[extropy-chat] Feynman on Freud?

[scerir]

"[...].In this connection, the historical information
in your letter about the use of terminology by
psychologists was very valuable to me, and I was
glad that you on the whole sympathize with my
approach. Indeed, contrary to some of our common
friends seem to believe of me, I have always sought
scientific inspiration in epistemology, rather than
in mysticism, and how horrifying it may sound, I am
at present endeavouring by exactitude as regards
logic to leave room for emotions.[...]"
- N.Bohr to W.Pauli, 2 march 1955
(N.Bohr, Collected Works, vol. 10, p.567)

Pauli and Bohr were discussing about the "detachment"
between the "observer" and the "observed", i.e. during
measurements, and in general. They also discussed 
about psychoanalysis, in few - but long - letters. 

Especially W.Pauli was very technical because - as it 
is well known - he was a real expert on that subject 
(Zurich, C.G.Jung, synchronycity, and all that).

Bohr, on his side, was a great fan of Eastern Religions
(and also "soap operas", during the Los Alamos years). 

In the "Celebrazione del Secondo Centenario della Nascita
di Luigi Galvani - Bologna - 18-21 Ottobre 1937-XV"
he gave a speech and said: "For a parallel to the lesson
of atomic theory regarding the limited applicability of
such customary idealisations, we must in fact turn to
quite other branches of science, such as psychology, or even 
to that kind of epistemological problems with which
already thinkers like BUDDHA and LAO TSE have been confronted,
when trying to harmonize our position as spectators
and actors in the great drama of existence."

In the paper "Unity of Knowledge" - Address
delivered at a Conference celebrating the Bicentennial
of Columbia Univesity, N.Y., on 28 October 1954 -
Doubleday & Co., N.Y., 1954 - he speaks of conscious
phenomena, memory (physical irreversibility),
"subconsciousness" (quantum reversibility), complementarity,
"confusion of the egos". Bohr wrote: "Incidentally,
medical use of psychoanalytical treatment in curing
neurosis may be said to restore balance in the content
of the memory of the patient by bringing him new conscious
experience rather than by helping him to fathom the
abysses of his subconsciousness."

And W. Pauli commented (letter to Bohr, Feb. 15, 1955): 
"I am quite glad about this [the above by Bohr] sentence, 
as logic is always the weakest spot of all medical therapeuts, 
who never learned the rigorous logical demands of mathematics."
And then: "Historically the word "the unconscious" was used
by Germa philosophers of the last century, particularly by
E. von Hartmann, (also E.G. Careus), developing further
older allusions of Leibniz and Kant. The Psycholamarckist
A. Pauly [August Pauly, 1850-1914, German zoologist], on
whom we spoke already, quoted von Hartmann in 1905 (Freud
was not known to him), when he called processes of biological
adaptation, already in plants, an "*unconscious* judgement
of the psyche of the organisms"."

Needless to say some of these arguments, or analogies, are 
still on the table.

In example so long as one keeps to the present formalism 
(see Kochen-Specker theorem) what we call the result of a 
quantum measurement of the "observable" X, cannot depend *only* 
on X and on the state of the (quantum) system (unless the 
wavefunction is an eigenstate of X). It also depends,
in a way still obscure, on the *choice* of other (quantum) 
measurements that *may* be performed (but are not performed, 
actually). These (at least apparent) "potentialities"
(Heisenberg) or "propensities" (Popper) have something in
common with the, so called, "abyss" of the psyche.

As Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker said "Nature is older than 
man, and man is older than science." (The History of Nature,
London, 1951, in page 8 in the original German edition of
1948).