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And non-locality
Non-locality is implied by the quantum jumps made by electrons of an atom when they either are promoted to a higher energy level or fall to a lower level. Quantum theory says they do this without ever being anywhere in between. Non-locality is also implied by a two-slit type experiment using light in which the experimenter delays choosing whether one or both slits are open until after the photon has gone past the slits. If it had to "look back" to see the state of the slits no "signal" could catch up with it.
Requiem
Einstein carried out a life long campaign to find a way to avoid the implications of quantum theory. However, he failed--but died still holding the hope that hidden variables would one day be discovered that explained all of the puzzling observations. The hope was a vain one, the final nail being driven into the coffin of materialist realism by Irish physicist, John Bell in 1965.
To be consistent with material realism, Einstein's hidden variables would have to act in a local fashion as causal agents on quantum objects, their influence travelling through space-time with a finite velocity and during a finite time. Bell suggested a set of mathematical relationships to test the locality of hidden variables. His work also required that, to be compatible with quantum mechanics, hidden variables must be non-local. Bell's postulates were thoroughly tested in the well known experiments of Alain Aspect and co-workers in Paris in 1982.
Interment
The Aspect experiments used polarization-correlated photons that emerged simultaneously and in opposite directions from radioactive calcium. A detector was set up on the path of each beam of photons. The crucial feature of the experiment--the one that made its conclusions irrefutable--was the inclusion of a switch that changed the polarization setting of one of the detectors every ten billionth of a second. This was shorter than the time light would have taken to travel between the two detectors.
The result of the experiment showed that the polarization setting of this detector changed the outcome of the measurement at the other detector in accordance with the predictions of quantum theory and contrary to those of classical physics, thus destroying forever, Einstein's hope that hidden variables would eventually emerge that would restore materialist realism and determinism.
Holism
The evidence from the Aspect and other experiments has the implication that once two particles have interacted with one another, they remain linked in some way, communicating instantaneously and in a manner that is independent of space-time. This forces us to think about the universe holistically, a vast network of interacting particles such that, in some sense, it is a single quantum system.
Of course the total cosmos is so complex and so large that we fail to appreciate this unity except when it is revealed in experiments specially devised to demonstrate the point. However, quantum theory has conclusively shown that the clockwork universe idea is a dead duck.
To be scientifically consistent with empirically demonstrated facts, we must learn to live with intrinsic uncertainty at the quantum level and to consider its wider implications on matters of consciousness, free will, even the criminal's responsibility for his/her actions. The alternative is to bury our heads in the sand, ostrich fashion, and, in doing so, to ignore a full century of extraordinary scientific advances--which is what a majority of scientists and philosophers have done.
Review
Before proceeding to philosophical considerations, let's review some of the major concepts of the quantum world. Radiation, as it is emitted or absorbed by matter is quantized, meaning that it is in discrete packets that are related to the energy levels of electrons accompanying atoms. These packets of light, the photons, have both wave and particle characteristics. Color, for example, is a wave property, but a single photon hitting a sensitive photographic plate registers as a tiny, particle-like spot.
When electrons in an atom "jump" between energy levels, this energy is quantized, an exact amount, that can never be anything in between. These quantum jumps are discontinuous, the electron is either "here" or "there," at "here's" energy level or "there's" energy level. The jump occurs with no movement through space or passage through time. The transition is a non-local event.
Uncertainty
There are correlated properties of a quantum particle that can never be known at the same time. Two of these are momentum (includes speed) and position. Called Heisenberg's
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