From Duality to Mysticism

Quantum physics came into being as a result of the investigation of the nature of the emission of light—more accurately, electromagnetic waves (EMWs)—by hot objects; specifically, the relation between the color of light emitted by an object, say a metal, and the temperature of that object. As generations of blacksmiths have witnessed, iron glows as you heat it. The glow starts with a dull red color, which changes to bright red as you keep it in a hot furnace, and finally to a white glow if the furnace is sufficiently hot. What they didn’t know is that the iron glows EMWs all the time, even at low temperatures. However, due to the invisibility of EMWs that lie outside the boundaries of rainbow colors—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet (the range of EMWs to which our optical nerves are sensitive)—they were not aware of that fact.