- Mar 28, 2023
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I could never quite grasp the Aristotelian concept of immanent form until I read Abraham P. Bos's book on Aristotelian pneuma as the carrier of form. That was when I realized this very idea could help solve a classic puzzle: what exactly is quantum reality, and what kind of existence are we actually dealing with?
I want to share a way of looking at this that fixes a major blank spot in the classic Copenhagen model, without getting stuck in the traps of modern realism. While the Copenhagen model is great because it doesn't treat quantum states like everyday classical objects, it doesn't really explain what is actually there. This lack of a solid philosophical foundation often makes it feel like a shallow tool, just a set of math equations for predicting things rather than a description of real life. Because of this, physicists and philosophers usually default to realist interpretations.
Rather than adopting such realist views, I suggest we look back to an old idea from Aristotle called hylomorphism (the pairing of matter and form), but complemented with the concept of pneuma. Think of pneuma as an active, subtle, and formative energy. In this pneumatic view, a quantum state isn't a physical particle or a wave travelling through space; it is pure, objective potential. Before we measure it, the quantum object is identical to the laws of physics themselves, existing as an un-incarnated, pneumatic logos. It only takes on classical, thing-like properties when it physically "incarnates" during measurement.
This pneumatic approach completely rules out the realist assumption that there is a pre-existing, definite classical past. Take John Wheeler's famous cosmic delayed-choice experiment. Realist thinking leads to the bizarre conclusion of retrocausality, making it seem like a measurement we make today can reach back billions of years to rewrite a photon's history. The pneumatic framework dissolves this paradox completely. The photon never needed to travel as a classical wave or particle in the first place; it was always an irreducibly quantum, pneumatic entity. Measurement is simply an "incarnation event" that makes things concrete in the present, meaning we don't need any time-traveling magic to explain it. Pneumatic quantum reality is primary, while wave and particle are merely secondary manifestations.
To see how we lost the ability to think this way, we have to look at how Western philosophy changed over time. Thinkers like Maximus Confessor (c. 580-662) understood the logoi as active, organizing principles existing right inside natural things. But when later medieval philosophy stripped these forms of their pneumatic carrier, nominalism took over, flattening everything into mere surface-level form. Eventually, this led to the modern view that order is just something our minds project onto the world. However, quantum physics has retroactively challenged this modern bias, proving that there is indeed a real, non-classical organizing principle operating inside nature, completely independent of our minds.
Ultimately, I see quantum measurement as a two-way street, a participatory event where pneumatic quantum reality and our human concepts meet. On a cosmic scale, this process is happening everywhere, all the time, through environmental and gravitational decoherence. Cosmic history is an ongoing, irreversible process of physical incarnation, moving from a unified, low-entropy quantum beginning to the highly differentiated classical world we see today. Read more about this on my retro nineties homepage: Pneumatic Hylomorphism and Quantum Philosophy: Retrieving the Logoi in the Copenhagen Model.
I want to share a way of looking at this that fixes a major blank spot in the classic Copenhagen model, without getting stuck in the traps of modern realism. While the Copenhagen model is great because it doesn't treat quantum states like everyday classical objects, it doesn't really explain what is actually there. This lack of a solid philosophical foundation often makes it feel like a shallow tool, just a set of math equations for predicting things rather than a description of real life. Because of this, physicists and philosophers usually default to realist interpretations.
Rather than adopting such realist views, I suggest we look back to an old idea from Aristotle called hylomorphism (the pairing of matter and form), but complemented with the concept of pneuma. Think of pneuma as an active, subtle, and formative energy. In this pneumatic view, a quantum state isn't a physical particle or a wave travelling through space; it is pure, objective potential. Before we measure it, the quantum object is identical to the laws of physics themselves, existing as an un-incarnated, pneumatic logos. It only takes on classical, thing-like properties when it physically "incarnates" during measurement.
This pneumatic approach completely rules out the realist assumption that there is a pre-existing, definite classical past. Take John Wheeler's famous cosmic delayed-choice experiment. Realist thinking leads to the bizarre conclusion of retrocausality, making it seem like a measurement we make today can reach back billions of years to rewrite a photon's history. The pneumatic framework dissolves this paradox completely. The photon never needed to travel as a classical wave or particle in the first place; it was always an irreducibly quantum, pneumatic entity. Measurement is simply an "incarnation event" that makes things concrete in the present, meaning we don't need any time-traveling magic to explain it. Pneumatic quantum reality is primary, while wave and particle are merely secondary manifestations.
To see how we lost the ability to think this way, we have to look at how Western philosophy changed over time. Thinkers like Maximus Confessor (c. 580-662) understood the logoi as active, organizing principles existing right inside natural things. But when later medieval philosophy stripped these forms of their pneumatic carrier, nominalism took over, flattening everything into mere surface-level form. Eventually, this led to the modern view that order is just something our minds project onto the world. However, quantum physics has retroactively challenged this modern bias, proving that there is indeed a real, non-classical organizing principle operating inside nature, completely independent of our minds.
Ultimately, I see quantum measurement as a two-way street, a participatory event where pneumatic quantum reality and our human concepts meet. On a cosmic scale, this process is happening everywhere, all the time, through environmental and gravitational decoherence. Cosmic history is an ongoing, irreversible process of physical incarnation, moving from a unified, low-entropy quantum beginning to the highly differentiated classical world we see today. Read more about this on my retro nineties homepage: Pneumatic Hylomorphism and Quantum Philosophy: Retrieving the Logoi in the Copenhagen Model.
