One test for whether a concept has "substance" is to use Occam's razor
to excise it from all discourse. If the essential content of discourse
remains unchanged, then I would say the concept has no substance. Of
course, like most scientific tests, this can only be used to falsify
the concept, not verify it.

The idea of spirit as a substantial component of the universe is of
course an ancient one, fundamental to the traditional dualistic view
most humans hold of the universe and themselves as part of that
universe. In this view, planets, rock, trees, and the human body are
made of matter, but matter is not everything. Beyond matter exists
mind, soul, or spirit, an etherial substance that may even be more
"real" than matter - the very quintessence of being.

In the mid-nineteenth century, many scientists thought that the
marvelous new discoveries of science, and the methods of science,
could be applied to the world of the spirit as well as to the world of
matter. For example, Sir Oliver Lodge, a physicist who had helped
demonstrate the reality of electromagnetic waves, argued that if
wireless telegraphy was possible, then so was wireless telepathy.
Lodge, like most others of the period, believed that electromagnetic
waves, including light, were vibrations of a frictionless medium, the
aether, that pervaded the universe. It seemed plausible that this
medium might also be responsible for the transmission thoughts, that
it was the long-sought substance of mind and spirit.

The electromagnetic field, like the gravitational field proposed
centuries before by Newton, exhibited a holistic character that fit in
well with spiritual ideas. Matter was particulate, occurring in lumps,
and analyzed by the distasteful methods of reductionism in which
objects are reduced to the sum of their parts. Fields, on the other
hand, were continuous - holistic - occurring everywhere in space,
connecting everything to everything else, and analyzable only in the
whole. Even today, occultists confuse natural electromagnetic effects
with "auras" surrounding living things. A popular con game at psychic
fairs is the sale of "aura photographs" that are simply made with
infrared-sensitive film. Kirlian photography is another example of a
simple electromagnetic phenomenon, corona discharge, that is given
imaginary spiritual significance.

Although the atomic theory of matter was well developed by the late
nineteenth century, it had not yet been convincingly verified at that
time. Many chemists, and a few physicists like Lodge, still held open
the possibility that matter might be continuous. The mathematics of
fields had been successfully applied to solids and fluids, which
appear continuous and wavy on the everyday scale. These scientists
suggested that continuity, not atomism, constituted the prime unifying
principle for describing the universe of both matter, light, and
perhaps spirit.

This comforting notion was shattered as the twentieth century got
underway. First, the aether was found not to exist. Second, the atomic
theory was confirmed. Third, light was found to be a component of
matter, composed of particles we now call photons. And so,
discreteness, rather than continuity, became the unifying principle of
physics, with the universe composed solely of particulate matter.
Quantum mechanics was developed to describe material phenomena in all
their various, discrete forms.

However, the situation was not quite so tidy as this short and
simplified review may imply. The phenomena that originally led people
to postulate its wave nature of light did not go away. Those
observations were correct. Furthermore, other forms of matter were
shown to also exhibit wave properties. Electrons were found to
diffract through small openings in exactly the same way as light.

The fact that particles sometimes behaved as waves and waves as
particles was called the wave-particle duality. Although matter was
sufficient to encompass all known physical phenomena, the apparent two-
fold nature of matter gave die hard dualists some comfort. Some
associated waves with mind. But waves and particles were not two
separate elementary substances but characteristics of the same
substance.

Whether a physical entity was a wave or a particle seemed to depend on
what you measured. Measure its position, and you concluded that the
entity is a material body. Measure its wavelength, and you concluded
that the entity is some type of continuous field. Furthermore, you can
imagine deciding which quantity to measure at the last instant, long
after the entity had been emitted from its source, which might be a
distant galaxy.

Some have inferred from this puzzle that the very nature of the
universe is not objective, but depends on the consciousness of the
observer. This latest wrinkle on ancient idealism implies that the
universe only exists within some cosmic, quantum field of mind, with
the human mind part of that field and existing throughout all space
and time.

Quantum phenomena seem to be very mysterious, and where mysteries are
imagined, the supernatural cannot be far behind. However, despite
these misgivings, quantum mechanics developed as a quantitative
physical theory that has proven itself capable of making calculations
and predictions to a high level of accuracy. After seventy years of
exhaustive testing, no observation has been found to be inconsistent
with quantum mechanics as a formal, mathematical theory.

Quantum mechanics dealt early with the problem of the wave nature of
matter by introducing a mathematical quantity called the wave
function. Schrödinger's equation was used to calculate how the wave
function evolved with time; the absolute square of the wave function
gave the probability that a body would be found at a particular
position.

In 1927, Einstein initiated a debate on quantum mechanics with Niels
Bohr that continues today, long after their deaths, as others have
taken up the arguments one side or the other. Initially Einstein
objected to the picture, retained today in most textbooks, in which
the wave function instantaneously "collapses" upon measurement. He
called this a "spooky action at a distance" because it implied that
signals must travel at infinite speeds across the wave front to tell
the wave function to go to zero in the places where nothing is
detected.

To modern dualists, the holistic quantum wave function, with its
instantaneous collapse upon the act of observation, has provided a new
model for the notion of spirit. They have been wittingly and
unwittingly encouraged by various statements made by physicists, some
of considerable distinction.

Eugene Wigner is widely quoted in the new literature of quantum
mysticism. He once said: "The laws of quantum mechanics itself cannot
be formulated . . . without recourse to the concept of
consciousness" (Wigner 1961).

A similar statement by John Archibald Wheeler's is also often used, to
his dismay, in justifying a connection between the quantum and
consciousness: "No elementary quantum phenomenon is a phenomenon until
it is a registered phenomenon. . . . In some strange sense, this is a
participatory universe" (Wheeler 1982).

"Ronald 'More-More' Moshki" writes:

One test

This guy is definitely a troll.
I find posts by him in:

alt.support.boy-lovers
alt.sports.football.pro.ne-patriots
alt.guitar
alt.obituaries
alt.usenet.kooks
alt.politics.homosexuality

and so on.

Please don't reply, the only thing that keeps
a troll going is stirring up comments.

Oops, I just did it. Sorry about that.

Well, at least didn't repost the off-topic
subject matter.

On Feb 9, 8:35�am, Dan Espen wrote:
"Ronald 'More-More' Moshki" writes:

One test

This guy is definitely a troll.
I find posts by him in:

alt.support.boy-lovers
alt.sports.football.pro.ne-patriots
alt.guitar
alt.obituaries
alt.usenet.kooks
alt.politics.homosexuality

and so on.

Please don't reply, the only thing that keeps
a troll going is stirring up comments.

Oops, I just did it. *Sorry about that.

Well, at least didn't repost the off-topic
subject matter.

I find your logic to be flawed and that is putting it nicely.