teps. Capra says that mystics are more interested in the experience itself than in its description, while physics is most interested in its ability to describe and quantify experience.
The scientific view examined most closely by Capra is called the New Physics, a shift from Classical Physics. Each involves a certain world view. Newton's mechanical model of the universe was the basis for Classical Physics. in this view, "God had created, in the beginning, the material particles, the forces between them, and the fundamental laws of motion" (56). This "machine" was then set in motion and had continued to run ever since, governed by unchangeable laws. Capra finds that this view is related to a rigorous determinism. The model was highly successful and made physicists think that the universe operated by mechanical laws alone. So long as everything could be explained by this mechanical model, it was accepted and would suffice. Change began to creep in with discoveries in electrodynamics and other areas, and the Newtonian model was supplemented by the model offered by Maxwell's electrodynamics.
That was the situation at the beginning of this century, and within the first three decades of this century, our notion of physics would change radically. In 1905 Albert Einstein initiated two revolutionary trains of thought with his special theory of relativity and with a new way of looking at electromagnetic radiation, a way that would lead to quantum, theory. Einstein's new modes of thought would have profound implications for our views of space, time, the nature of the universe, and physical interactions in the universe. In the New Physics, it is not possible to talk about space without taking about time, and the new entity is known as space-time.
Classical Physics still explains the operation of solid bodies moving in empty space. This is also the realm of common experience. It is difficult for us to envision a universe in...