When Science Meets Spirituality: Dialogue, Synthesis, and the Direction of Inference

Attempts to bring science and spirituality together are treated very differently. A theory claiming that quantum physics points towards a universal consciousness may quickly be accused of pseudoscience. At the same time, a university can offer a course combining physics, philosophy and religion without causing much controversy.

Is this merely a cultural preference for established Christianity over newer forms of spirituality? There is probably an element of institutional asymmetry. But I believe that a more fundamental distinction is involved.

The crucial difference is not simply between Christianity and New Age spirituality. It is between bringing different disciplines into dialogue and claiming that physics directly establishes a spiritual worldview.

Four projects hidden in one phrase

The expression “uniting science and spirituality” can refer to at least four different projects.

First, science, philosophy and religion can be compared. One may ask how they approach questions concerning the origin, structure and intelligibility of the universe.

Second, they can enter into dialogue. Scientific discoveries may create new philosophical and theological questions, while philosophy can clarify the assumptions and limits of scientific explanations.

Third, a scientific theory can be given a metaphysical interpretation. One may ask whether relativity, quantum theory or cosmology fits more naturally with relationalism, structural realism, idealism, physicalism or some other ontology.

Fourth, one may claim that science has established a spiritual or theological conclusion: that consciousness creates physical reality, that the universe is conscious, that God can be identified with a physical field, or that personal consciousness survives death.

The first three projects can be intellectually legitimate, although their conclusions remain open to criticism. The fourth makes a stronger claim. If the proposed spiritual reality is presented as part of a physical theory, it must be connected to the evidential and mathematical structure of physics.

This does not mean that every theoretical entity must be directly observable, nor that a single Popperian criterion of falsifiability can provide a mechanical boundary between science and non-science. Physics routinely reasons about entities and processes that cannot be observed directly. Quarks, the solar interior and the hot early universe are known through theoretical and indirect relations to observable phenomena.

The status of more speculative proposals, such as the multiverse or the string landscape, is itself disputed. Their scientific legitimacy cannot simply be assumed. But such proposals are normally assessed by considering several factors together: mathematical coherence, connections with empirically successful theories, explanatory power regarding independently recognised problems, indirect observational constraints and the possibility of future empirical contact.

Scientific status is therefore a matter of epistemic structure and degree, not a binary property conferred by immediate observability.

One particularly useful diagnostic question concerns the direction of inference. Does an independently motivated physical theory lead towards an unexpected metaphysical possibility, or is a prior metaphysical picture first assumed and then translated into physical and mathematical language? The direction alone does not determine whether a proposal is true or false. But in the second case, the formalism provides little independent support unless it acquires constraints and consequences not already contained in the original metaphysical picture.

Two cases from Uppsala

The distinction can be illustrated by two recent examples from Uppsala University.

The university offers a course called “Three Perspectives on Cosmology – Physics, Philosophy and Religion.” The title is significant. It speaks of three perspectives rather than one unified theory.

According to the course syllabus, students study the standard cosmological model and its observational support, concepts from philosophy of science and metaphysics, and ideas about the universe found in selected religions. They are expected to discuss the relation between these fields with “disciplinary awareness.”

The course therefore does not claim that contemporary cosmology proves a religious doctrine. It studies the similarities, tensions and possible points of contact between different disciplines. Teaching about religious interpretations of the cosmos is not the same as presenting those interpretations as established physics.

Maria Strømme’s article Universal Consciousness as Foundational Field: A Theoretical Bridge between Quantum Physics and Non-Dual Philosophy made a different kind of claim. It proposed universal consciousness as a fundamental field from which space, time, matter and individual consciousness emerge.

The article begins with the Three Principles associated with Sydney Banks, whose spiritual teachings became the basis of the popular-psychological Three Principles movement: universal mind, universal consciousness and universal thought. These metaphysical principles are then represented through the language of fields, states, collapse mechanisms and operators. Universal thought is represented by an operator, T̂, which initiates the differentiation of an undivided consciousness field.

The direction of inference is important. Universal consciousness does not first emerge as an unexpected consequence of an independently motivated physical theory. The metaphysical picture is introduced at the beginning and subsequently translated into physical and mathematical language.

This does not prove the picture false. But mathematical representation alone does not provide independent evidence for the reality being represented. Almost any sufficiently articulated metaphysical system can be assigned symbols and transformations. The decisive question is what constrains the formalism and connects it to phenomena independently of the conclusion it was introduced to express.

What the retraction did—and did not—establish

The chronology is worth noting.

Strømme’s article was received by AIP Advances on 15 July 2025, accepted on 28 October and published online on 13 November. It was subsequently promoted by Uppsala University.

After critical media coverage, a different unit within the same university—the Department of Physics and Astronomy—issued a brief statement on 12 December distancing itself from the article and criticising the university’s handling of the matter.

The journal retracted the article on 7 May 2026. According to the official notice, the central operator T̂ had no associated measurable quantity and could not be verified or falsified through empirical tests. The publisher and editors therefore concluded that the theory’s predictions were not empirically verifiable and that the article did not meet the journal’s standard for scientific validity.

The notice was corrected on 18 May concerning the description of the author’s response. In its current form, it states that Strømme responded to correspondence about the retraction but abstained from comment.

It would nevertheless be inaccurate to say that the original article contained no suggestions for empirical investigation. Its main text included a section entitled “Concrete predictions and experimental tests,” while the supplementary material developed the proposed tests further.

Among other things, the article proposed looking for correlations between directed mental states and random-number generators, vacuum fluctuations, Casimir-like systems, biological synchronisation and anomalies in the cosmic microwave background.

The problem is that suggesting phenomena in which an effect might appear is not yet the same as deriving a quantitative and distinctive prediction from a theory. To provide strong empirical support, an observation must be connected to the central formalism and distinguish the proposed theory from plausible alternatives. A correlation that could be produced by many unrelated mechanisms does not by itself test the existence of universal thought or a universal consciousness field.

The wording of the retraction should therefore not be treated as a final philosophical solution to the demarcation problem. The fact that the article was accepted and featured by a physics journal before being retracted also demonstrates that the boundary is not self-evident in practice. Journals and peer review can fail to make the transitions between metaphor, metaphysics and physical theory sufficiently explicit.

The institutional response was fragmented as well. Uppsala University’s promotional interview remained available for more than five months after its Department of Physics and Astronomy had publicly distanced itself from the article. The interview content was not removed until 19 May 2026, following the journal’s retraction.

This does not necessarily imply continued endorsement. It does, however, illustrate how scientific communication, departmental criticism and editorial gatekeeping can move on different institutional timelines.

The episode is consequently not only about one author. It is also about the gatekeeping practices of scientific institutions.

Why Christian theology often avoids direct collision with physics

Classical Christian theology usually distinguishes between the Creator and creation. God is not ordinarily understood as another object, force or field within the universe. God does not compete with gravity, quantum fields or biological evolution as one more physical cause among others.

In classical theological language, God can be described as a primary cause, while processes within nature are secondary causes. This distinction allows a physicist to give a complete physical account of a process without thereby answering every metaphysical question about why a law-governed reality exists at all.

One may, for example, distinguish between the questions:

How did the observable universe develop from an early hot and dense state?

Why does any physical reality, governed by intelligible laws, exist at all?

The first is primarily a scientific question. The second is metaphysical and possibly theological. This does not make the theological answer true, but it means that it is not automatically a competing cosmological model.

Likewise, creation in sophisticated Christian theology need not mean a physical event preceding the Big Bang. It can refer to the dependence of the entire physical reality—including time itself—upon a more fundamental ground.

This kind of theology can certainly be criticised. One may question whether the concept of such a ground is coherent, explanatory or necessary. One may also suspect that moving God outside the domain of empirical inquiry insulates theology from possible correction. But the disagreement is then primarily philosophical rather than a dispute between two rival physical theories.

Serious non-materialist alternatives

It would be unfair, however, to compare sophisticated Christian theology only with the least disciplined forms of contemporary spirituality. There are intellectually developed non-materialist positions within contemporary philosophy.

In his academic monograph Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, Philip Goff defends Russellian monism, panpsychism and, ultimately, a form of cosmopsychism: the hypothesis that the universe as a whole is conscious.

Whatever one thinks of this proposal, it is presented as a metaphysical theory and defended through arguments concerning consciousness, physical structure, grounding and explanatory power. It is not presented as a theorem already contained in quantum mechanics, nor does it automatically entail the survival of individual persons after death.

David Chalmers and Kelvin McQueen go further towards physical modelling in their work on consciousness and wave-function collapse. They combine integrated information theory with continuous spontaneous localisation models. Importantly, they acknowledge that simple versions of the proposal are ruled out by the quantum Zeno effect, while more complex versions might in principle be tested using quantum computers. Their conclusion is not that consciousness-induced collapse has been established, but that it may constitute a research programme worth exploring.

This is a useful example of a cautious transition from metaphysical interpretation towards empirical theory. Consciousness is not excluded in advance, but neither is its physical role assumed merely because it fits an attractive worldview.

The contrast therefore cannot be reduced to Christian versus non-dual thought, or materialism versus spirituality. There are disciplined and undisciplined forms of synthesis on both sides.

Why contemporary spirituality often turns towards quantum physics

The label “contemporary spirituality” covers many different ideas and movements. Nevertheless, a recurring pattern can be identified.

Many contemporary spiritual worldviews are immanentist or non-dualist. The ultimate reality is understood as present within the cosmos, identical with it, or expressed through a universal consciousness. This makes it tempting to describe the ultimate reality as an energy, vibration, information structure or quantum field.

Scientific language also carries enormous cultural authority. A spiritual idea described as “quantum” may appear more objective and modern than one based openly upon metaphysical reasoning, tradition or religious experience.

A familiar chain of reasoning then emerges:

quantum measurement
↓
the observer
↓
conscious observation
↓
consciousness creates reality
↓
universal consciousness
↓
survival of consciousness after death.

But none of these transitions follows automatically from the preceding step.

An “observer” in physics does not necessarily mean a conscious human subject. A measurement can be described as a physical interaction, and most interpretations of quantum mechanics do not require human consciousness to collapse the wave function.

Even if consciousness did play some role in measurement, this would not by itself establish a universal consciousness. And even the existence of a universal consciousness would not immediately imply that individual memory, identity or personhood survives bodily death.

Each arrow in the chain requires an independent argument. Scientific terminology cannot replace those arguments.

An institutional asymmetry

It would also be naïve to ignore the sociology of knowledge.

Christian theology has existed within European universities for centuries. It possesses institutions, journals, established vocabularies and recognised methods of criticism. It therefore receives a degree of cultural legitimacy that newer spiritual movements usually lack.

A speculative idea may appear more respectable when expressed in the language of an established theological tradition than when expressed through concepts taken from contemporary spirituality. Academic legitimacy is not distributed solely according to the quality of arguments.

Nor are Christian attempts at synthesis immune to category mistakes. Creation science, certain forms of intelligent design and attempts to derive the soul or divine action directly from quantum mechanics can commit precisely the same error.

The reverse is also true. A university course comparing quantum physics, Buddhist philosophy, Advaita Vedanta and contemporary philosophy of mind could be entirely legitimate, provided that its methods and transitions were made clear.

The decisive question is therefore not whether an idea is Christian, non-dual or New Age. The question is what kind of claim is being made, what independently motivates it, and what reasons are offered for moving from one level of discourse to another.

Turning the criterion towards observer-equivariance

This distinction is directly relevant to my own work on observer-equivariance.

The four levels within that project deliberately echo the four different meanings of “unification” described at the beginning of this essay:

1. A formal mathematical principle.
2. A physical interpretation of transformations between observers.
3. A metaphysical or monadic ontology.
4. A possible existential, theological or spiritual significance.

These levels may inform one another, but they should not be conflated.

Suppose, for example, that I prove a classification theorem concerning observer-equivariant law spaces. Such a theorem might constrain the range of possible physical structures or make a particular metaphysical interpretation more attractive. But if I claimed that the classification theorem itself proved the monadic ontology, I would be committing the same kind of mistake criticised above.

The formal result would not contain the metaphysical conclusion unless the additional bridging premises were stated and defended.

Likewise, the fact that physical descriptions depend upon observer perspectives does not by itself show that observers are conscious subjects, still less that reality is generated by a universal consciousness. Moving from formal perspectival structure to a spiritual ontology would require further arguments.

Turning the criterion towards my own work is important. Otherwise the distinction between legitimate philosophy and illegitimate synthesis risks becoming merely a way of protecting one’s preferred metaphysics while excluding those of others.

My own movement from explicitly spiritual language towards a more philosophical formulation should perhaps be understood in this way. It need not mean abandoning the original questions. It means becoming more precise about where physics ends, where metaphysical interpretation begins, and what remains an open existential possibility.

Boundaries as points of articulation

The meeting between science and spirituality becomes most credible when neither side tries to disguise itself as the other.

Physics should be allowed to constrain our pictures of reality. Philosophy should examine the concepts and transitions involved. Theology and spiritual traditions may raise questions of meaning, ground, value and ultimate reality—but they must not present these questions as experimentally settled merely by borrowing the language of quantum mechanics.

Disciplinary boundaries need not be walls. They can instead be points of articulation. But a genuine bridge requires two distinguishable banks.

Science and spirituality do not become closer simply because their vocabularies are blended. They become closer when the transitions between them are made explicit.

Sources

• Uppsala University, “Three Perspectives on Cosmology – Physics, Philosophy and Religion”.
• Uppsala University, course syllabus.
• Maria Strømme, “Universal Consciousness as Foundational Field: A Theoretical Bridge between Quantum Physics and Non-Dual Philosophy”.
• Maria Strømme, supplementary material.
• AIP Advances, retraction notice.
• Uppsala University, statement from the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
• Uppsala University, notice concerning the unpublished interview.
• Philip Goff, Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, especially Chapter 9, “A Conscious Universe” (Oxford University Press, 2017).
• David J. Chalmers and Kelvin J. McQueen, “Consciousness and the Collapse of the Wave Function”.