At dinner one evening, early in the month-long physics workshop, Huang had explained that the Chinese word for physics was “Wu Li,” which could be translated literally as “patterns of organic energy.” The evocative phrase captured everyone’s imagination. Huang had gone on to explain that the Chinese characters making up “Wu Li” could also mean a variety of notions, depending on the spoken inflection or intonation. The term could be translated as “my way,” “nonsense,” “I clutch my ideas,” or “enlightenment,” each connoting a more individualistic, epistemic bent than the English word “physics.” The physicists sitting around the table began to chime in: the richness of the term seemed an eerie match for the direction their own research had taken them, from quantum physics to the nature of consciousness. Zukav now had the outline for his book. He divided his discussion into sections, each labeled by one of the meanings of “Wu Li.”

1. 研究风格和方法。他们自觉回归了爱因斯坦玻尔海森堡时代的自由思想哲学精神。前面说过，冷战时代的物理学已经淡忘了那个传统。

 

2. 关于量子现象的非定域性和“缠结”（entanglement，也有人译作“纠缠”，“缠绕”，我看干脆就译“纠结”），也就是Bell定理。他们抓住了“纠结”问题，吸引了更多同行的注意，从而诞生了量子信息论。

 

3. “无克隆定理”（no-cloning theorem）。就是说，不可能完全复制一个量子态。这一点很容易理解，因为每个态都有海森堡的不确定性，而各态间又是相互缠结的。这个定理似乎说明量子密码是绝对安全的（真的吗？）。有趣的是，FFG起初研究这个定理，是为了解开心灵感应和超感觉的秘密。