“From all things One and from One all things,” wrote the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. You might read this as a platitude, or as a pleasant spiritual or philosophical idea. You probably wouldn’t read it as a more-or-less accurate scientific statement about the nature of the universe. Particle physicist Heinrich Pèas, however, does. In the book ‘One’, Pèas makes the surprising and compelling case for monism-the philosophical idea that one single, all-encompassing thing underlies everything we experience-rehabilitating the idea’s reputation and reclaiming it for science. At first glance, the idea that “all is one” seems patently absurd. But Pèas reveals that monism (also can be inferred to Advaita philosophy) follows logically from certain principles of quantum mechanics once they are applied to the entire universe.
He shows how monism is not only a feasible theory from a scientific perspective but a potentially powerful solution to the stagnation of thought in contemporary physics, arguing that if physics is ever to progress, physicists must learn to embrace insights from outside the narrow silo of experimental knowledge.
