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From: guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.sci,net.misc
Subject: Re: Mind and Brain
Message-ID: <2070@rlgvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Jul-84 22:24:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.2070
Posted: Tue Jul  3 22:24:29 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Jul-84 04:04:10 EDT
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> Second, on the existence of the mind or soul, independent of the
> brain.  (This, again, is not MacLaine, but another character speaking.)

> 	Some of our scientists suspect this energy is there but
> 	they can't measure it because it is not molecular.  They say
> 	there's an energy that fills interatomic space, but they don't
> 	know what it is.  Even they call it the cohesive element of the atom,
> 	which they term 'gluon'.  They know it is not matter, but rather
> 	units of energy.
> 	...it is this subatomic energy that makes up the Source.  Therefore
> 	the Source, that form of energy, is not molecular.  Now I'm going to
> 	tell you the hard part to understand, but the part that is the most
> 	important.  This energy is the energy that makes up the soul.  Our
> 	bodies 	are made out of atoms; our souls are made of this Source
> 	energy.  [p. 325]

A *real* character, I'd say.  It looks like s/he strung together a bunch
of words from physics without knowing what they mean.  "but they can't
measure it because it is not molecular"?  There's lots of ways to measure
the energy in a light beam, but a light beam isn't "molecular" either.

According to quantum field theory, forces between particles are carried by
"fields".  If you're just considering, say, the force between two charged
particles, the value of the electric field at a point in space and at a
particular time is just a vector proportional to the force on a particle
with one unit of charge at that point in space and at that time; it merely
reflects the effect of other charges.  However, given that the electric field
can effect the magnetic field, and vice versa, one can construct electromagnetic
field patterns that only reflect other charges indirectly; a pair of charges
moving together and apart will generate an electromagnetic wave which will
travel through space (affecting other charges as it goes) even after the
original charges cease to move.  That's what light is, and what radio waves
are, and what X-rays are, etc..

In quantum field theory, such waves behave as if they were made of individual
"units".  If such a wave causes charges to move, thus transferring some energy
from the wave to the charges, this energy is transferred in discrete units,
or "quanta".  The quantum of the electromagnetic field is called the "photon".
One could say that a photon isn't "matter, but rather a unit of energy."

Atoms are held together by the electromagnetic force; the electrons, with
negative charges, are tied to the positively-charged nucleus by the
electromagnetic attraction between opposite charges.  (Just like the old
pith balls in High School physics - well, not *just* like, but close enough
for this discussion.)  The nucleus, however, is made of positively-charged
particles (protons), which would tend to *repel* one another electromagnetically,
and non-charged particles (neutrons), which wouldn't give a d*mn one way
or the other.  The nucleus doesn't fly apart, though (at least not in
non-radioactive matter), so *some* force must hold it together.  It currently
seems the case that protons and neutrons themselves are made of particles
called "quarks"; there is another force that holds them together.  The quanta
of the field for this force are called "gluons".

So there's nothing magic or Awesomely Mysterious about gluons.  They're just
like photons, only different.  Like photons, one could say they "aren't matter,
but rather units of energy", but so what?  The energy that they carry probably
*doesn't* fill interatomic space; it fills the space *within* protons and
neutrons, but doesn't seem to get out.  And no, we don't "know" what it is,
but we don't "know" what electromagnetic energy is, either.  We know some
properties that electromagnetic energy has.  We know *lots* of properties
that it has, actually; it's been studied for hundreds of years.  We know
a lot less about the properties that gluon energy has.  For one thing, we
don't know that it even exists.  The theory behind it (called, for reasons
having nothing to do with its properties, "quantum chromodynamics") is the
prime contender for being the correct theory of how particles like protons
and neutrons work.  However, it hasn't been around long enough, or been
verified in enough ways, for people to say "this is it".  Neither theory
nor experimental evidence gives us any reason to say that souls are made
of it.

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy