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The Paradise: A Metaphor for Quantum Mechanics I

The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge as Metaphors for the Wave Function and Measurement Summary This essay proposes a novel interpretation of the Edenic narrative through the conceptual framework of quantum mechanics, establishing systematic correspondences between biblical symbols and quantum-mechanical constructs. Through careful analysis of biblical texts and their mystical interpretations in Kabbalistic and Chassidic sources, combined with precise physical and mathematical formulations, I demonstrate how the Garden of Eden can be understood as a metaphorical representation of Hilbert space—the mathematical foundation of quantum mechanics. The essay develops four primary correspondences: (1) the Tree of Life as the quantum-mechanical wave function—representing superposition of all possible states; (2) the Tree of Knowledge as measurement—causing the collapse of the wave function to a single definite state; (3) Paradise as Hilbert space—the domain [...]

Human, Angel, or Machine: The Challenge of Consciousness

I.             Introduction The confrontation between Jacob and an unidentified being in Genesis raises fundamental questions about the nature of consciousness, identity, and the boundaries between different orders of being. This encounter gains new relevance as we approach an era where artificial intelligence may become indistinguishable from human intelligence. Building on our previous analysis of angels as metaphors for information processing systems found in “The Binary Universe II: Angels as Microprocessors,” “Binary Universe III: Two Camps of Angels,” “The Ontological Ambiguity of Messengers: From Angels to AI,” and “Wrestling with AI: From Divine Dreams to Digital Reality,” this essay examines a deeper ontological ambiguity: the challenge of distinguishing between human and non-human intelligences. II.          The Biblical Paradigm The Torah presents two distinct instances of ontological ambiguity regarding angels. The first appears in the term [...]

The Ontological Ambiguity of Messengers: From Angels to AI

This post continues the discussion we began in “Bereshit: The Binary Universe I” and continued in “The Binary Universe II: Angels as Microprocessors” and “Binary Universe III: Two Camps of Angels.” Introduction The beginning of the Torah portion of Vayishlach presents us with an intriguing linguistic and philosophical puzzle when Jacob sends מַלְאָכִים (malakhim) to his brother Esau. The deliberate ambiguity in the term מַלְאָךְ (malakh)—which can denote either human or divine messengers—provides a unique lens through which to examine questions of consciousness, agency, and identity that have become increasingly relevant in our age of artificial intelligence and advanced robotics. The Biblical Context In the beginning of the Torah portion of Vayishlach, Jacob sends messengers (angels, according to Rashi) to his brother Esau: Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother, to [...]

Time and Space as Emergent Phenomena — Abstract

The current Torah portion Beshalach tells about the splitting of the Sea of Reeds. As I discussed in my essay, “Collapse and Revelation,” the splitting of the sea is a metaphor for the collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics. The Alter Rebbe, the Baal HaTanya, taught us to leiben min hatzait (“to live with the time,” that is, to leave with the current reading of the Torah). Maybe this is why, this week, when we read in the Torah portion Beshalach about the splitting of the sea, I finally understood where time comes from. This question haunted me for more than forty years. Finally, this week, I got it—time emerges through the interaction of consciousness with the universal wave function, causing the sequence of wave function collapses that we perceive as [...]

On Freedom of Choice, Divine Providence, and the Hard Problem of Philosophy

The story of Joseph and his brothers, described in the Torah portion of Vayeshev, presents many problems. Classical biblical commentators interpret the conflict between Joseph and his brothers in diametrically opposite ways. Some commentators interpret it literally—the brothers were guilty of conspiring to kill Joseph and, ultimately, selling him into slavery, for which they were held accountable.[1] In fact, the brothers admit their guilt: And they said one to another: ‘We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear. . . . Genesis 42:21 Others take the view that these events were predetermined by G‑d. Indeed, in the Covenant Between the Parts, G‑d reveals to Abraham that his descendants will be strangers in a foreign land. Furthermore, [...]

Cartesian Dualism, Kabbalah, and Quantum Mechanics

Cartesian dualism, or mind-body dualism, formulated by the French scientist, mathematician, and philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), holds that the body and the mind (which he equated with consciousness, or the soul) are two distinct ontological substances with nothing in common.[1] They exist in different worlds and do not interact or communicate with each other. This position presents a serious problem—if the two have nothing in common, how can they have the causal connections they seem to have? How, for example, can the mind causally direct the body? And, vice versa, how can the body communicate sensations, such as pain, to the mind? This valid criticism proved fatal for Cartesian dualism, which has been all but relegated to the dustbin of history. The Jewish theosophical doctrine of Kabbalah takes a very different approach. It [...]

What is a Soul? III. The Many Souls of Man

  …[H]e who tries to cure the soul, wishing to improve the moral qualities, must have a knowledge of the soul in its totality and its parts…Maimonides[1] Maimonides opens his introduction to The Ethics of the Fathers with this statement: Know that the human soul is one, but that it has many diversified activities. Some of these activities have, indeed, been called souls, which has given rise to the opinion that man has many souls, as was the belief of the physicians, with the result that the most distinguished of them states in the introduction of his book that there are three souls, the physical, the vital, and the psychical.[2] While Maimonides lists three souls—the physical (tiv’it), the vital (chiyunit), and the psychical (nefoshit)—he believes them to be aspects of one soul—“Know that [...]

What Is a Soul? II. Anatomy of the Soul

In the biblical story of the creation of Adam, the Torah states: Then the Eternal G‑d formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.Genesis 2:7 The word translated into English as “soul” in the original Hebrew is nefesh. This is the first and the lowest level of the soul given to Adam. The taxonomy and anatomy of a soul in Judaism are quite complex. Original biblical sources speak of three levels of the soul: nefesh (“soul”), ru’ach (“spirit”),[1] and neshamah (“breath”).[2] The Kabbalah speaks of the five levels of the soul: nefesh, ru’ach, neshamah, chayah, and yechidah. This is based on classical rabbinic sources. As stated in the midrash, “By five names is the soul called: nefesh, ru’ach, [...]

Wigner’s Friend Paradox

Amicus est Socrates, magister meus, sed magis est amica veritas. “Socrates is my friend but a greater friend is truth” – Plato c. 428-348 BCE. Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. “Plato is my friend, but a greater friend is truth" – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 350 BCE. Amicus Plato amicus Aristoteles magis amica veritas. “Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but a greater friend is truth.” – Isaac Newton, Cambridge Student Notebook, 1661 You are my friend, but what is truth? – Eugene Wigner, 1961 If Isaac Newton summed up the aphorisms of Plato and Aristotle in his student notebook, exactly 300 years later, Eugene Wigner put this notion on its head. Although taking a poetic license, I put Wigner's words above in quotation marks, I do not know if he [...]

By |2023-03-23T18:18:41-04:00March 17th, 2019|Uncategorized|4 Comments

Shavuot — Three States of Consciousness

Shavuot (a.k.a. the Feast of Weeks, or “Pentecost”) is the only Jewish holiday with no fixed day on the calendar—it is always the fiftieth day from the beginning of the counting of the Omer (which itself starts on the second day of Passover). What is so special about the number 50, and what is its connection to Shavuot? Shavuot is not only the culmination of the counting of the Omer—Sefirat HaOmer—but also the culmination of the process of the maturation of our consciousness. On Shavuot, it is customary to read the Book of Ruth (Megilat Rut). The story begins with Lot and his daughters running away from Sodom and hiding in a mountain cave. Seeing the destruction of Sodom, the daughters of Lot suspected that God, in his fury, destroyed the whole of [...]

Two Beginnings

B’reshit bara Elokim et hashamaim v’et haaretz… In the beginning, G‑d created heaven and earth… Alternative translation: With two beginnings G‑d created heaven and earth… Genesis 1:1   *This is an abridged and updated version of my paper “Towards Reconciliation of Biblical and Cosmological Ages of the Universe” Presented at the Third Miami International Conference on Torah & Science in Dec. of 1999 and published in B’Or HaTorah, 13 (2002) p. 19. Contemporary science places the age of the universe in the thirteen to fourteen billion years range, or 13.787 ± 0.02, [1] to be precise.  This age is derived from both theoretical models as well as experimental data.  (For an overview of theoretical and experimental approaches to dating the universe and our planet Earth see my original paper TOWARDS RECONCILIATION OF BIBLICAL AND [...]

On the Nature of Time and the Age of the Universe

Presented at the International Torah and Science Conference in Miami International University on December 18, 2005 Alexander Poltorak   Introduction. This is the third in a series of articles, in which I attempt to sketch various approaches to reconciling a cosmological age of the universe currently estimated at 13.75 billion years with the Jewish tradition setting this age at less than six thousand years (5770 as of the day of this writing, to be exact). The first article [1] tackled this problem from the point of view of Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics suggesting that there were two distinct forms of existence—physical and proto-physical—and that the first conscious observers, Adam and Eve, collapsed the universal wavefunction, bringing the world from amorphous proto-physical existence into tangible physical existence.  This approach leads to two distinct [...]

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