New Physics for Psych/Theology

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Newtonian Physics has governed scientific discourse for the last 300 years, and is still valid and important at the macro level. But Newtonian Physics has always been seen as incomplete or inadequate in that it was deterministic, and left no room for the human experience of free will, or for God's actions within the world, the universe, the multiverse. This began to change at the beginning of the last century with the work of Thompson, Rutherford, and Bohr leading to the understanding of atomic structure, beginning with protons, neutrons, and especially electrons but continuing with seemingly endless demonstrations leading to "zoo" of subatomic particles. It is at the sub-atomic level that Newtonian Physics breaks down, leading to the rapidly growing field of Quantum mechanics to explain what can be known and understood about the interactions of these subatomic realities. At this level we now know that what we call "matter" exists simultaneously in two forms, particles and waves. It is at this level that the "behaviors' of the components of all that we think of as matter seem to exercise independence and freedom. At this level we can only speak of probabilities not certitude. This independence and freedom within all that is real accordingly re-opens within the sciences space for legitimate explorations into the nature of life, consciousness and free will, as well as God's activity within material existence. Explorations include even new understandings of what life after death might mean.