<1>
Recently, there has been a lot of discussion on a paradigm shift occurring or having occurred in physics: a shift from old-fashioned, Cartesian or even Copenhagen physics to what is sometimes called consciousness physics. While the enthusiasm of the propounders and exponents of this new physics is understandable, if only because more and more people (including some good scientists) are getting interested in these matters, it may be of some interest to recall the following in this context:

a) Paradigm shift is not be confused with growing interest or even adoption by the majority of a new idea or point of view. If this were the case, paradigm shift has already occurred in some parts of the country where the majority (including Ph.D.s in biology) have given up Darwin and adopted Creationism whole-heartedly. In the former Soviet Union the universal acceptance of dialectical materialism by a so-called intelligentsia could have been proclaimed (perhaps was proclaimed) as a paradigm shift.

b) We need to be clear about what physics (science) is trying to do: to explain and thus understand quantitatively and consistently, on the basis of clearly defined concepts and incontrovertible experiments how phenomena in the physical world occur.

c) While hypotheses that lead to verifiable or falsifiable consequences are always entertained in science, interesting interpretations, analogical suggestions, and philosophical speculations which have no empirical content are generally excluded from technical scientific discourse, though they me be part of the popularization of science by reflective scientists and thinkers.

d) Paradigm shift may be said to have occurred when and only when a known set of phenomena which used to be explained and understood on the basis of a certain conceptual/ methodological framework is now being more successfully explained and understood by the vast majority of the scientific establishment on the basis of a significantly different conceptual/ methodological framework.

<2>
From these considerations it is not clear that we have yet reached the stage when we can proclaim or celebrate any paradigm shift in science as a result of the spate of essays and books on fanciful extensions of Bells Theorem or of the Aspect et al. experiments.

<3>
All this is not to say that serious and systematic scientific interest in the "phenomenon of consciousness" has not been growing. There is no question but that hard core science (especially neuroscience and AI, and post-modern quantum mechanics) is probing deeper and deeper into the source and basis of consciousness. It is very likely that in the course of the impending century, we may have a better scientific grasp of this (thus far) greatest mystery in the only universe we know. More interest in a sub-field of science by more people is likely to bear more results, but speculations, however interesting, ingenious, or intelligent, do not constitute paradigm shifts in science.

[Varadaraja V. Raman
Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology
e-mail <VVRSPS@ritvax.isc.rit.edu>]