Hans-Peter Dürr: The spiritual is the driving force

Let's say I mean I'm a dyed-in-the-wool quantum physicist. So that means that I fully consciously took part in this development that took place at the beginning of this century. It started with Planck, with Einstein and so on. But the important thing is that Planck and Einstein, who started this development, actually didn't believe it. Because they interfered, uncertainty principle and so on and then quantum physics and so on. They said it can only be a transitional stage. And it was the young people, Werner Heisenberg, in whose office I am sitting here, Werner Heisenberg at the age of twenty, who said: this is the breakthrough! We need to see reality totally differently. No longer material, but much more open. 

For these people, the difficulty then arose: how can something that is so open, which could also include people at once, because we never wanted to submit to determinism, because we naturally thought of ourselves as creative. In such an open world, how can you ever find out something like a law of nature? And then you realize: it works. In this potentiality, through these coagulation processes, laws arise that correspond exactly to the laws of classical physics. And that, of course, was the breakthrough. Not that they apply strictly, but that it seems as if they apply. And for us, who want to survive here and have to grasp something to feed ourselves, that's perfectly enough. But it is not enough to understand our origin and understand the world and immediately. I don't call it modern physics, not quantum physics, but holistic physics. The essence of quantum physics was that we say, strictly speaking, we can no longer speak of parts. There's no such thing as parts. There is always only the whole. But this whole thing is already differentiated. It sort of has fences and boundaries, but that's more like the waves on the surface of the ocean, and one shouldn't say the ocean is made up of waves. That doesn't do it at all. But if I look superficially, that's true. The surface of the ocean is made up of waves , that's a pretty good description and for the superficial thinker that's good too. Even someone who operates shipping is not interested in what is two kilometers under the ocean. He says: well, I have to watch out for and manipulate this wave now and I have to avoid it. That is, for him the surface structure of the ocean is much more important than the interconnectedness of the sea.

There isn't just the Big Bang theory, but that's the one that 's actually the most accepted at the moment. I would guess that the big bang theory as it stands now isn't correct either. For me, it is still formulated too much in the old physics, i.e. oriented towards matter. And I believe that when we get to the point where cosmology will also be written in the language of modern physics, that is quantum theory for me, that we will then have a different formulation.

The old notion is that we actually start with a material base. It used to be said that there were atoms that always rearranged themselves differently. And then you ask yourself: why do they organize themselves in such a way that we end up with such a complex system as humans? The modern idea is: no, matter itself is already a result of a development. In the beginning there was the possibility, the potential, something that is always holistic, which of course somehow already had all future possibilities built in, but not in the realized form, which is now beginning to take shape. The laws of nature also do not apply in the way we believe, in the old mechanistic form, that something runs like clockwork, but the laws of nature are also just a result of evolution, that they have developed, presumably in a way that other avenues of statutory order were possible, but it then latched onto a specific one way, almost like a kind of habit. Well, it always occurs to me, when I'm on the train and it starts to rain and I see the water running down the window, you have to watch out for the water trying to come down. There it comes down in the most crooked ways. But once it finds a path, all the water goes that way . And then I follow and ask: Why did the water go exactly this way? There could also have been another path, but once it has found the way, then it becomes a kind of natural law for the flow of water. 

This is how the laws came about and I believe that biology and physics, which are seen as something opposite, physics rigid and subject to its laws, biology somehow more open, especially if we want to include ourselves; we don't want to be clockwork, we are actually malleable. For me, the potentiality is actually the spiritual, what we call spirit, also uniform, there is not left half and right half of the spirit: always uniform, as if from a thought, no, from a hunch, I should say. A hunch at the beginning, from which concrete thoughts form, just like in our heads; but the question of why exactly this thought and no other is not predetermined. And that's why there isn't, so to speak, the goal: We as people, as a goal, but something similar, just as I know very well that some thought arises in my head, but maybe this thought or that thought. If we ask how did life come about and we start with the amino acids, then we can of course describe what is necessary to lead to these structures, and it is similar if we ask how it is that we assemble a car. 

Everything that defines a car afterwards has of course also come into being due to the laws of nature, so that I brought certain materials into contact and they did exactly what corresponds to their laws. But how did you manage to create the conditions that exactly these materials came together in the form. So the logistics in the background, that's the real difficulty, the logistics In the case of car construction, of course: our plan to build a car, and that there were engineers who planned it. We don't have to imagine logistics as a car manufacturer who says: I want to build a car, but who knew that a certain affinity could be created here, which would lead to the creation of structures that have greater flexibility by I can then make other things that I can assemble to have even more flexibility. I would like to compare it to writing a poem. That is, nature, as it were, intends to write a poem, but she does not know which poem will be written. But she sees that if she has letters that would now fight each other to see which letter is better, there will never be a poem. But there is also the possibility that A and B arrange themselves, maybe add an L and then suddenly form a combination that corresponds to a blah blah, which is already a form of expression that is higher than any letter, which is now proving its worth . And this blah differentiates and makes sensible words that are even more flexible and can now form sentences that make sense. That's evolution, so to speak. But the poem that emerges at the end is not predetermined. But a poem that is differentiated, because this poem can express things that have, so to speak, an enormous number of dimensions, and that is then important for the organism's ability to survive. Survival is important after all, but in a much more sophisticated way of playing together.

The entire origin of life can be easily explained chemically. But what we cannot understand: how did it happen that exactly the things came together to make this quite improbable possible. That's where the idea comes in, so to speak, that here simply throwing the dice all the time and then we do the math. I mean, if you roll the dice, how likely is it that something like this will happen? And then you say: yes, it can happen. But so many improbabilities in such a short time, it's practically impossible. Then you think about acceleration mechanisms. In my opinion, the resolution lies in this: nobody ever rolls anything. It's like doing something with my right hand and my left hand and putting my fingers together and then asking, what's the probability that they meet? It is arbitrarily small if they are not parts of the same body! They are never separated, they always know about each other. That means: everything that happens is only a development of the one thing that is at the beginning, and then such improbabilities happen. It 's not a dice action, it's something connected with an intention, spontaneous intention. Or that I am guided by ideas that I had before. Again this thought: How does a hunch become a special thought when you wake up in the morning and say: what am I going to do today? You don't say it yet, it's in your head as soon as your day comes. And if someone asks you, what do you do? Then all of a sudden that hunch shrinks to this and that, independently of each other, and these thoughts have nothing to do with each other. And yet they came out of the same soup that we used to call a hunch. 

This is how the world came into being and therefore it is not pure probability and coincidence that it is. If we now look back at the development of life, then we see that very specific conditions are necessary. Already in our planetary system we see that the earth is the only planet that fulfills these conditions. It is large enough that it can hold certain substances, for example hydrogen, and not release it into space, there is enough mass for that. He is a certain distance from the sun. This is important for the temperature, because here we walked through a zone where water could rain down and oceans could form. All of these things are important. And if we look at it from our point of view, we say: isn't that just a coincidence? Yes, I mean, if we imagine the big universe and how many planets there are there, we don't usually see them, we only see the suns, then we say: Yes, we live exactly where we were able to. It's not just that the world, the earth, is alive. It's a living organism. The whole matter has to be included. It is also alive in that sense. That is, instead of building up the living from totems and asking, what do I have to do when organizing the logistics of the dead so that something living comes out of it at the end? You have enormous difficulties there, because you only get complicated robots, but never anyone who says: cognito ergo sum – I think, therefore I am me. But you have to start right from the start with what we call vitality. We can say: life is much more fundamental than matter. That means the processual, the creative, the constantly changing. And the fact that there are also things in this stream of changes that don't change is a minor matter, but very important, because it is very important for us that we keep recognizing the things we are used to.

I share this idea that there is a plan, that is, that in a certain way there is a goal that we are developing towards. I see the difficulty we have when we believe that we are in a development here where, in a sense, by trial and error, practically through a great game of dice and subsequent selection, a person is finally wobbled down. In principle you can imagine it like this, but if you think about how long something like this would take, then it is far from enough , these three and a half billion years. That means you get the impression that something has to come together somewhere, that it's not a game of dice, that is, dice are thrown becomes like in gambling, where each throw is practically independent. Modern physics shows, but here is a way out that we find: there is nothing independent that plays with each other, but everything is linked from the beginning. And that's why the game that nature shows us isn't a game of dice, it's actually more like a game played by a child who plays with a certain, let's say, anticipation of what it actually wants to play . Not that it has a specific goal in mind, but it's played within a certain context. Then we can achieve what we actually want much faster. 

The reason is that modern physics says again and again that the basis of physics is not matter, so reality is not reality in the sense of a material reality, but that there is something in the background that we call potentiality in physics. That means, it is the possibility of realizing oneself in every moment, only the possibility. It's something that's up in the air. So it's more like when we have a hunch in our head, a hunch as opposed to a concrete thought that we're thinking about. The hunch leaves everything open. But the hunch isn't, so to speak, that it's all in our heads. It already has a shape. In the beginning there is a figure. It is something that belongs together, something that is holistic. So there are no parts that develop into more and more concrete forms in the course of evolution, in particular begin to coagulate, which we then call matter. And we look at the matter and think: this is the essential. Matter, however, is exactly that part of evolution that no longer takes part in evolution, that is skeletonized, so to speak, ossified and, so to speak, only serves as a framework for what actually supports evolution. Evolution itself is open. It is actually not an evolution in the sense of an unfolding, but a new creation in every moment. 

If we ask whether there is a transcendent dimension here, i.e. what one usually associates with the divine in some way, then I can say in a certain way: yes. But it's not of the kind that we then associate with the concept of force, because for me force already has a direction and so on. The transcendence consists in the fact that it permits the possibility of concrete formation. And in this design process, not only is each part involved in isolation, but in the end the creation of the world is always a total work of art in the next moment, in which we are all involved, and not only to a certain extent we as humans with our consciousness, wherever we are intentions, but everything that is there in the world participates, so to speak, in the new creation of the world. And of course there are a few bores among them who, so to speak, when you say, the world will be drawing in the next moment, and they say: I can't think of anything. If someone can't think of anything, then he behaves like matter. This glass is a bore, because I have the glass now and in the next moment and it's the same glass, he couldn't think of anything else but to be the same again. And that's what we call matter. That's coagulated spirit, that's just everyone who can't think of anything anymore, and the point is that we take the matter so seriously because it doesn't change over time. We shouldn't consider them important, because matter can't think of anything more than itself. We should care about those who think of something new every moment, and then we should put people back in the foreground.

Modern physics, in which matter appears as something visible to our eyes only in great detail, and which is so important to us because our minds are designed to manipulate the world, i.e. to grasp it with our hands - it overlooks the fact that at the bottom and the origin of all this being is actually the spirit, which does not yet have this material form, and that what is matter ultimately comes into being through a coagulation of the spirit. That's why I always say that matter is the crust of the spirit. And if only I had the crust then I don't understand at all what the ground of this world is. Because exactly what coagulated there is no longer part of evolution, so to speak, but is only used as a means and tool to prepare for the next stages of evolution. The driving force is always the spiritual. This means that if we as humans have the impression that we can shape the future, that is no illusion. The future is open and we are really, really creative in shaping the future. The future is not a past that is not yet known, but the future is really open and that is why we also need the instrument of hope, because hope gives us a picture of how we want to shape the future, and hope can be realized, and we are not totally bound, just simply shifting matter. And that is of course important for us, if we sometimes despair, don't say that this will necessarily happen with one hundred percent certainty because of the laws of nature, no: the laws of nature tell us that we can also do something with the future that has not existed before has.

I want to suggest that what a scientist calls reality is actually not reality itself, but only how it appears to him. And I take the parable of a fisherman who wants to explore the world, he only catches fish and after years of fishing he comes to the first basic law of fishing. First basic law: all fish are larger than five centimeters. Second basic law: all fish have gills. Why does he call it the Basic Law? Because with every catch it has come true, and he therefore assumes it will continue to do so in the future. On the way home he meets the philosopher, the metaphysician, and tells him about his great discovery, and he tells him: Well, listen, your second basic law with the gills might be a law, but your first one certainly is n't. If you had measured the mesh size of your net, you would have found it to be two inches. So you can't catch any fish smaller than two inches. But the fisherman is not impressed at all. He says: sorry, for me as a fisherman something I can't catch with the net is not a fish. 

I transfer this image to the natural sciences, which always claim that they have found something here and that is a property of nature and not rather a way in which nature reveals itself to them through its methods, measuring methods and so on. But the most decisive thing is not just the methodology, but our way of thinking, when we realize that we always think by analyzing, by fragmenting, by taking things apart. That is, what kind of reality do I see when I approach this tool in my head? And that's very important to know, because we're so proud of our intellectual abilities, our minds: is our mind really suited to comprehending reality as such, or is it just an instrument that the body has created for itself, that of evolution to make our hand a little more dexterous so that we can find the apple on the tree that we need for our sustenance? Isn't our mind an instrument that is vital to our own survival? I think it's because whatever we see, we always insist that we get it. That means we can practically get our hands on it . And now the interesting thing is, how far can we, with a mind that's only supposed to allow us to survive, how far can we also see with that mind, what holds the world together? And the new experience of science is that the world, the actual reality, has a different structure than the one that is comprehensible. And now we're in trouble, because if we can't understand something, if we can't represent it as if it were an object that we can hold in our hands, how are we supposed to express it in language, which is also reflected in the objects formed? That's the difficulty that the modern physics has. So we have to talk about fish smaller than two inches. Perhaps I should also say that there is also a fundamental dispute as to the extent to which we actually have to fall back on these things. Because the fisherman says, yes, sorry, there could be fish smaller than two inches, but when I go to the marketplace and sell my fish, nobody has ever been interested in fish that I can't catch . From an economic point of view, that means it is actually uninteresting, but philosophically it is of course important when we ask the question: Where do we actually come from as human beings? How did the universe come into being? 

Then it's something that doesn't matter at all to our survival. These questions are not important, that's what happened. But we as humans, we are interested in these questions and then the question is: how can we even be interested in something that our minds cannot grasp? And there is an explanation too. Because we as humans and in general as everything that is here in this world are always connected to the whole, we have a memory of what we are embedded in. And that's what we actually call our religious relationship to reality, that we ask ourselves questions that we can't understand. And our colloquial language is full of terms that are actually incomprehensible. When we talk about loyalty, when we talk about love, about trust, that's not something we can understand. And yet we can understand each other and we can assume that the other understands what we mean. We may not always know. Someone who has never been in love probably won't know when I'm talking about love. But I 'm going to assume that as a human being he also had this experience. But it is incomprehensible. And this is why our questions actually arise: where do we come from? What connects us? What is the meaning of our existence? And it's very difficult to get an answer that's comprehensible in that sense.

For me, the idea of ​​stardust is the old idea of ​​imagining reality as reality, as physical reality, as if we could describe reality as an interplay of things, objects, matter. But if I picture it as modern physics says: reality is potentiality, which is something that is not yet matter, something, we always say, that is not yet substance, but already has shape. It's very difficult for us to imagine: something that has shape but has no support. For us, in our view, shape only makes sense, for example the shape of this glass - I need materials and ask: how is it designed? But we cannot imagine form without substance. That doesn't fit into our comprehensible physics, our mind doesn't understand it. But it is like that. In the beginning we have form, this form that takes everything together, it is always there. In the course of evolution, it begins to differentiate and makes matter and forms what we then call stardust, i.e. what then accumulates here in the spiral nebulae. Now the question is, will it ever go back to stardust, because something that was just shape and then took on a material form, it's like a coagulation process - does it ever go back? In my opinion, that is not said. That is, It may be that the transformation of spirit and matter only goes in one direction. Spirit can become matter, but matter can no longer become spirit. Rather: we as humans have a physical body, that's the part that we can grasp, we take it so terribly important, but we are actually always a part of this one spirit, because the spirit is not divisible. 

So I actually have more of the image when I think of myself or think of people, more than an ocean, which is always an ocean that now makes waves in the wind and forms it foam crests and these white foam crests look at each other and say: you are separated from me. Each is an individual, independent of the other, but they have two kilometers of ocean beneath them. They are not separated at all, only the wave pretends that they are separated, and that is visible to us and the white of the foam crest is the material thing, so to speak, we take that terribly seriously. When we die, we sink back into the oceans. That means that as spiritual beings we don't actually disappear, but we go back to where we came out of.