EPILOGUE AND ESSAYS

The following information was developed to support the theories and concepts presented in the trilogy.

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Seeing Reality As It Is

EPILOGUE

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Reality is referred to more than one hundred times in this book. And I expect that many readers will ask what I understand reality to be, especially in view of the strange reality of quantum mechanics. Long-held opinions about material reality were challenged in 1801 when light (photons) was used in double-slit experiments. In those experiments, photons passed through double slits and then onto a screen. If light consisted of particles, as Isaac Newton thought, photons would pass through the slits and form predictable particle-like patterns on the screen. What actually appeared on the screen was a double-slit interference pattern of bright and dark bands characteristic of waves, not particles. The bright bands were constructive interference regions where photons would most likely appear on the screen. Since this early experiment, electrons, neutrons and collections of hundreds of atoms were passed through double-slits and produced similar interference patterns. In addition, it was found that an interference pattern appeared even when a single photon passed through a single slit. The challenge these experiments pose for a traditional, material-based view of reality is if particles can behave as both particles and waves, is a traditional view of a material reality wrong?

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