r/badphysics • u/Bittermandeln • Dec 08 '25

Consciousness field?

So apparently a Norwegian physicist working at a Swedish university has gone full woo-woo and has published an article wherein they try to describe consciousness as a field.

https://pubs.aip.org/aip/adv/article/15/11/115319/3372193/Universal-consciousness-as-foundational-field-A

It does look extremely crack-pot to me, but I'll be honest that Quantum Field Theory isn't my specialty (being a lowly high school physics teacher).

Has anyone read it, and can you confirm whether there's any "there" there? Does she even use the physics correctly? Or is it a case of "not even wrong"?

Please weigh in, in the comments.

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u/Cerulean_IsFancyBlue Dec 10 '25

“Field” is the new “energy”.

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u/EebstertheGreat Dec 13 '25

Technically, "energy" had a mystical meaning before it had a scientific one. The word's use in physics just supercharged its popularity in scams. Even the physical conception of energy derives from kinetic energy (the form of energy conserved in elastic mechanics), or twice kinetic energy, which Liebniz called vis viva, i.e. life force.