What matters to us, in the crises you list, are the futures before us in time and space, in the differentiated world where we make our lives. So we should get rid of time and space and then ... what? The crises go away, because quantum numbers have no time and space? Or we go away, because we've lost our separate identities, and thus our duties, as distinct beings, to strive to resolve our crises and bring into being a better world?
There have been other physicists who have advocated that we abandon metaphysics and "just calculate", i.e. just do the numbers. Where is moral value to be found if we take existence to be, at base, just math? Might this be a reductio ad absurdum, an illustration of the sort of run-away rationality which McGilchrist (as perhaps a run-away anti-rationalist) rails against?
Likely I'm missing something. Has Vedral published something on this which is not behind a paywall (as the New Scientist is)?
Your concerns are exactly the right ones, and I think there’s been a miscommunication about what this recognition implies. Let me try to clarify, because you’re absolutely right that this opens the way to a shared moral compass - that’s precisely the point!
We Don’t Lose the World - We Find It
When Vedral talks about quantum numbers rather than particles in space and time, he’s not saying we should abandon the physical world. He’s saying that what we experience as “solid objects moving through space” is actually stable patterns of relationship.
Think of a marriage. Recognising that a marriage is a relationship, not a thing, doesn’t make the marriage disappear. It reveals what marriage actually IS - an ongoing pattern of commitment, care, and connection between two people. The relationship is MORE real than any certificate or ring.
Similarly, recognising that you and I are relational patterns doesn’t dissolve our identities. It reveals that our identities ARE our relationships - with other people, with the Earth, with ourselves across time. You’re still Whit, with all your particular history, responsibilities, and connections. But now you understand that “Whit” names a unique pattern of relationships, not an isolated object.
This Grounds Morality MORE Deeply, Not Less
You ask “where is moral value to be found if we take existence to be, at base, just math?” But it’s not “just math” - mathematics describes relationships, and relationships ARE the ground of morality.
Consider Jesus’s teaching that you reference. “Love your neighbour as yourself” only makes sense if self and neighbour are already connected. The Golden Rule assumes we’re related, not separate. When Jesus says “whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me,” he’s describing reality as fundamentally relational.
The physics is confirming what the contemplatives always knew: we’re not separate beings who might choose to care about others. We’re expressions of a unified reality, temporarily differentiated but never separated. Harm to others literally IS harm to self because self and other arise from the same relational ground.
The Crises Become MORE Urgent, Not Less
You’re concerned that recognising reality as relational might make our crises disappear or excuse us from addressing them. The opposite is true.
If we’re separate objects, climate change is someone else’s problem - future generations’, other species’, distant nations’. But if we’re all patterns in the same relational web, then destroying the climate is literally destroying ourselves. We can’t externalise the costs because there is no “external.”
This doesn’t mean we “lose our separate identities and thus our duties.” It means our duties become clearer and more urgent. Just as recognising that your body is a community of cells doesn’t excuse you from taking care of it - it explains WHY you must take care of it - recognising ourselves as part of Earth’s living system explains why we must act.
It’s Not Reductionism - It’s Recognition
McGilchrist rails against the left-hemisphere’s tendency to reduce reality to mechanical parts. But recognising reality as relational is the OPPOSITE of reductionism. It’s seeing the whole, the connections, the meaning that emerges from relationship.
A piece of music isn’t “just math” because it follows mathematical ratios. The mathematics describes the relationships between notes that create beauty and meaning. Similarly, reality being mathematical at base doesn’t reduce it to numbers - it reveals that even mathematics is about patterns and relationships, not isolated quantities.
The Practical Path Forward
The recognition that regulation is embedded in patterns, never imposed from outside, gives us practical guidance:
• Instead of trying to control climate from outside (geoengineering), we strengthen Earth’s own regulatory systems (forests, wetlands, soils)
• Instead of managing communities from above, we return power to those embedded in local relationships
• Instead of treating depression as individual brain chemistry, we recognise it often emerges from isolation and heal it through reconnection
You’re Right About the Shared Moral Compass
This is what’s so exciting - science and contemplative traditions ARE converging on the same insight. Not because science proves spirituality or spirituality validates science, but because both are recognising the same pattern:
• Reality is relational
• We’re participants, not observers
• Everything affects everything
• Love/compassion/care emerge naturally from recognising our connection
• Harm to others is harm to self
• The path forward is deeper participation, not better control
This doesn’t diminish our individual responsibilities - it reveals WHY we have them and HOW to fulfill them. Not through external management but through recognising and strengthening the relationships that constitute us.
The crises don’t go away. But we stop trying to solve them using the mindset that created them (separation, control, extraction) and start addressing them through the wisdom that’s emerging (relationship, participation, regeneration).
Does this help clarify? The recognition doesn’t take us away from the world - it brings us more fully into it, with clearer vision and deeper moral grounding.
With appreciation for your thoughtful engagement,
Terry
PS. I have read only the New Scientist article, I’m afraid .
Hi Terry. Delayed response due to, well, life, not disinterest.
Why should we posit an opposition between objects and relations? Even if we take on the premise that it's relations between relations all the way down, with ultimately no object except the universe itself, still more stable patterns of relations can be usefully conceived as objects. To view the table I'm resting my elbows on as I type as just a mostly-void space encompassing a set of relations between atoms is, aside from the poetic fancy, worthless in terms of ... well ... resting my elbows.
That you are extracting meaning from the suggestions of that writer -- this is extraction, right? And that you're separating one mindset from another -- separation. And then in urging we favor one mindset over another -- control. Now, we're in an area where a taste for Zen paradox may be essential; the direction you're pointing in I largely agree with. Recognizing it's a valuable direction towards worthy goals is a positive step. The next step is the practical matter of establishing clear paths to it. A lot of us are stumbling around in these areas, and sometimes finding ourselves in beautiful places. Maybe the best we can do is encourage others to share similar visions of these good goals; but of even greater value will be if we can establish paths, not just to return to these spaces more consistently ourselves, but to share directions with others, and accelerate, as it were, these spaces' colonization.
Having a theory is not the same as practice. A theory of electricity does not light your house. Nor does a recipe cook your dinner. So to describe the practice here, if your theory is good, still requires more particulars, practical ways to place objects in the relationships which produce real-world results. Again, I like the direction of your theory. So I'm asking, How do we get light, or dinner from it? And not just abstractly, metaphorically. We need a far better electrical grid, and wiser food production, with distinct urgency.
I don't doubt the approach you urge is applicable. Honestly, I'd like to see if there are clearer ways to specify its application.
Reading back, I can feel how much I wanted to clarify—and maybe came in a bit strong with ideas. I’m really open to how this lands for you, Whit. I don’t want to just lay out arguments—I want to stay in the inquiry, if you’re up for it.
What matters to us, in the crises you list, are the futures before us in time and space, in the differentiated world where we make our lives. So we should get rid of time and space and then ... what? The crises go away, because quantum numbers have no time and space? Or we go away, because we've lost our separate identities, and thus our duties, as distinct beings, to strive to resolve our crises and bring into being a better world?
There have been other physicists who have advocated that we abandon metaphysics and "just calculate", i.e. just do the numbers. Where is moral value to be found if we take existence to be, at base, just math? Might this be a reductio ad absurdum, an illustration of the sort of run-away rationality which McGilchrist (as perhaps a run-away anti-rationalist) rails against?
Likely I'm missing something. Has Vedral published something on this which is not behind a paywall (as the New Scientist is)?
Hi Whit,
Your concerns are exactly the right ones, and I think there’s been a miscommunication about what this recognition implies. Let me try to clarify, because you’re absolutely right that this opens the way to a shared moral compass - that’s precisely the point!
We Don’t Lose the World - We Find It
When Vedral talks about quantum numbers rather than particles in space and time, he’s not saying we should abandon the physical world. He’s saying that what we experience as “solid objects moving through space” is actually stable patterns of relationship.
Think of a marriage. Recognising that a marriage is a relationship, not a thing, doesn’t make the marriage disappear. It reveals what marriage actually IS - an ongoing pattern of commitment, care, and connection between two people. The relationship is MORE real than any certificate or ring.
Similarly, recognising that you and I are relational patterns doesn’t dissolve our identities. It reveals that our identities ARE our relationships - with other people, with the Earth, with ourselves across time. You’re still Whit, with all your particular history, responsibilities, and connections. But now you understand that “Whit” names a unique pattern of relationships, not an isolated object.
This Grounds Morality MORE Deeply, Not Less
You ask “where is moral value to be found if we take existence to be, at base, just math?” But it’s not “just math” - mathematics describes relationships, and relationships ARE the ground of morality.
Consider Jesus’s teaching that you reference. “Love your neighbour as yourself” only makes sense if self and neighbour are already connected. The Golden Rule assumes we’re related, not separate. When Jesus says “whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me,” he’s describing reality as fundamentally relational.
The physics is confirming what the contemplatives always knew: we’re not separate beings who might choose to care about others. We’re expressions of a unified reality, temporarily differentiated but never separated. Harm to others literally IS harm to self because self and other arise from the same relational ground.
The Crises Become MORE Urgent, Not Less
You’re concerned that recognising reality as relational might make our crises disappear or excuse us from addressing them. The opposite is true.
If we’re separate objects, climate change is someone else’s problem - future generations’, other species’, distant nations’. But if we’re all patterns in the same relational web, then destroying the climate is literally destroying ourselves. We can’t externalise the costs because there is no “external.”
This doesn’t mean we “lose our separate identities and thus our duties.” It means our duties become clearer and more urgent. Just as recognising that your body is a community of cells doesn’t excuse you from taking care of it - it explains WHY you must take care of it - recognising ourselves as part of Earth’s living system explains why we must act.
It’s Not Reductionism - It’s Recognition
McGilchrist rails against the left-hemisphere’s tendency to reduce reality to mechanical parts. But recognising reality as relational is the OPPOSITE of reductionism. It’s seeing the whole, the connections, the meaning that emerges from relationship.
A piece of music isn’t “just math” because it follows mathematical ratios. The mathematics describes the relationships between notes that create beauty and meaning. Similarly, reality being mathematical at base doesn’t reduce it to numbers - it reveals that even mathematics is about patterns and relationships, not isolated quantities.
The Practical Path Forward
The recognition that regulation is embedded in patterns, never imposed from outside, gives us practical guidance:
• Instead of trying to control climate from outside (geoengineering), we strengthen Earth’s own regulatory systems (forests, wetlands, soils)
• Instead of managing communities from above, we return power to those embedded in local relationships
• Instead of treating depression as individual brain chemistry, we recognise it often emerges from isolation and heal it through reconnection
You’re Right About the Shared Moral Compass
This is what’s so exciting - science and contemplative traditions ARE converging on the same insight. Not because science proves spirituality or spirituality validates science, but because both are recognising the same pattern:
• Reality is relational
• We’re participants, not observers
• Everything affects everything
• Love/compassion/care emerge naturally from recognising our connection
• Harm to others is harm to self
• The path forward is deeper participation, not better control
This doesn’t diminish our individual responsibilities - it reveals WHY we have them and HOW to fulfill them. Not through external management but through recognising and strengthening the relationships that constitute us.
The crises don’t go away. But we stop trying to solve them using the mindset that created them (separation, control, extraction) and start addressing them through the wisdom that’s emerging (relationship, participation, regeneration).
Does this help clarify? The recognition doesn’t take us away from the world - it brings us more fully into it, with clearer vision and deeper moral grounding.
With appreciation for your thoughtful engagement,
Terry
PS. I have read only the New Scientist article, I’m afraid .
Hi Terry. Delayed response due to, well, life, not disinterest.
Why should we posit an opposition between objects and relations? Even if we take on the premise that it's relations between relations all the way down, with ultimately no object except the universe itself, still more stable patterns of relations can be usefully conceived as objects. To view the table I'm resting my elbows on as I type as just a mostly-void space encompassing a set of relations between atoms is, aside from the poetic fancy, worthless in terms of ... well ... resting my elbows.
That you are extracting meaning from the suggestions of that writer -- this is extraction, right? And that you're separating one mindset from another -- separation. And then in urging we favor one mindset over another -- control. Now, we're in an area where a taste for Zen paradox may be essential; the direction you're pointing in I largely agree with. Recognizing it's a valuable direction towards worthy goals is a positive step. The next step is the practical matter of establishing clear paths to it. A lot of us are stumbling around in these areas, and sometimes finding ourselves in beautiful places. Maybe the best we can do is encourage others to share similar visions of these good goals; but of even greater value will be if we can establish paths, not just to return to these spaces more consistently ourselves, but to share directions with others, and accelerate, as it were, these spaces' colonization.
Having a theory is not the same as practice. A theory of electricity does not light your house. Nor does a recipe cook your dinner. So to describe the practice here, if your theory is good, still requires more particulars, practical ways to place objects in the relationships which produce real-world results. Again, I like the direction of your theory. So I'm asking, How do we get light, or dinner from it? And not just abstractly, metaphorically. We need a far better electrical grid, and wiser food production, with distinct urgency.
I don't doubt the approach you urge is applicable. Honestly, I'd like to see if there are clearer ways to specify its application.
Reading back, I can feel how much I wanted to clarify—and maybe came in a bit strong with ideas. I’m really open to how this lands for you, Whit. I don’t want to just lay out arguments—I want to stay in the inquiry, if you’re up for it.