In my usual perusal of nytimes.com's technology section my attention was caught by a reference to xxx.lanl.gov which is making waves in academic publishing by putting quality research papers online. Once there I noticed a paper by G. 't Hooft, Dimensional Reduction in Quantum Gravity, '93.

After considering the entropy of black holes 't Hooft concludes that there "simply are not more degrees of freedom to talk about than the ones one can draw on a surface�. The situation can be compared with a hologram." L. Susskind further pursues this startling conclusion in The World as Hologram, '94.

I trust that these authors are familiar with the holographic speculations of Bohm and Pribram dating back at least to the Seventies. They do make reference to the Bootstrap model that was formulated by G. Chew in the same time period, all of which figured prominently in the zeitgeist of the mystical physicists.

I find it surprising that this professional interest in the holographic model has not been noticed in the popular literature, at least not to my knowledge.*

'T Hooft and Susskind also allude to the possible connections of their ideas to the informational models of physics. The combination of the above speculations seems to provide a natural scientific basis for an immaterialist or idealist metaphysics, in my opinion. Perhaps it is the fear of offending their potential scientific audience that has prevented the mystical physicists from being more emphatic about this very obvious consequence.

The above summary is just by way of an introduction to my further speculations along these lines. It is my inclination to take physical models as metaphors for the structure of an immaterial cosmology. In this spirit I suggest that we substitute the black boxes of our mind/brains for the black holes in 't Hooft's holographic model. This is just about as far as one can fetch a metaphor, but so be it.

What we would then have is the first mathematical model for the concept of the mind as a microcosm, and the physical cosmos as the projection of our multiple microcosms. Projective geometry provides a much more rudimentary model for the concept of the microcosm. The quantum correlations then must be all tied up in the teleological constraints of the eschatology implicit in immaterialism.

I will attempt to expand upon this very rough outline of an idea.

---------

*I have just read Lee Smolin's book, The Life of the Cosmos, '97. He refers to the "holographic hypothesis" in chapter 21 as partial justification for his relational model of the world. This Leibnitzian/monadic view is a big leap toward immaterialism, but Lee says he is still holding out for an objective reality. It is very difficult to let go of that security blanket.

.

rev. 4/26/98