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Plain English Summary
Here's something you don't see every day: a Nobel Prize-winning physicist arguing that telepathy and mind-over-matter might be allowed by the laws of physics. Josephson and Pallikari-Viras start from Bell's theorem, which proved that distant particles can be mysteriously connected across space ("nonlocality"). Standard quantum math says these connections wash out in everyday life through statistical averaging. But the authors suggest living organisms might have evolved clever workarounds -- using special probability patterns that let them actually tap into these spooky links. It's a bold, purely theoretical idea with no hard numbers to test, but it became a launching pad for decades of similar proposals.
Research Notes
One of the few theoretical psi papers published in a mainstream physics journal by a Nobel laureate. Provides the foundational quantum-nonlocality argument that later papers by Walach, Tressoldi, and others build upon. Central to the debate over whether physics permits or prohibits psi phenomena.
Nobel laureate Brian Josephson and Fotini Pallikari-Viras argue that Bell's theorem demonstrates the existence of nonlocal connections between spatially separated objects, but that standard quantum mechanics predicts these connections vanish under statistical averaging. Drawing on Bohm's causal interpretation, they propose that this vanishing is an artifact of the specific probability distributions relevant to quantum measurement, and that biosystems — through evolutionary adaptation and developmental learning — may access qualitatively different, goal-focused distributions enabling practical use of nonlocality for telepathy and psychokinesis. The theory is entirely qualitative, offering no quantitative predictions.
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Related Papers
Cites
Companion
- Parapsychological Phenomena as Examples of Generalized Nonlocal Correlations—A Theoretical Framework — Walach, Harald (2014)
- Experimental evidence of non-classical brain functions — Kerskens, Christian Matthias (2022)
- Extrasensory Perception and Quantum Models of Cognition — Tressoldi, Patrizio E (2010)
- Does Consciousness Collapse the Wave-Packet? — Bierman, Dick J (2003)
- The Mental Universe — Henry, Richard Conn (2005)
- The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox in the Brain: The Transferred Potential — Grinberg-Zylberbaum, Jacobo (1994)
- Quantum Aspects of the Brain-Mind Relationship: A Hypothesis with Supporting Evidence — Kauffman, Stuart A (2023)
- Information in Life, Consciousness, Quantum Physics, and Paranormal Phenomena — Kennedy, J.E (2011)
- Consciousness in the Universe: Neuroscience, Quantum Space-Time Geometry and Orch OR Theory — Penrose, Roger (2011)
- Weak Quantum Theory: Complementarity and Entanglement in Physics and Beyond — Atmanspacher, Harald (2002)
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📋 Cite this paper
Josephson, Brian D, Pallikari-Viras, Fotini (1991). Biological Utilisation of Quantum NonLocality. Foundations of Physics. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01889297
@article{josephson_1991_biological,
title = {Biological Utilisation of Quantum NonLocality},
author = {Josephson, Brian D and Pallikari-Viras, Fotini},
year = {1991},
journal = {Foundations of Physics},
doi = {10.1007/BF01889297},
}