Jack Sarfatti
Encyclopedia
Jack Sarfatti is an American theoretical physicist
specializing in the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness
. Working largely outside academia, he argues that mind
may be crucial to the structure of matter, that retrocausality
may be possible, and that physics—which he calls the "Conceptual Art of the late 20th Century"—has replaced philosophy as the unifying force between science and art.
Sarfatti was part of an informal group of physicists in California known as the Fundamental Fysiks Group
, who in the 1970s, according to David Kaiser
, a physicist and historian of science at MIT, helped to nurture some of the alternative ideas in quantum physics that today form the basis of quantum information science
.
He was co-author, along with physicist Fred Alan Wolf
, of Bob Toben's Space-Time and Beyond (1975), and has self-published three of his own books, Space-Time And Beyond II (2002), Destiny Matrix (2002), and Super Cosmos (2005).
in Flatbush, Brooklyn, graduating in 1956. In 1960 he obtained his B.A. in physics in 1960 from Cornell University, and in 1963 published his first paper, "Quantum-Mechanical Correlation Theory of Electromagnetic Fields," in Nuovo Cimento, the journal of the Italian Physical Society. He obtained his M.S. in physics in 1967 from the University of California, San Diego, and his Ph.D. in 1969 from the University of California, Riverside—where he studied under Fred Cummings
—for a thesis entitled "Gauge Invariance in the Theory of Superfluidity." He and Cummings co-wrote a paper, "Beyond the Hartree-Fock Theory in Superfluid Helium," published in Physica Scripta in 1970.
. He also studied at the Cornell Space Science Centre, the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment, and the Max Planck Institute in Munich. In 1973–1974 he conducted research into mini black holes at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, after which he left academia.
Sarfatti was one of a group of around 10 physicists in the San Francisco area in the 1970s who became part of the Fundamental Fysiks Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
. Apart from Sarfatti, the group included its founder Elizabeth Rauscher
, as well as Henry Stapp
, Fred Alan Wolf
, Nick Herbert
, Fritjof Capra
, John Clauser
, Philippe Eberhard, Saul-Paul Sirag, and George Weissman—a "very smart and very playful" group, according to Kaiser, with Sarfatti as the star. Some of them held jobs within academia, but others had been left under-employed when the post-war boom in physics ended. Kaiser writes that, holding PhDs in theoretical physics from elite universities, they tried to carve out new roles for themselves, writing about quantum mysticism
and becoming part of the Bay Area's counterculture and New Age
movement. Sarfatti's involvement with these issues did not advance his academic career, though he regarded his exile from academia as self-imposed.
According to Kaiser, quantum theory—particularly Bell's theorem
and the concept of quantum entanglement
—had raised questions about parapsychology
and issues such as telepathy
. In How the Hippies Saved Physics (2011), he explains how the Fundamental Fysiks Group cultivated patrons outside academia, including the human potential movement (see below), who they hoped might be interested in the broader application of these ideas. There was also significant government interest. The Central Intelligence Agency
and Defense Intelligence Agency
set up a program called ESPionage, financing experiments into telepathy and remote viewing
to the tune of tens of millions each year. The research was conducted by the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), where Sarfatti and the Fundamental Fysiks Group became what Kaiser calls its "house theorists."
, an Israeli who had become known for his assertion that he could bend spoons
and make watches start or stop by using only what he said were his thoughts. The SRI had begun to study Geller in its parapsychology lab in 1972 to determine whether he was using psychokinesis
; the studies were led by laser physicists Russell Targ
and Harold Puthoff, and resulted in a paper in Nature in October 1974. Sarfatti and the group were asked to use quantum theory, and specifically Bell's theorem, to explain what Kaiser said looked like a robust experimental result.
Sarfatti organized follow-up tests at Birkbeck College, London. The study was led by John Hasted
, and on June 21 and 22, 1974, Hasted and Sarfatti joined David Bohm
, Arthur Koestler
, Arthur C. Clarke
, and two of Geller's associates, Ted Bastin and Brendan O'Regan, to watch Geller display what he said were his psychokinetic powers. Geller bent four brass Yale keys and a 1 cm disk, affected a Geiger counter and deflected a compass needle. New Scientist wrote at the time that any good magician could have bent the keys, no matter how closely the observers believed they were watching. Sarfatti issued two press releases saying he believed Geller had demonstrated genuine psycho-energetic ability, statements that were picked up by Science News and the international media, though he later retracted his view.
In San Francisco, the Fundamental Fysiks Group became local celebrities, in part because of the Geller research. When the film director Francis Ford Coppola
bought out City Magazine in San Francisco in 1975, one of its earliest features was a photo spread of Sarfatti, Saul-Paul Sirag, Fred Alan Wolf, and Nick Herbert (see external link to image below right), an article that cemented their position within the local counter-cultural community. The spread played up what Kaiser called their "guru" status, and discussed the group "going into trances, working at telepathy, and dipping into their subconscious in experiments toward psychic mobility."
were also interested in applying ideas from quantum theory. Werner Erhard
, the founder of Erhard Seminars Training, or EST, believed there had to be a way to use quantum theory to expand human consciousness. He moved to the Bay Area and came into contact with Sarfatti and Fred Alan Wolf. According to Kaiser, they hit it off, and had their lawyers formally create a non-profit think tank called the Physics-Consciousness Research Group—with Sarfatti as president, and Saul-Paul Sirag vice-president—into which Erhard and others funneled significant amounts of money. The group gave local lectures, published pamphlets, and wrote an opera about quantum physics and the brain, which they staged in a Bay Area park.
Erhard introduced Sarfatti to Michael Murphy
, co-director of the Esalen Institute
in Big Sur
, California, which had become what Kaiser calls an incubator for New-Age ideas and their potential application. In January 1976, Sarfatti and the physics group gathered there for a month-long conference on physics and consciousness. Murphy's announcement of the conference said, "Perhaps a new kind of inspired physicist, experienced in the yogic modes of perception, must emerge to comprehend the further reaches of matter, space, and time." Sarfatti was the conference's intellectual director, and wrote to major figures asking them to address it. Gary Zukav's best-selling The Dancing Wu Li Masters
(1979)—a book about these new ideas—was organized around his attendance at this conference; he and Sarfatti were roommates in North Beach at the time. The conference apart, the Esalen group held regular workshops on quantum theory, with physicists from around the world attending, mixing lectures with yoga and sessions in the hot tubs.
, editor of the prestigious Physical Review
, formally banned discussion of the interpretation of quantum mechanics, drawing up special instructions to referees to reject material that even hinted at the philosophical debate. The new material therefore ended up being distributed in alternative media. One such publication was a hand-typed newsletter called Epistemological Letters, published by a Swiss Foundation. Several eminent physicists and philosophers had to publish their material there—including the Irish physicist John Bell
, the originator of Bell's theorem
—as well as Sarfatti and other members of the Physics-Consciousness Research Group.
The group were also involved in a mailing list, the core members of which were Sarfatti and Fred Alan Wolf, called the Unicorn Preprint Service, which was financed by Ira Einhorn
, an American anti-war and environmental activist with good New York publishing contacts. It was Einhorn who arranged for the publication of Bob Toben's Space-Time and Beyond (1975), co-written by Sarfatti and Wolf. The list distributed articles not published elsewhere, and included some eminent thinkers, people such as Thomas Kuhn
and Gerald Feinberg
, though recipients often had their names added without being asked. It was intended, as Kaiser puts it, as an end-run around mainstream, peer-reviewed publication. Kaiser calls it a "parallel universe," though he says it was a fragile one, which ended in the late 1970s when Einhorn was charged with the murder of his girlfriend.
Sarfatti's local fame in North Beach, San Francisco, continued throughout the 1980s with regular seminars he gave on physics and consciousness in the Caffe Trieste on Vallejo Street. The novelist Herbert Gold
in Bohemia (1994) called it "Sarfatti's Cave," after Plato's cave
:
He continued to attend academic conferences to try to discuss his ideas, and in February 1986 argued during a meeting at the New York Academy of Sciences that faster-than-light
communication was possible using time loop
s, and said he had tried to attract the support of the Defense Department to develop the research. In the 1990s, he swapped the seminars for a website, Stardrive, and in 1995, as the Web started to become popular, he and his brother Michael began setting up websites for local charities in San Francisco, such as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Hebrew Academy.
His work outside academia continued into the 2000s. He was appointed senior scientist in 1999–2000 by the International Space Sciences Organization, a group set up by Joe Firmage
, the Internet entrepreneur, to explore mind-matter issues. Between 2002 and 2005 he self-published three books advancing his ideas, Destiny Matrix (2002), Space-Time and Beyond II (2002), and Super Cosmos: Through Struggles to the Stars (2005).
He was one of three physicists whose invitations to an August 2010 conference on de Broglie-Bohm theory—organized by Mike Towler of the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory—were withdrawn. Antony Valentini
, another organizer, withdrew invitations from Sarfatti; F. David Peat
, David Bohm's biographer; and Brian Josephson, who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics and led the Mind-Matter Unification Project at Cambridge. According to Times Higher Education (THE), Peat's invitation was withdrawn because he had written about Jungian
synchronicity
, and Josephson's because of his interest in parapsychology. Peat's and Josephson's invitations were later restored; THE did not explain why Sarfatti was uninvited.
In October 2010 he was among 30 people involved in setting up a one-year working group, the 100-Year Starship Study—financed to the tune of $1.1 million by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and NASA's Ames Research Center—on how to achieve interstellar space flight within the next 100 years.
Papers
Films
Books
Theoretical physics
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena...
specializing in the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
. Working largely outside academia, he argues that mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
may be crucial to the structure of matter, that retrocausality
Retrocausality
Retrocausality is any of several hypothetical phenomena or processes that reverse causality, allowing an effect to occur before its cause....
may be possible, and that physics—which he calls the "Conceptual Art of the late 20th Century"—has replaced philosophy as the unifying force between science and art.
Sarfatti was part of an informal group of physicists in California known as the Fundamental Fysiks Group
Fundamental Fysiks Group
The Fundamental Fysiks Group was founded in San Francisco in May 1975 by two physicists, Elizabeth Rauscher and George Weissmann, at the time both graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley. The group held informal discussions on Friday afternoons to explore the philosophical...
, who in the 1970s, according to David Kaiser
David Kaiser
David Kaiser is an American physicist and historian of science. He is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and department head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's program in Science, Technology, and Society...
, a physicist and historian of science at MIT, helped to nurture some of the alternative ideas in quantum physics that today form the basis of quantum information science
Quantum information science
Quantum information science is an area of study based on the idea that information science depends on quantum effects in physics. It includes theoretical issues in computational models as well as more experimental topics in quantum physics including what can and cannot be done with quantum...
.
He was co-author, along with physicist Fred Alan Wolf
Fred Alan Wolf
Fred Alan Wolf is an American theoretical physicist specializing in quantum physics and the relationship between physics and consciousness. He is a former physics professor at San Diego State University, and more recently has helped to popularize science on the Discovery Channel...
, of Bob Toben's Space-Time and Beyond (1975), and has self-published three of his own books, Space-Time And Beyond II (2002), Destiny Matrix (2002), and Super Cosmos (2005).
Education
Sarfatti was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Hyman and Millie Sarfatti. He attended Midwood High SchoolMidwood High School
Midwood High School, at Brooklyn College, is a public, urban, co-ed high school located on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, New York City.Midwood High School was for many years the recipient of multiple accolades because of its competitive educational programs and for the achievements of its students...
in Flatbush, Brooklyn, graduating in 1956. In 1960 he obtained his B.A. in physics in 1960 from Cornell University, and in 1963 published his first paper, "Quantum-Mechanical Correlation Theory of Electromagnetic Fields," in Nuovo Cimento, the journal of the Italian Physical Society. He obtained his M.S. in physics in 1967 from the University of California, San Diego, and his Ph.D. in 1969 from the University of California, Riverside—where he studied under Fred Cummings
Fred Cummings
Fred Cummings is a theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at University of California, Riverside. He specialises in cavity quantum electrodynamics, many-body theory and non-linear dynamics.-Discoveries:...
—for a thesis entitled "Gauge Invariance in the Theory of Superfluidity." He and Cummings co-wrote a paper, "Beyond the Hartree-Fock Theory in Superfluid Helium," published in Physica Scripta in 1970.
Academic career
He worked from 1967 to 1971 as assistant professor of physics at San Diego State University, and in 1971–1972 held a research fellowship at Birkbeck College, London, where he worked with David BohmDavid Bohm
David Joseph Bohm FRS was an American-born British quantum physicist who contributed to theoretical physics, philosophy, neuropsychology, and the Manhattan Project.-Youth and college:...
. He also studied at the Cornell Space Science Centre, the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment, and the Max Planck Institute in Munich. In 1973–1974 he conducted research into mini black holes at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, after which he left academia.
Fundamental Fysiks Group
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...
. Apart from Sarfatti, the group included its founder Elizabeth Rauscher
Elizabeth Rauscher
Elizabeth A. Rauscher is an American physicist and parapsychologist. She is a former researcher with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Stanford Research Institute, and NASA....
, as well as Henry Stapp
Henry Stapp
Henry Stapp is an American physicist, well-known for his work in quantum mechanics.-Biography:Stapp received his PhD in particle physics at the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of Nobel Laureates Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain...
, Fred Alan Wolf
Fred Alan Wolf
Fred Alan Wolf is an American theoretical physicist specializing in quantum physics and the relationship between physics and consciousness. He is a former physics professor at San Diego State University, and more recently has helped to popularize science on the Discovery Channel...
, Nick Herbert
Nick Herbert (physicist)
Nick Herbert is an American physicist and author, best known for his book Quantum Reality.Herbert studied Engineering Physics at the Ohio State University, graduating in 1959. He received a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University in 1967 for work on nuclear scattering experiments...
, Fritjof Capra
Fritjof Capra
Fritjof Capra is an Austrian-born American physicist. He is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, and is on the faculty of Schumacher College....
, John Clauser
John Clauser
John Francis Clauser is an American theoretical and experimental physicist known for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics, in particular the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality....
, Philippe Eberhard, Saul-Paul Sirag, and George Weissman—a "very smart and very playful" group, according to Kaiser, with Sarfatti as the star. Some of them held jobs within academia, but others had been left under-employed when the post-war boom in physics ended. Kaiser writes that, holding PhDs in theoretical physics from elite universities, they tried to carve out new roles for themselves, writing about quantum mysticism
Quantum mysticism
Quantum mysticism is a term that has been used to refer to a set of metaphysical beliefs and associated practices that seek to relate consciousness, intelligence or mystical world-views to the ideas of quantum mechanics and its interpretations...
and becoming part of the Bay Area's counterculture and New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
movement. Sarfatti's involvement with these issues did not advance his academic career, though he regarded his exile from academia as self-imposed.
According to Kaiser, quantum theory—particularly Bell's theorem
Bell's theorem
In theoretical physics, Bell's theorem is a no-go theorem, loosely stating that:The theorem has great importance for physics and the philosophy of science, as it implies that quantum physics must necessarily violate either the principle of locality or counterfactual definiteness...
and the concept of quantum entanglement
Quantum entanglement
Quantum entanglement occurs when electrons, molecules even as large as "buckyballs", photons, etc., interact physically and then become separated; the type of interaction is such that each resulting member of a pair is properly described by the same quantum mechanical description , which is...
—had raised questions about parapsychology
Parapsychology
The term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir, and originates from para meaning "alongside", and psychology. The term was adopted by J.B. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the term psychical research...
and issues such as telepathy
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
. In How the Hippies Saved Physics (2011), he explains how the Fundamental Fysiks Group cultivated patrons outside academia, including the human potential movement (see below), who they hoped might be interested in the broader application of these ideas. There was also significant government interest. The Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
and Defense Intelligence Agency
Defense Intelligence Agency
The Defense Intelligence Agency is a member of the Intelligence Community of the United States, and is the central producer and manager of military intelligence for the United States Department of Defense, employing over 16,500 U.S. military and civilian employees worldwide...
set up a program called ESPionage, financing experiments into telepathy and remote viewing
Remote viewing
Remote viewing is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using paranormal means, in particular, extra-sensory perception or "sensing with mind"...
to the tune of tens of millions each year. The research was conducted by the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), where Sarfatti and the Fundamental Fysiks Group became what Kaiser calls its "house theorists."
Research into Uri Geller
In 1974 Sarfatti and the group helped SRI suggest a theoretical background to research involving Uri GellerUri Geller
Uri Geller is a self-proclaimed psychic known for his trademark television performances of spoon bending and other supposed psychic effects. Throughout the years, Geller has been accused of using simple conjuring tricks to achieve the effects of psychokinesis and telepathy...
, an Israeli who had become known for his assertion that he could bend spoons
Spoon bending
Spoon bending is the apparent deformation of objects, especially metal cutlery, either without physical force, or with less force than normally necessary...
and make watches start or stop by using only what he said were his thoughts. The SRI had begun to study Geller in its parapsychology lab in 1972 to determine whether he was using psychokinesis
Psychokinesis
The term psychokinesis , also referred to as telekinesis with respect to strictly describing movement of matter, sometimes abbreviated PK and TK respectively, is a term...
; the studies were led by laser physicists Russell Targ
Russell Targ
Russell Targ is an American physicist and author, an ESP researcher, and pioneer in the earliest development of the laser....
and Harold Puthoff, and resulted in a paper in Nature in October 1974. Sarfatti and the group were asked to use quantum theory, and specifically Bell's theorem, to explain what Kaiser said looked like a robust experimental result.
Sarfatti organized follow-up tests at Birkbeck College, London. The study was led by John Hasted
John Hasted
John Barrett Hasted was a British physicist, who from 1968 until his retirement was head of experimental physics at Birkbeck College, London...
, and on June 21 and 22, 1974, Hasted and Sarfatti joined David Bohm
David Bohm
David Joseph Bohm FRS was an American-born British quantum physicist who contributed to theoretical physics, philosophy, neuropsychology, and the Manhattan Project.-Youth and college:...
, Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...
, Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...
, and two of Geller's associates, Ted Bastin and Brendan O'Regan, to watch Geller display what he said were his psychokinetic powers. Geller bent four brass Yale keys and a 1 cm disk, affected a Geiger counter and deflected a compass needle. New Scientist wrote at the time that any good magician could have bent the keys, no matter how closely the observers believed they were watching. Sarfatti issued two press releases saying he believed Geller had demonstrated genuine psycho-energetic ability, statements that were picked up by Science News and the international media, though he later retracted his view.
In San Francisco, the Fundamental Fysiks Group became local celebrities, in part because of the Geller research. When the film director Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
bought out City Magazine in San Francisco in 1975, one of its earliest features was a photo spread of Sarfatti, Saul-Paul Sirag, Fred Alan Wolf, and Nick Herbert (see external link to image below right), an article that cemented their position within the local counter-cultural community. The spread played up what Kaiser called their "guru" status, and discussed the group "going into trances, working at telepathy, and dipping into their subconscious in experiments toward psychic mobility."
Physics-Consciousness Research Group
Outside government, groups within the human potential movementHuman Potential Movement
The Human Potential Movement arose out of the social and intellectual milieu of the 1960s and formed around the concept of cultivating extraordinary potential that its advocates believed to lie largely untapped in all people...
were also interested in applying ideas from quantum theory. Werner Erhard
Werner Erhard
Werner Hans Erhard is an author of transformational models and applications for individuals, groups, and organizations...
, the founder of Erhard Seminars Training, or EST, believed there had to be a way to use quantum theory to expand human consciousness. He moved to the Bay Area and came into contact with Sarfatti and Fred Alan Wolf. According to Kaiser, they hit it off, and had their lawyers formally create a non-profit think tank called the Physics-Consciousness Research Group—with Sarfatti as president, and Saul-Paul Sirag vice-president—into which Erhard and others funneled significant amounts of money. The group gave local lectures, published pamphlets, and wrote an opera about quantum physics and the brain, which they staged in a Bay Area park.
Erhard introduced Sarfatti to Michael Murphy
Michael Murphy (author)
Michael Murphy is the co-founder of the Esalen Institute, a key figure in the Human Potential Movement and author of both fiction and non-fiction books on topics related to extraordinary human potential.- Biography :...
, co-director of the Esalen Institute
Esalen Institute
Esalen Institute is a residential community and retreat in Big Sur, California, which focuses upon humanistic alternative education. Esalen is a nonprofit organization devoted to activites such as meditation, massage, Gestalt, yoga, psychology, ecology, and spirituality...
in Big Sur
Big Sur
Big Sur is a sparsely populated region of the Central Coast of California where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. The name "Big Sur" is derived from the original Spanish-language "el sur grande", meaning "the big south", or from "el país grande del sur", "the big...
, California, which had become what Kaiser calls an incubator for New-Age ideas and their potential application. In January 1976, Sarfatti and the physics group gathered there for a month-long conference on physics and consciousness. Murphy's announcement of the conference said, "Perhaps a new kind of inspired physicist, experienced in the yogic modes of perception, must emerge to comprehend the further reaches of matter, space, and time." Sarfatti was the conference's intellectual director, and wrote to major figures asking them to address it. Gary Zukav's best-selling The Dancing Wu Li Masters
The Dancing Wu Li Masters
The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav is a popular new age book from 1979 about mysticist interpretations of quantum physics.The toneless pinyin phrase Wu Li in the title is most accurately rendered 物理 in hanzi in the light of the book's subject matter, but appears to be somewhat of a pun as...
(1979)—a book about these new ideas—was organized around his attendance at this conference; he and Sarfatti were roommates in North Beach at the time. The conference apart, the Esalen group held regular workshops on quantum theory, with physicists from around the world attending, mixing lectures with yoga and sessions in the hot tubs.
Publication and research outside academia
The new ideas were not invariably welcome within mainstream academic physics. According to Kaiser, Samuel GouschmitSamuel Abraham Goudsmit
Samuel Abraham Goudsmit was a Dutch-American physicist famous for jointly proposing the concept of electron spin with George Eugene Uhlenbeck in 1925.-Biography:...
, editor of the prestigious Physical Review
Physical Review
Physical Review is an American scientific journal founded in 1893 by Edward Nichols. It publishes original research and scientific and literature reviews on all aspects of physics. It is published by the American Physical Society. The journal is in its third series, and is split in several...
, formally banned discussion of the interpretation of quantum mechanics, drawing up special instructions to referees to reject material that even hinted at the philosophical debate. The new material therefore ended up being distributed in alternative media. One such publication was a hand-typed newsletter called Epistemological Letters, published by a Swiss Foundation. Several eminent physicists and philosophers had to publish their material there—including the Irish physicist John Bell
John Stewart Bell
John Stewart Bell FRS was a British physicist from Northern Ireland , and the originator of Bell's theorem, a significant theorem in quantum physics regarding hidden variable theories.- Early life and work :...
, the originator of Bell's theorem
Bell's theorem
In theoretical physics, Bell's theorem is a no-go theorem, loosely stating that:The theorem has great importance for physics and the philosophy of science, as it implies that quantum physics must necessarily violate either the principle of locality or counterfactual definiteness...
—as well as Sarfatti and other members of the Physics-Consciousness Research Group.
The group were also involved in a mailing list, the core members of which were Sarfatti and Fred Alan Wolf, called the Unicorn Preprint Service, which was financed by Ira Einhorn
Ira Einhorn
Ira Samuel Einhorn, known as "the Unicorn Killer" , is a convicted murderer who savagely beat his ex-girlfriend, Holly Maddux, to death and then stored her body in a locker in his apartment for more than a year before it was discovered by the police...
, an American anti-war and environmental activist with good New York publishing contacts. It was Einhorn who arranged for the publication of Bob Toben's Space-Time and Beyond (1975), co-written by Sarfatti and Wolf. The list distributed articles not published elsewhere, and included some eminent thinkers, people such as Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift," which has since become an English-language staple.Kuhn...
and Gerald Feinberg
Gerald Feinberg
Gerald Feinberg was a Columbia University physicist, futurist and populist author. He spent a year as a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, and two years at the Brookhaven Laboratories....
, though recipients often had their names added without being asked. It was intended, as Kaiser puts it, as an end-run around mainstream, peer-reviewed publication. Kaiser calls it a "parallel universe," though he says it was a fragile one, which ended in the late 1970s when Einhorn was charged with the murder of his girlfriend.
Sarfatti's local fame in North Beach, San Francisco, continued throughout the 1980s with regular seminars he gave on physics and consciousness in the Caffe Trieste on Vallejo Street. The novelist Herbert Gold
Herbert Gold
-Early life:Gold was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Lakewood, a community he was later to memorialize in his first book, Birth of a Hero, published in 1951 by Viking Press. He moved to New York City at age 17 after several of his poems had been accepted by New York literary magazines...
in Bohemia (1994) called it "Sarfatti's Cave," after Plato's cave
Allegory of the cave
The Allegory of the Cave—also known as the Analogy of the Cave, Plato's Cave, or the Parable of the Cave—is an allegory used by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work The Republic to illustrate "our nature in its education and want of education"...
:
He continued to attend academic conferences to try to discuss his ideas, and in February 1986 argued during a meeting at the New York Academy of Sciences that faster-than-light
Faster-than-light
Faster-than-light communications and travel refer to the propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light....
communication was possible using time loop
Time loop
A time loop or temporal loop is a common plot device in science fiction in which time runs normally for a set period but then skips back like a broken record. When the time loop "resets", the memories of most characters are reset...
s, and said he had tried to attract the support of the Defense Department to develop the research. In the 1990s, he swapped the seminars for a website, Stardrive, and in 1995, as the Web started to become popular, he and his brother Michael began setting up websites for local charities in San Francisco, such as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Hebrew Academy.
His work outside academia continued into the 2000s. He was appointed senior scientist in 1999–2000 by the International Space Sciences Organization, a group set up by Joe Firmage
Joe Firmage
Joseph Firmage is an American Internet entrepreneur. He founded several business ventures prior to and during the dot-com boom and currently is involved with two closely linked organizations: ManyOne Networks, of which he is CEO, and the Digital Universe Foundation, of which he is a co-founder and...
, the Internet entrepreneur, to explore mind-matter issues. Between 2002 and 2005 he self-published three books advancing his ideas, Destiny Matrix (2002), Space-Time and Beyond II (2002), and Super Cosmos: Through Struggles to the Stars (2005).
He was one of three physicists whose invitations to an August 2010 conference on de Broglie-Bohm theory—organized by Mike Towler of the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory—were withdrawn. Antony Valentini
Antony Valentini
Antony Valentini is a theoretical physicist and a professor at Clemson University. He is known for his work on the foundations of quantum physics.- Education and career :...
, another organizer, withdrew invitations from Sarfatti; F. David Peat
F. David Peat
F. David Peat was born in Waterloo, England and is a holistic physicist and author who has carried out research in solid state physics and the foundation of quantum theory....
, David Bohm's biographer; and Brian Josephson, who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics and led the Mind-Matter Unification Project at Cambridge. According to Times Higher Education (THE), Peat's invitation was withdrawn because he had written about Jungian
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
synchronicity
Synchronicity
Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance and that are observed to occur together in a meaningful manner...
, and Josephson's because of his interest in parapsychology. Peat's and Josephson's invitations were later restored; THE did not explain why Sarfatti was uninvited.
In October 2010 he was among 30 people involved in setting up a one-year working group, the 100-Year Starship Study—financed to the tune of $1.1 million by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and NASA's Ames Research Center—on how to achieve interstellar space flight within the next 100 years.
Works
Books- Toben, Bob (1975). Space-Time and Beyond: Toward an Explanation of the Unexplainable. E.P. Dutton; Toben in conversation with Fred Alan Wolf and Jack Sarfatti. ISBN 978-0525473992
- (2005). Super Cosmos: Through Struggles to the Stars. AuthorHouse. ISBN 978-1418476625
- (2002). Space-Time and Beyond II. AuthorHouse. ISBN 978-1403390226
- (2002). Destiny Matrix. AuthorHouse. ISBN 978-0759696891
Papers
- (2011). "Retrocausality and Signal Nonlocality in Consciousness and Cosmology", Journal of CosmologyJournal of CosmologyJournal of Cosmology describes itself as a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal of cosmology, although the quality of the process has been questioned. The journal was established in 2009 and is published by Cosmology Science Publishers...
, Vol 14. - (2011). "Dark Energy and Dark Matter as w = -1 Virtual Particles and the World Hologram Model", Bulletin of the American Physical Society, Vol 56, No. 4, April 2011 meeting.
- with Creon Levit (2009). "The emergence of gravity as a retro-causal post-inflation macro-quantum-coherent holographic vacuum "Higgs-Goldstone field", ArXiv.org, January 2009.
- (2006). "Emergent Gravity: String Theory Without String Theory", ArXiv.org.
- (2004). "Einstein Gravity with Dark Energy and Dark Matter as Sakharov Metric Elasticity", GR17 Dublin 2004: 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation: Book of Abstracts, p. 181.
- (2004). "Wheeler's World", Developments in Quantum Physics, NOVA Scientific Publishers, pp 41-84. ISBN 1-59454-003-9
- (2003). "Macro-Quantum Origin of Gravity and Quintessence", Papers at APS Austin & Philadelphia published in APS Abstracts for those meetings. Bulletin of the American Physical Society, Vol 48, No 1, Part II, N35-6, p. 832.
- (2002). "Progress in Post-Quantum Physics and Unified Field Theory", Gravitation and Cosmology: From the Hubble Radius to the Planck Scale (Series: Fundamental Theories of Physics, Vol 126), Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 419–430. ISBN 1-4020-08885-6
- with M.C. Levit (1998). "Are the Bader Laplacian and the Bohm Quantum Potential Equivalent?", Causality & Locality in Modern Physics (Series: Fundamental Theories in Physics, Vol 97), Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 353–358. ISBN 0-7923-5227-0
- (1998). "Beyond Bohm-Vigier Quantum Mechanics", Causality & Locality in Modern Physics, (Series: Fundamental Theories in Physics, Vol 97), Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp 403-410. ISBN 0-7923-5227-0
- (1991). "Design for a Superluminal Signaling Device,", Physics Essays, Vol 4, No 3, Sep 1991, pp 315-336.
- (1977). "The Case for Superluminal Information Transfer," MIT Technology Review, Vol. 79, No. 5, p. 3ff.
- (1977). "Higher Intelligence is Us in the Future", in Leary, Tim (ed.). Spit in the Ocean, Ken KeseyKen KeseyKenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a...
, Fall 1977, No. 3. - (1976). "Reply to Bohm-Hiley," Psychoenergetic Systems, Gordon & Breach, Vol. 2, 1976, pp. 1–8.
- (1975). "Toward a Unified Field Theory of Gravitation and Strong Interactions", Foundations of Physics, Vol 5, No. 2.
- (1975). "The Physical Roots of Consciousness" in Mishlove, Jeffrey. The Roots of Consciousness. Random House, pp. 279–290. ISBN 0-394-73115-8
- (1974). "The primordial proton", Physics Today, letters, Vol 27, No. 5, May 1974.
- (1974). "Eightfold way as a consequence of the general theory of relativity", Collective Phenomena, Vol 1, No. 3, pp. 169–172.
- (1974). "Off the Beat: Geller Performs for Physicists," Science News.
- (1974). "The Dirac Equation and General Relativity," Foundations of Physics.
- (1974). "Speculations on the effects of gravitation and cosmology in hadron physics", Collective Phenomena, Vol 1. No. 3, January 1, 1974, pp. 163–167.
- 1973). "Explanation for the Asymmetry Between Matter and Antimatter in the Visible Universe", International Centre for Theoretical Physics, November 1973.
- (1973). "Regge Trajectories as Rotation Black Holes in Strong Gravity", in H. FrohlichHerbert FröhlichHerbert Fröhlich was a German-born British physicist and a Fellow of the Royal Society....
& F.W. CummingsFred CummingsFred Cummings is a theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at University of California, Riverside. He specialises in cavity quantum electrodynamics, many-body theory and non-linear dynamics.-Discoveries:...
(eds.). Collective Phenomena. - (1972). "Gravitation, Strong Interactions, and the Creation of the Universe", Nature, letter to the editor, December 04, 1972, pp. 101–102.
- (1971). "On mini black holes", short note in Nature Physical Science.
- with Fred Cummings and J. S. Herold (1970). "Beyond the Hartree-Fock Theory in Superfluid Bosons", in Physica Scripta (Switzerland), Vol. 50, No. 1, November 23, 1970.
- (1969). "Destruction of Superflow in Unsaturated 4He Films and the Prediction of a New Crystalline Phase of 4He with Bose-Einstein Condensation", Physics Letters, Vol. 30, No. 5, November 3, 1969, pp. 300–301.
- (1969). "Gauge Invariance in the Theory of Superfluidity", University of California, Riverside, Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume 31-01, Section B, p. 0320.
- (1967). "On the 'type II superconductor' model of self-trapped laser filaments," Physics Letters A, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 88–89.
- (1967). "A new theory of the superfluid vortex phenomenon", Physics Letters A, Vol. 24, No. 7, March 27, 1967, pp. 399–400.
- (1967). "On the nature of the superfluid critical velocity", Physics Letters A, Vol. 24, No. 5, February 27, 1967, pp. 287–288.
- (1967). "Laser Self-Focusing Analogue to the Landau-Ginzburg Equation of Type II Superconductivity", Physics Letters.
- with Marshall StonehamMarshall StonehamArthur Marshall Stoneham, FRS , known as Marshall Stoneham, was a British physicist who worked for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, and from 1995 was Massey professor of physics at University College London...
(1967). "The Goldstone Theorem in the Jahn-Teller Effect", Proceedings of the Physical Society of LondonProceedings of the Physical SocietyThe Proceedings of the Physical Society is a journal on the subject of physics, originally associated with the Physical Society of London, England. - Journal history :* 1874–1925: Proceedings of the Physical Society of London...
, Vol. 91, No. 1, cited in American Institute of Physics Resource Letter on Symmetry in Physics, 1980 (at Atomic Energy Research EstablishmentAtomic Energy Research EstablishmentThe Atomic Energy Research Establishment near Harwell, Oxfordshire, was the main centre for atomic energy research and development in the United Kingdom from the 1940s to the 1990s.-Founding:...
, Harwell, Didcot, Berks). - (1965). "Atomic relaxation and fluctuations of laser photons", Optical Society of America, Vol. 55, pp. 455–456. April 1965.
- (1963). "Quantum-Mechanical Correlation Theory of Electromagnetic Fields," Il Nuovo Cimento journal of the Italian Physical Society, Vol. 27, No. 5.
- (1963). "Quantum-mechanical correlation theory of electromagnetic fields".
Films
- Time Travel: The Art of the Possible, an interview with Jack Sarfatti about time travelTime travelTime travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
, included on the "Star TrekStar TrekStar Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
IV" DVD, Paramount Pictures, 1999. - Staya Erusa, a Dutch documentary film with Jack Sarfatti, Andrija Puharich, Uri Geller, Brian Josephson, Colonel John Alexander, Colin Wilson, and others
- Le Film, written, directed and produced in 1971 by Fred Alan WolfFred Alan WolfFred Alan Wolf is an American theoretical physicist specializing in quantum physics and the relationship between physics and consciousness. He is a former physics professor at San Diego State University, and more recently has helped to popularize science on the Discovery Channel...
(who appeared in "What The Bleep Do We Know?"), with Jack Sarfatti playing the Jesus Christ Messiah character. Wolf and Sarfatti were on the physics faculty of San Diego State, where the film was made as part of the university's Physics for Poets course.
See also
- Global Consciousness ProjectGlobal Consciousness ProjectThe Global Consciousness Project is a parapsychology experiment begun in 1998 as an attempt to detect possible interactions of "global consciousness" with physical systems...
- How the Irish Saved CivilizationHow The Irish Saved CivilizationHow The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe is a non-fiction historical book written by Thomas Cahill....
(1995) - MetaphysicsMetaphysicsMetaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
- Mind–body problem
- NoosphereNoosphereNoosphere , according to the thought of Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin, denotes the "sphere of human thought". The word is derived from the Greek νοῦς + σφαῖρα , in lexical analogy to "atmosphere" and "biosphere". Introduced by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 1922 in his Cosmogenesis"...
- Philosophy of mindPhilosophy of mindPhilosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
- The Tao of PhysicsThe Tao of PhysicsThe Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism is a book by physicist Fritjof Capra, published in 1975 by Shambhala Publications of Berkeley, California. It was a bestseller in the United States, and has been published in 43 editions in 23 languages...
(1975)
Further reading
- Sarfatti's website, accessed April 25, 2011.
- "How the Hippies Saved Physics (Excerpt)", Scientific American, June 27, 2011.
- Carr, Bernard. "Can Psychical Research Bridge the Gap Between Mind and Matter?", Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 59, No. 221, June 2008.
- Chalmers, DavidDavid ChalmersDavid John Chalmers is an Australian philosopher specializing in the area of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, whose recent work concerns verbal disputes. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University...
. "The Puzzle of Conscious Experience", Scientific American, first published December 1995, updated 2002. - Gusterson, HughHugh GustersonHugh Gusterson is an anthropologist currently at George Mason University.His expertise is in nuclear culture, international security and the anthropology of science....
. "Physics: Quantum outsiders", Nature, 476, 278–279, August 18, 2011. - Johnson, GeorgeGeorge Johnson (writer)George Johnson is an American journalist and science writer. He is the author of a number of books, including The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments and Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics , and writes for a number of publications, including The New York...
. "What Physics Owes the Counterculture", The New York Times, June 17, 2011. - Merali, Zeeya. "Back From the Future", Discover magazine, April 2010.
- The LoungsThe LoungsThe Loungs are an indie rock band from St Helens, Merseyside, in the North-West of England. Their debut album We Are The Champ was released in 2007 on Manchester's Akoustik Anarkhy label and the follow-up Big Wow in 2010 on Fresh Hair Records. Both albums were highly acclaimed in the music press...
. "Jack Sarfatti", song on their album Amelia's Magazine, July 2008; video courtesy of YouTube, accessed April 25, 2011. - Wisnioski, Matthew. "Let's Be Fysiksists Again", Science, vol 332, issue 6037, 24 June, 2011, pp. 1504–1505.
Books
- Benjamin, Marina. Rocket Dreams. Simon and Schuster, 2003.
- Bohm, DavidDavid BohmDavid Joseph Bohm FRS was an American-born British quantum physicist who contributed to theoretical physics, philosophy, neuropsychology, and the Manhattan Project.-Youth and college:...
. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. Routledge, 2002 (first published 1980). - Davies, PaulPaul DaviesPaul Charles William Davies, AM is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, currently a professor at Arizona State University as well as the Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science...
. God and the New PhysicsGod and the New PhysicsGod and the New Physics is a 1984 scientific book written by English scientist Paul Davies. The book deals fundamentally with cosmology although throughout the text several sciences are mentioned, such as: physics, mathematics, neurology, and philosophy. It deals with a wide variety of...
. Simon & Schuster, 1984. - Dossey, Larry. Space, Time, and Medicine. Routledge, 1982.
- Gardner, MartinMartin GardnerMartin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature , philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion...
. Science, Good, Bad and Bogus. Prometheus Books, 1989. - Gribbin, JohnJohn GribbinJohn R. Gribbin is a British science writer and a visiting Fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex.- Biography :John Gribbin graduated with his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Sussex in 1966. Gribbin then earned his master of science degree in astronomy in 1967, also...
. In Search of the Multiverse: Parallel Worlds, Hidden Dimensions, and the Ultimate Quest for the Frontiers of Reality. Wiley, 2010. - Gribbin, John. White Holes. Electric Book Co., 2005.
- Mishlove, Jeffrey. The Roots of Consciousness. Random House, 1975.
- Rucker, RudyRudy RuckerRudolf von Bitter Rucker is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and philosopher, and is one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware Tetralogy, the first two of...
. Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension. Dover Publications, 1977. - Walker, Evan HarrisEvan Harris WalkerEvan Harris Walker , was an American physicist.Born in Franklin, Indiana, Harris received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Maryland in 1964...
. "The Physics of Consciousness: The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life. Perseus Publishing, 2000. - Wilson, Robert AntonRobert Anton WilsonRobert Anton Wilson , known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic...
. Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy. Random House of Canada, 1988.