This essay reviews "What the Bleep Do We Know" by William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, and Mark Vicente (2005), exploring the book's central claims about quantum physics, consciousness, and the nature of reality. The essay surveys the eight major interpretations of quantum reality — from the Copenhagen interpretation to Heisenberg's duplex universe — and examines how Arntz uses these frameworks to bridge science and religion. It concludes by weighing whether the book's approach constitutes genuine scientific inquiry or pseudoscience, ultimately suggesting that the work is thought-provoking but highly open to interpretation depending on the observer's own perspective.
In What the Bleep Do We Know (Arntz, Chasse, & Vicente, 2005), the reader is presented with an interesting set of questions that border the fields of religion and science. What is thought? Why are we here? Why do we do the things we do? What is existence? The book creates a tempest of unknowns with the purpose of making the reader deconstruct their own physical existence. Rather than explaining why "we are here," the book attempts to make the reader fundamentally aware that the question of the nature of reality is unknowable.
The book is an extension of the 2004 docudrama What the Bleep Do We Know?, a half-documentary, half-fiction video narrative. The book version may be more palatable to readers who want to chew on the kernel of a thought rather than be drawn through a video journey in the space of two hours.
The nature of the book is to use quantum physics as an explanation of reality, stating that what is unknowable can be addressed by framing it in terms of quantum physics. Using a blend of science, technology, and religious discussion, Arntz et al. weave stimulating material to engage the reader in examining their preconceptions about themselves, the world they live in, and the nature of what is real.
The book opens with a thought experiment. Arntz asks the reader to construct a question that could be answered in the theoretical "Universal Book of Everything." The reader is then invited to ask another question just for fun, before being asked: "What is the one thing you know for sure?" The point of this thought experiment is that the act of asking questions, in and of itself, opens the door of consciousness, expands previously held dogma, and inserts a large "what if" into everyday discourse.
Arntz gives the reader a compelling way to approach the science-versus-religion divide when it comes to asking the "great questions." Truth, as a phenomenon to be explored, is sought both by religion and by science. Rather than being diametrically opposed, the two are two sides of the same coin, separated by a view of whether some idea or explanation of the nature of the cosmos is dogma or natural law.
Science, as the field is currently known, grew out of the idea that gaining wisdom and understanding the natural order was done for the glory of God. Science, then, was not apart from religion — it was a natural evolution of the attempt to become one with the divine. This changed beginning with Copernicus, continuing through Newton and Darwin, and up to the present day. Science is driven by observation, not conjecture. The divine, unknowable, faith-based model finds no testable hypothesis or statistical methodology in science (O'Hear). This is clearly the realm of the spirit. Can Creationism and Darwinism live in harmony with each other? Creationism has taken on new weight as the spiritual progenitor of "intelligent design" (I.D.). The strategic scientific wording of I.D. is an attempt to highlight the void in the evolutionary explanation, arguing that those empty spaces have more significance than the theory's otherwise convincing totality (Cray).
To Arntz, the new paradigm for bridging the gap between science and religion is to use science as the explanation of the untestable hypothesis — the unknowable, and perhaps even the divine. Science, Arntz holds, can explain why we do not know what we do not know, and that in itself is an answer worthy of scientific inquiry. It is a "new paradigm" of science, breaking away from the rigid structure of hard-line empiricism. The tool Arntz uses to uphold the premises in his book is quantum physics. The following sections review some ideas of quantum reality that directly bear on Arntz's theories and interpretations of reality and consciousness.
Arntz asks "what is reality?" — and the answer differs depending on the viewpoint of the person being asked. A priest, monk, or shaman will likely give very different answers than a systems scientist, a nuclear physicist, or a theoretical physicist. In What the Bleep Do We Know, these two fundamental viewpoints — spiritual versus scientific — are brought into a single sphere of knowledge: quantum physics, specifically discussions on quantum realities.
What is quantum reality? It is the holy grail of the theoretical physics world — the interpretation of how our universe really works and what existence is. The idea of quantum reality has been debated, analyzed, and theorized by some of the greatest minds the human race has ever known. Figures such as Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Erwin Schrödinger worked on this puzzle without arriving at a definitive answer. There are eight widely recognized interpretations of quantum reality; each has fundamental flaws, but together they represent humanity's best attempts to answer the question of what is really going on in our world (Bey). From this foundation of theorizing about the nature of reality, Arntz builds his case.
The first interpretation is the Copenhagen interpretation, which states that there is no deep reality. Developed by Niels Bohr and the Copenhagen school, it holds that there is no quantum world — only an abstract description based on quantum physics. The everyday phenomena we experience are real, but they float on a foundation that is not real in any conventional sense; the underlying substance of things is of an altogether different and indescribable kind. This view remains the most widely accepted paradigm. Bohr further argued that no advances in technology would ever be able to reveal the deeper truth of quantum reality (Stapp).
In What the Bleep Do We Know, Arntz draws heavily on aspects of this interpretation, though the book also reflects an encounter with quantum mysticism — a set of metaphysical ideas presupposing a consciousness, intelligence, or otherwise mystical component to the experience of existence at the quantum scale (Rosenblum). To some, this is pseudoscience; to others, it is an enlightened path to science.
The second interpretation is the modified Copenhagen interpretation, commonly known as the Observer Effect. This view accepts that there is no deep quantum reality, but modifies Bohr's position by stating that reality is created by the observer. What we see is real, but phenomena are not present in the absence of an observer to perceive them (Van Orden). Sayings such as "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" or "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" stem from this observer theory. In short, "you create your own reality." Nothing is real until it is an observed phenomenon. Arntz uses this premise as an argument to draw readers away from the narrow, fixed boundaries of physical reality and common interpretation.
The third interpretation, conceived by Walter Heitler, holds that reality is an undivided wholeness. Everything in our universe — planets, stars, elements, atoms, living things — is not separate but part of an inseparable whole. Heitler accepts the modified Copenhagist observer-created reality but adds that the act of observation dissolves the barrier between observer and the observed; the observer becomes a necessary part of the whole (Bleuler). Arntz addresses this bridge by asking "Why aren't we magicians?" — if we create our reality and can change it simply through how we perceive it, we should be able to shape our world and our place within it. In this way, Arntz offers readers what many self-help traditions have offered: responsibility for one's own reality, and the suggestion that it can be changed.
The fourth interpretation is Hugh Everett's many-worlds interpretation, developed at Princeton in 1957 (Albert and Loewer). This view, popular in science fiction, holds that every time a measurement is taken a multitude of universes is created. For every possible outcome of an event, there is a universe in which that outcome is realized, meaning there are effectively infinite alternate universes enacting every possible version of our lives (Albert and Loewer). For Arntz, the implication is that for any person seeking change or a new paradigm, such a reality already exists somewhere.
The fifth interpretation is quantum logic, posited by Birkhoff and Neumann in 1936. It holds that the universe obeys a non-human kind of reasoning. Rather than replacing old concepts of reality with new ones, humanity must abandon classical reasoning entirely and develop a new mode of thought — quantum logic — that has yet to be fully articulated. Once we discard classical physics and fully understand quantum reality, the theory holds, we will be able to think quantum logically and thereby understand reality.
The sixth interpretation is Neorealism, which argues that the universe is made of ordinary objects — objects with no quantum properties that possess attributes independent of observation. This view is the least accepted among physicists, as it discards quantum reality altogether and asserts that the universe can be explained by classical physics. Critics such as Bohr compared this to claiming the world is flat or that the sun revolves around the earth. Neorealists counter that the other interpretations make things more complex than they need to be.
The seventh interpretation states that consciousness creates reality. A modified form of the observer-created reality view, it holds that only entities possessing consciousness can create reality, meaning that before any conscious being existed, nothing existed. Most physicists, including Einstein, Bohr, and Heitler, argued that this position is incomplete because it implies something magical was required to create consciousness so that reality could exist — a circular problem. Only a small number of physicists embrace this interpretation.
The eighth and final interpretation is Heisenberg's duplex universe, conceived by Werner Heisenberg. It states that the universe consists of two realms: potentials and actualities. Heisenberg accepted the observer-created reality interpretation but asked: if the observer creates reality, what does the observer create it from? His answer was the duplex universe. We inhabit the world of actuality; reality is created when the observer brings it into being by observing it, drawing that actuality from a parallel universe of possibility in which every possible outcome exists (Busch, Heinonen, and Latti).
The eight versions of reality proposed by some of the greatest minds in history represent the human desire to understand everything around us. One could argue that humankind first began questioning the nature of what it saw — and did not see — at the very dawn of consciousness. From that time, through the development of civilizations, cultures, and institutions, the rise of religion and its offspring, science, has brought us to this nascent period of inquiry. Arntz capitalizes on this intellectual background and provides a provocative line of thought that many readers will find difficult to resist.
Each person has a different perception of the world, shaped in part by the way their nervous system and brain are formed, the nature of their sensory equipment, their upbringing and education, and their personal belief system. What one person observes about a phenomenon will not be identical to what another person observes about the same phenomenon. Furthermore, a given individual's perception of the world changes constantly with age, so what is observed or perceived today will necessarily differ from what is perceived later in life.
"Role of perception and consciousness in reality"
What Arntz is asking us, fundamentally, is how certain we can be about science, and what kinds of explanations we can use to define our existence through the tools available to us, including scientific inquiry and religion.
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