Tackling Borges’s Library with Quantum Physics by Joseph Michael Owens

If you’re like me, you hate rhetorical questions in a column or essay, and you definitely hate it when they appear in anything resembling fiction. I’m not going to do that to you. I’m also not going to ever use phrases like “…the mind’s eye” or “man cave” or “retail therapy”. I hate those phrases and I submit it’s very possible (likely?) that you do too. One thing I can’t promise is that I will refrain from digressions. In fact, I can almost guarantee them. What I can also guarantee is that I’ll be—regularly to semi-regularly—talking about experimental literature and how it relates to being a sentient person living on planet Earth.

So instead of asking you a rhetorical question, like: “What’s the deal with Borges’s Library of Babel?” or “What can we learn about writing from Quantum Mechanics and String Theory?”, or implying a rhetorical question through the use of a rhetorical statement like: “Some physicists believe in the existence of parallel universes,” and then totally backpedaling and just asking the rhetorical question anyway, like: “What can parallel universes teach us about literature?”; I’m just going to start typing about this idea I’ve had for a while and hope you are as interested in it as I am.

OK then, here’s what we’ve got: experimental literature, Quantum Mechanics and String Theory. I should state here that I do not have a background in physics nor have I ever been, to the best of my knowledge, a physicist in a previous and/or parallel life.

However, physics was the one science class I ever took in high school and college that I really liked and managed to do pretty well in. I also submit that I know and understand a lot more on the theoretical side of physics than I do where the mathematics are concerned. In other words, I’m a dabbler in physics, astrophysics, particle physics, etc. (basically anything that you can watch a documentary about on the Science Channel), a dilettante.

Before I lose my audience, which, let’s be honest, when you start throwing around terms like “math” and “science,” the eyes of many literary types begin to glaze over. Here are some basics in a condensed, Reader’s Digest or Cliff’s Notes version: Albert Einstein (of E=MC² fame) unsuccessfully searched—until his death—for a formula he called the “theory of everything” (TOE), a unifying theory that would elegantly bring together the two best (albeit, competing) theories of the day: his own theories of Special and General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. [1]

Simply put, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics will never been seen laughing together over ice-cold microbrews.[2]

String theory, then, attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. [And while it’s at it, emerges as a leading contender for the elusive theory of everything (TOE)]. The most important thing to know about string theory is that it suggests there are not just three dimensions of space, but ten. And its sibling, M-theory, furthers this by suggesting yet another, eleventh dimension: time (and a few other factors not pertinent to this column, like p-branes and d-branes, etc.). M-theory also suggests that our universe is only one of a basically infinite number of other universes that make up a truly gigantic, interconnected Multi-verse.[3]

In the pseudo-rhetorical questions section above, I mentioned Borges’s “Library of Babel”. Borges’s narrator describes how his universe consists of an enormous expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms—each of which contains the bare necessities for human survival—and four walls of bookshelves. Though the order and content of the books is random and (supposedly) completely meaningless, the Library’s inhabitants believe that the books contain every possible ordering of just a few basic characters (letters, spaces and punctuation marks). In other words, Borges’s Library contains every book ever written as well as every book that ultimately will- and could possibly ever be written.[4]

Borges’s Library of Babel is very similar to the idea of an infinitely-large multiverse where every conceivable combination of things and events exists, has existed and will always exist, into infinity. Borges’s Library contains the minutely detailed history of the future, Gospels, commentary and refutation of those Gospels, the true story of your own personal death, translations of every book in every language—both known and unknown—it contains quite literally everything.

So there’s good news for all of you out there who have, for example, started a novel but eventually found yourself at a standstill. That novel is already complete! In a way, you are—according to Borges—retyping it from the copy that already exists in the Library of Babel. This could be seen, by some, however, as a depressing phenomenon. Like: “What’s the point of writing it if it already exists?” And it’s true, at least according to M-theory, that a parallel you has already written the book, has already written every book ever—but you (i.e. the you that is reading this column right now) does not have access to the “you” who wrote Shakespeare’s plays or Infinite Jest.

All of this stuff kind of blows my mind if I stop to think about it for too long.

But it kind of makes you think: if everything already exists in every kind of conceivable combination, it really gives you a totally fresh sense of the interconnectedness of the universe(s). Like, if we all came from the same source (e.g. many physicists call it “the singularity”) and the big bang exploded everything that was a singular whole into a bazillion disparate pieces, maybe our search for connectedness stems from a desire to be a part of the whole we forgot we once were. (This sort of lends itself to Kabbalah and the whole “shattered god” concept, but that’d be a wholly other column.)

Borges’s Library also sort of makes me think of Jung’s theory of a “collective unconscious” but not necessarily 100 percent the way he conceived of it. More like in the way that there is this vast store of knowledge and information (N.B. information, according to Stephen Hawking, Leonard Suskind, et al, is the one thing that cannot be created or destroyed) that exists outside of reality as we know it and we simply “tap into” it. In other words, we don’t necessarily discover things (i.e. information); we remember them.

I submit that these ideas seem not only dense, but also just fucking “way out there.” But I do have a point—sort of. I’ve often viewed writing the way David Foster Wallace did, or at least how he was quoted as having viewed writing (fiction, specifically): as a way to feel connected to those people and things around you, as a means to be “a fucking human being.” In a way, each of us who writes is contributing to reconstructing Borges’s Library of Babel—book by book, letter by letter, space by space. And even those of us who don’t write are still contributing. Because there would (hypothetically) be a volume describing an accurate account of your life replete with your hopes, fears, dreams and passions. Each drop of sweat and blood would be accounted for.

And that is, I suppose, where the beauty and hopefulness of this totally abstract idea comes from, where the equality of each human being (and everything that has ever existed ab aeterno), exists in its purest, most objective form: within this library that pieces together everything, that connects the individual parts to its former whole. I don’t know about you, but it definitely makes me feel less alone.

 +