“What the #$*! Do We Know?!”

Great question. Great movie. Short answer: not much. Made in Portland, and starring the wonderfully expressive actress Marlee Matlin (an Oscar winner for “Children of a Lesser God”), “What the #$*! Do We Know?!” mixes together a fictional storyline with non-fictional expositions of quantum physics, neuroscience, and other findings from the cutting edge of science.

Having written a book about the relation of the new physics and old mystics (“God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder,” which I’ve revised and am working to get back-in-print), this was a movie that I couldn’t miss. Unfortunately, lots of other people will. I only found two reviews through the Movie Review Query Engine, and the Salem Cinema seats were mostly empty last Friday night. That’s too bad. This film isn’t perfect—what movie is?—but it has much more entertainment and thought-provocation value than most flicks.

I got to see and hear some scientists whose books I’ve enjoyed: Amit Goswami from the University of Oregon, and Fred Alan Wolf. I agreed with most of what they and others talked about, but the “quantum physics says we create our own reality” theme is a stretch that goes over the edge of even cutting-edge science. Goswami himself says in his first book, “The Self-Aware Universe,” that a universal rather than individual consciousness has to bring reality into manifestation.

If this weren’t the case, the laws of nature wouldn’t bear much resemblance to the utterly dependable laws we are familiar with. In his book Goswami likens the situation to people coming to a four-way intersection and choosing what color the light should turn: red or green. Chaos would result, cars crashing into each other. Obviously, this isn’t the way the universe works. Regularity and order prevail on the macro level where we live and breathe. Only on the subatomic level is quantum unpredictability and uncertainty clearly evident.

In my book I quote Roger Penrose as saying that early on people hoped to find evidence for human free will in the randomness of quantum events. But, says Penrose, randomness is a pretty shaky foundation for free will, which should permit us to do just what we want to do, not take a chance on a roulette wheel of possibilities.

That quibble aside, my main problem with the movie, Laurel and I thoroughly enjoyed the examination of another theme: how our thoughts and emotions form a prism through which we see the world only darkly. Often not how it is, but how we have been conditioned to see it. Breaking that conditioning is what psychotherapy and meditation are all about. Science too, since regular paradigm shifts are necessary to boost scientific understanding out of well-worn ruts and into new paths.

It was Fred Alan Wolf, I believe, who said in the movie that our planet’s religions are out of sync with a modern scientific world view, and that one day they will seem as out-moded as so many other discredited perspectives—such as that the Sun revolves around the Earth. I couldn’t agree more. Mystery, Wolf said, should be embraced, rather than feebly explained away through the superstitions offered up by traditional Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and the like (Buddhism seems more in tune with reality to me, but not by much).

Consider: physicists believe that only 4% of the physical universe is made of ordinary matter, with some 21% being composed of dark (unseen) matter and 75% of dark energy (I think I have these percentages right). So how can anyone consider that we know much about the cosmos when we don’t even know what 96% of it is made of, much less how the universe came to be and what the meaning of all this is? Mysteries surround us. Mysteries are us. I’d much rather embrace the reality of mystery than the illusion of religious “answers.”

Comments

[Keith]

Yes, I'm afraid the movie will come and go without much fanfare at all. I saw it last night. The house was loosely packed - about twenty curious souls.

If I had to describe the movie to someone, I might say it is a wacky version of "Mindwalk". Same sort of thing with a more "let's take it and run" attitude.

I enjoyed the movie very much.

[Sean Gunderson]

We saw the movie in Tempe, AZ last night and there was not an empty seat in the house. I heard one woman had been back 13 times. We had heard that we should be there an hour early to get tickets for the 4:20 PM showing. Sure enough, there was a long line waiting to get in.

The movie is great and I have already suggested it as a must see to many people. It may be a bit much for some people. It was well done. We are going back for more!!

[Laura Griffiths]

Well, I was too cheap and skeptical to pay for theatre tickets, so I watched it when it came out of DVD. The "extras" on the flip side were very interesting to say the least. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, I did have to watch it more than once to try and piece things together and I do wish more things were explained in greater detail, but all in all, I believe it is well worth watching. I grew up in the Portland metro area, so, was very thrilled to see so much of it in the movie. I heard from a friend of mine that it was actually sold out at the Bagdad theatre for weeks!
My husband wasn't as impressed with the movie as I was, which I found totally bizarre as he is a Discovery Channel and OPB/PBS buff!!! I THOUGHT he would be interested in it because he's so interested in the string theory, but, according to him, quantum physics and the string theory have nothing to do w/ one another- what do I know?

[Brian]

Laura, has your husband read Brian Greene's book, "The Fabric of the Cosmos"? His chapter, "The World on a String," describes how superstring theory relates to quantum physics.

The big problem in finding a Theory of Everything is relating the continuous space and time of relativity theory/gravity with the discontinous nature of quantum physics.

Greene says, "The main new feature of string theory is that its basic ingredient is not a point particle--a dot of no size--but instead is an object that has spatial extent. The difference is the key to string theory's success in merging gravity and quantum mechanics."

Philosophically, or spiritually, what I find intriguing about string theory is that it seems to represent the first physical manifestation of Many from One. The space-time continuum of Einstein is just that, one continuous entity. Strings mysteriously emerge from that oneness.

I like Greene's words on p. 374: "The [string] theory intimates that the familiar notions of space and time do not extend into the sub-Planckian [very, very small] realm, which suggests that space and time as we currently understand them may be mere approximations to more fundamental concepts that still await our discovery."