Howard S. Carman, Jr.
Quantum Question
In a quantum world, my existence
is a single stationary state
whose behavior is collapsed
from a superposition
of all possible states
(mine, yours,
all who have gone before,
all who are to come,
perhaps even God)
because of interaction with
(observation by)
the external world.
In other words,
|ψ 〉 = ∑ cᵢ |ϕᵢ 〉 → |ψ´ 〉 = |ϕᵢ 〉
where |ψ´ 〉 is the me you observe
out of all the possibilities
of who I could be,
including you.
It takes all of us
to make me—
and you.
Our behaviors
are all motivated
by different things—
I need not list them.
But . . . if all our behaviors
were motivated by love,
would the world
collapse into Heaven?
_______________
Howard S. Carman, Jr., Ph.D., is a retired physical chemist who fell in love with poetry later in life. He published his first collection of spiritual poetry (But Now I See: Rhymes and Reflections) in 2017. His poetry has since won awards from Poetry Society of Tennessee, National Federation of State Poetry Societies, and appears in Tennessee Voices Anthology (several issues), We Were Not Alone: A Community Building Artworks Anthology, and Black Moon Magazine. Howard lives in Blountville, TN and serves on the Board of Directors of Poetry Society of Tennessee.
Author’s Notes and Backstory: This poem originated from contemplation of several dimensions of my experience: study of quantum physics while obtaining a Ph.D. in physical chemistry; transition from atheism to faith several years later; coming to love and appreciate poetry and the similarity of poetry and mathematics (two “genres” in a sense) in capturing the magic of the universe in concise and powerful ways. In quantum mechanics, wave function collapse occurs when a wave function (a superposition of an infinite number of possible states) reduces to a single eigenstate due to interaction with the external world (observation), which connects the wave function with classical observables (such as position and momentum). I have often found it interesting to think of God in the same way: as a superposition of an infinite number of possibilities that becomes manifest through observation (mine and others’).
Editor’s Comments and Image Citations: As a physical and theoretical chemist, and physicist, I’m delighted when I see works that combine science and poetry, like the Victorian era scientists did (James Maxwell, Humphrey Davy, John Herschel…)—and well before them, as well, certainly during the Romantic period, and the Age of Enlightenment. Scientific works were often described with lush language as opposed to what much of the current literature does, which is sterile, though well-meaning to present unbiased results.
The mathematical symbolism in the poem is a compact way of describing quantum phenomena from what’s called linear algebra (do not be deceived by the “simplistic” word algebra! A great deal of difficult matrix mechanics and differential equations are implied). The Greek letters phi and psi represent wavefunctions that attempt to describe the probability of occurrence of certain events or states.
I’ve “always” wanted to teach two courses: “Poetry for Physicists and other Scientists,” and “Physics for Poets.”
Image Credit: XKCD Comics #1861 Quantum and #1240 Quantum Mechanics combined on one PowerPoint slide with background color added to their edges and blotting out superfluous items.
