The Long Way Home 09/06/24

Northshore Journal 

Reading books is my favorite pastime, mainly because I can do it while I’m eating, drinking, or smoking a pipe. 

On the other hand, I should never review books. The following mentions a book and some themes but isn’t a review. But this book is unparalleled if you're seeking a mind-bending exercise that will leave you questioning the very fabric of reality.

Several years ago, my friend Joel asked me to join a business consulting firm he started in Portland, OR. The firm served clients in the freight transportation industry, a business I knew more than a little bit about.

I’d known Joel for a long time. We “came up” in the freight brokering business during the heady years of deregulation in the 1980s. Mutual respect made working together a rewarding experience.

Joel’s management and consulting philosophy centered on the science of quantum physics. This science attempts to explain how the universe works at the smallest scale. It deals in probabilities and observation—measurement.

For business, the probability of success hinges on understanding all the parts and pieces, identifying expected outcomes, and implementing systems to measure progress or its opposite. This is where the practical application of quantum physics in business becomes evident.

He captivated me with the tale of Schrödinger's Cat. Erwin Schrödinger, a Nobel physicist in the mid-20th century, devised a thought experiment: Picture a sealed box with a live cat, a radioactive atom, a Geiger counter, and a vial of poison. The atom has a 50% chance of decaying within an hour. If it decays, the Geiger counter detects the radiation and breaks the vial, killing the cat. According to quantum mechanics, until the box is opened and the cat is observed, it exists in a superposition of both alive and dead states.

As a lightly educated freight broker, I thought this idea seemed offputting. But curiosity eventually got the better of me. I entirely bought into the business side of understanding the essential components of a business, setting objectives, and creating a process to observe and measure outcomes. But I put the idea of Quantum Physics in the pile of ideas gathering dust on my desk.

Not long ago, I found a book, the one referred to above, that rekindled my interest. It is “The Dancing Wu Li Masters, An Overview of the New Physics,” by Gary Zukav. The cover blurb was, “...Gary Zukav opens the fascinating world of quantum physics to readers with no mathematical or technical background.” That’s me.

It goes on, “‘Wu Li’ is the Chinese phrase for physics. It means, ‘patterns of organic energy,’ but it also means ‘nonsense.’” 

If the nonsense of Schrödinger's Cat, mentioned in the book, hooks you, wait until you read about the dancing Wu Li Masters. 

Einstein and the boys found something that appealed to my nonsense side. They found that light, God's creation right after the heavens and the earth, is both particle and wave. A particle is a discrete unit of matter or energy, often visualized as a tiny, localized object. A wave is a disturbance propagating through space, like a pebble dropping in a pond or the radio signals that dominated our life in the 20th century.

Depending on how and when you observe light, it will either be a particle or a wave. But you can’t know, like you can’t know if the cat is alive or dead until you open the box and observe.

After slogging through Zukav’s work, I realized that understanding quantum physics is similar to understanding teenagers. 

Think about Eddie Haskell, Wally Cleaver’s buddy on “Leave it to Beaver,” the sitcom for babyboomers. When observed by Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver, Eddie was the epitome of the perfect young man. Like a particle, he was a tiny, localized character. But when the parental observers looked elsewhere, Eddie was a holy terror without dignity or compassion. 

Quantum physics reinforces that a single observation is never enough to uncover the truth in business or other human interactions. It reminds us to always consider multiple perspectives.