have this exoteric quantity of “mass”? Another fundamental tenet of Newton’s Physics (that actually comes from Galileo) is the notion that objects tend to move in a straight line at constant speed. Aristotle thought that objects tend to stop if they are not pushed. Galileo realized that objects (such as arrows) keep moving even when no force is pushing them. Thus it made sense to assume that objects want to keep moving indefinitely. (Friction and gravity cause them to slow down or bend). This works. But: why do objects have a preference for traveling in a straight line at constant speed? Where does this property come from? Again, this is open to interpretation. In conclusion, it is not surprising at all that there are several different interpretations of what Quantum Physics means: there are still, three centuries later, different interpretations of what Newton’s Physics means.   Back to the beginning of the chapter "The New Physics" | Back to the index of all chapters