Foundations of Physics, 11ol. 2, No. 2/3, 1972 Photon Consciousness: Fact or Fancy? James F. Woodward, Andr6 de Klerk, Gail Kahler, Kathrine Leber, Peter Pompei, Daniel Schultz, and Sharon Stern University of Denver, Denver, Colorado Received May 20, 1971 An experhnent designed to test the highly speculative hypothesis o J" photon consciousness was executed. It was found that, within the accuracy attainable with the apparatus, there is no empirical justification for the hypothesis. In a previous issue of this journal, Cochran (a) proposed the speculative hypothesis that elementary particles are endowed with a quality of conscious- ness in addition to those properties they are already assumed to possess. Under normal circumstances, this quality of consciousness, according to Cochran, is not discernable because of thermal agitation. But in the boson state, since thermal agitation is negligible, this consciousness should emerge as a detectable characteristic. If such a hypothesis were in fact true, it would be of tremendous significance to theoretical physics; for example, the identical-particle postulate of quantum mechanics and the Copenhagen interpretation of the uncertainty principle would be manifestly false. Con- sequently, we have carried out an experiment, simple in principle, to test this hypothesis. The ability to make conscious (or, for that matter, unconscious) deci- sions requires intelligence. For the consciousness hypothesis to be of any 241 © 1972 Plenum Publishing" Corporation, 227 West 17th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011.