The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are / quote 47 of 101
Quantum theory: no intrinsic properties
in accordance with William Blake’s principle that “The fool who persists in his folly will become wise,” the persistent scientist is the first to realize the obsolescence of old models of the world. Open a good, standard textbook on quantum theory: … the world cannot be analyzed correctly into distinct parts; instead, it must be regarded as an indivisible unit in which separate parts appear as valid approximations only in the classical [i.e., Newtonian] limit… . Thus, at the quantum level of accuracy, an object does not have any “intrinsic” properties (for instance, wave or particle) belonging to itself alone; instead, it shares all its properties mutually and indivisibly with the systems with which it interacts. Moreover, because a given object, such as an electron, interacts at different times with different systems that bring out different potentialities, it undergoes … continual transformation between the various forms (for instance, wave or particle form) in which it can manifest itself.