Alejandro Guijarro, Tristan Hoare Gallery, London.

Max Planck invented the term “quantum,” writes Deepak Chopra, a professor of family medicine and public health, in a letter to the NYTimes. He quotes a 1931 interview with The Observer of London in which Planck said, “I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.”

Google riffs on “quantum” as “a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents.”

I have coined the term “possum” to mean “a discrete quantity of possible understanding proportional in magnitude to the clarity of the assertion it measures.”

Sean Carroll, in “Even Physicists Don’t Understand Quantum Mechanics” (Op-Ed, nytimes.com, Sept. 7), asks whether consciousness is somehow involved in our observations of the world. How could it not be?… Physics… went down a path that either took consciousness for granted or shrugged it off as part of our fickle, subjective world… [A] new generation of physicists is open to the notion that you cannot get around consciousness. I’d say it’s about time.
(“From Deepak Chopra: You Can’t Get Around Consciousness,” 9-15-19)

The possum of understanding I receive from Dr. Chopra would be augmented in magnitude if he defined “consciousness,” and also mentioned exactly what he intuits so clearly that the physicists have missed.

(c) 2019 JMN