LEV SADOVNIK, Ph.D.
OPTICAL SCIENTIST, TECH ENTREPRENEUR, AND SPIRITUAL EXPLORER
Dr. Lev Sadovnik is an Optical Scientist and entrepreneur with over sixty papers and fortypatents to his name. A USC graduate, he co-founded WaveBand and Holoptic, where he led the development of innovative electromagnetic devices. After a career at the pinnacle of industry, he began exploring the junction of scientific achievement and divine reality.
He views scientific models as a "divine vocabulary"—metaphors that bring God’s infinite manifestations into our finite perception. Through his presentations on the Holographic Metaphor of World’s Duality and the Concept of DAAT, he helps others see the spiritual foundation hidden within the material world. He lives in Irvine, California, with his wife of forty-five years, Victoria.
Science in Service
of God
LEV SADOVNIK, Ph.D.
In The Guide for the Perplexed,(1) Maimonides (also known as Rambam) famously wrote: “You will certainly not doubt the necessity of studying astronomy and physics, if you are desirous of comprehending the relation between the world and Providence as it is in reality, and not according to imagination.”(2) For Rambam, science was never a mere secular pursuit; it was a primary tool for understanding the Creator. I believe this remains true today: scientific models allow us to grasp challenging concepts about God that might otherwise remain abstract.
Science operates by creating models of the universe’s most basic processes. Similarly, ancient Sages taught that every spiritual construct has a “hint” or reflection in the physical world. Looking back on my years in the fields of science and technology, I do not view that time as a detour from my spiritual growth. Rather, it helped provide the vocabulary to make sense of the world’s fundamental duality—the way reality simultaneously hides and reveals God. It offered me a framework for understanding the interaction between the soul and the brain, and the projection of God’s infinite existence into our finite realm.
In particular, challenging a strictly materialistic worldview(3) often begins with demonstrating where that view fails on its own terms. Consider quantum physics (QP)—the most rigorously tested and accurate scientific model we possess.(4) QP suggests that the universe cannot transition from potentiality to reality without an independent observer.(5) According to the “Observer Effect,”(6) a particle does not inhabit a definitive state (position or spin) until it is detected. Until that moment, it exists only as a “wavefunction” (7) of potential states.
For the universe to have come into existence, there must have been an a priori Observer—one who is not part of the physical system being brought into being. Critics often argue that “decoherence”—the interaction of a particle with its environment—can collapse a wavefunction without a conscious mind. However, this assumes an “environment” already exists, which contradicts a purely materialistic account of the universe’s very origin.
By establishing the necessity of a non-material entity existing before the material world, we take the first step toward acknowledging the spiritual. Inquiring further into the nature of this “Ultimate Observer” leads us inevitably toward the God of revelation, which provides the most profound and detailed description of how that infinite Observer manifests within our world.
This perspective reflects my own journey. Having been educated in the universities of the former Soviet Union, I was immersed in the mandatory doctrines of Historical Materialism(8) and Scientific Atheism.(9) My transition to a believer in God and the spiritual foundation of reality was gradual, but the catalyst was a lecture by the late Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel.(10) I was stunned by how much his insights resonated—not just spiritually, but logically. It was then that I realized the “material” world I had studied for so long was only half the story.
Footnotes:
1) Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (1138–1204 CE), known by the acronym “Rambam,” or “Maimonides,” (which is the Greek form of “the son of Maimon”) was a towering 12th-century medieval Jewish philosopher, Torah scholar, and royal physician to the Sultan of Cairo. Born in Córdoba, Spain, and later settling in Egypt, he established himself as a preeminent legal authority and influential philosopher, most notably for The Guide to the Perplexed, which seeks to reconcile Aristotelianism with Rabbinical Jewish theology.
2) A materialistic worldview refers to the philosophical belief that the universe is made solely of matter, energy, and physical forces. Under this view, all things, including the origin of the universe, can be explained by physical processes operating within nature, without requiring any outside, supernatural, or conscious intervention.
3) This quote by Maimonides in The Guide for the Perplexed can be found in Part 1, Chapter XXXIV.
4) Quantum physics (or quantum mechanics) is the branch of science that studies the behavior of matter and energy at the atomic and subatomic levels. Quantum physics explores the fundamental building blocks of nature—such as atoms, electrons, and photons—which often follow bizarre, counter-intuitive rules. Unlike classical physics, which is deterministic, quantum mechanics relies on probability to predict the state of a particle.
5) This is a philosophical interpretation (often associated with the participatory universe concept) rather than a universally accepted scientific fact of quantum physics, as some physicists (as noted later in this essay) subscribe to other interpretations (e.g., Many-Worlds, Decoherence) where an “independent” or “conscious” observer is not required.
6) The quantum observer effect is the phenomenon where the act of measuring or observing a quantum system (like an electron) forces it from a state of multiple possibilities into a single, definite state, effectively altering the outcome and forcing it to "choose" one location.
7) A wavefunction is a mathematical “map” or “blueprint” that encodes all the measurable information—all the potential possibilities—for a particle (like an electron) before it is actually observed or measured. It predicts where the particle is likely to be, rather than where it definitely is.
8) Historical Materialism is a methodological approach to understanding human history and society, developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It posits that the material conditions of life—specifically the economic organization of production—are the primary drivers of historical change and societal development.
9) Scientific Atheism is the belief that only scientific methods and empirical evidence can explain reality, rejecting supernatural claims as unsupported. It positions science as the primary, if not sole, method for understanding the universe, often concluding that gods are unnecessary to explain natural phenomena.
10) Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz (July 11, 1937 – 7 August 7, 2020) was an Israeli Chabad rabbi, teacher, philosopher, social critic, author, translator and publisher. Steinsaltz originally published The Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition in modern Hebrew, with a running commentary to facilitate learning. It was subsequently translated into English, French, Russian, and Spanish.