Cosmic Secrets

Book excerpt: We see objects in front of us, and experience a real material effect when we approach and touch them. Thus, we conclude that all objects are embedded in space and exist objectively. However, such experiences in everyday life cannot be transferred to the atomic level: within standard quantum theory, the material world is still embedded in space, but it no longer has an objective existence. How can objects be embedded in space without existing objectively? This book addresses this and similar issues in an illustrative and non-conventional way. Using up-to-date information, the following basic questions are contemplated: What is a particle, a quantum object? What can we say about the nature of time? How is reality, in particular the cosmos, formed? What is the influence of evolution on the discovery of new developments in this field? Like the philosophers Whitehead and Bergson, the primacy of process is advocated: we experience objects OCo both quantum objects and those we experience in everyday life OCo at certain positions in space, but everything is a matter of process and the existence of static objects in space is thus eliminated."