Peter Russell – You create your own reality. Just “think positive,” and you’ll get yourself a new car, a great job, the perfect partner and lots of money. That’s a message heard more and more frequently, most prominently in popular documentaries like The Secret, following the success of What the Bleep Do We Know!?

To offer concrete evidence for their claims, the filmmakers point to discoveries in quantum physics. But does physics really provide the proof for these claims?

Quantum physics describes the socalled “observer effect,” which refers to the impact the mere act of observing can have on the phenomenon being observed. Physicists speak about this as the “collapse of the wave function.” The wave function describes the probabilities of a particle being observed in any of its possible states. When an observation is made, the wave function “collapses” and the particle is observed in one particular state. A popular interpretation of this is that the act of observation affects physical reality, “freezing” it into a certain state. Hence the claim that you create your own reality, and the importance of holding a positive vision of a desired outcome.

The original formulation, however, put forward by Nobel Prize-winner Werner Heisenberg, states that is your knowledge of the system that collapses. Nothing in the real world actually changes; the only thing that changes is the uncertainty in your knowledge. Continue reading →