LS,

Parallels drawn between consciousness and quantum mechanics are relatively popular today, but I'm interested in the history of these parallels. I know James Jeans noted that the quantum world behaves 'thought-like', but Max Born seems to have made a more explicit parallel, as I read in the Classic of Wolfgang Koehler (1959)(Gestalt Psychology Today):

"Max Planck once told me that he expected our approach to clarify a difficult issue which had just arisen in quantum physics if not the concept of the quantum itself. Several Years later Max Born, the great physicist who gave quantum mechanics its present form, made almost the same statement in one of his papers."

I wonder if anyone knows what paper this might be. Also, I'm interested if someone knows of a scientist having drawn parallels between consciousness and perhaps Gestalt Psychology in particular) and quantum mechanics, before say 1950.

Friendly greetings, Patrick.

-- Patrick van den Berg (cirandar@yahoo.com), February 15, 2003

Answers

You might contact the Max Born Institute at http://www.mbi- berlin.de/en/ to see if someone there can answer this question.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), February 18, 2003.