When I first studied quantum mechanics, it felt familiar, not foreign. Beneath the equations was a way of seeing the world that echoed the lessons of my tūpuna: that everything is connected, that potential lives in the unseen, and that our observation carries responsibility.
- Whakapapa and Entanglement
In quantum physics, entanglement describes particles that remain connected across time and space, what happens to one instantly influences the other.
In te ao Māori, whakapapa holds the same relational truth: everything has a genealogy, a connection, a living thread to all else. Our actions are never isolated.Systems thinking and whakapapa are both about acknowledging connection and consequence. There is no individual without the network that sustains it.
- Mauri and Superposition
A quantum state can exist in many possibilities until observed, what physicists call superposition.
Mauri, the life force within all things, holds a similar sense of potential: a living energy that can be uplifted or diminished through interaction.
Both remind us that potential is sacred. How we engage with data, with land, with people – determines what becomes manifest.
- Observation and Kaitiakitanga
In quantum theory, observation changes the outcome. In te ao Māori, observation is not passive; it is an act of kaitiakitanga.
When we look, we engage. When we measure, we carry responsibility for what follows.
Governance, science, and ethics converge here, how we see determines how we serve.
- Time, Space, and Wairua
Quantum mechanics bends our sense of time. A particle’s future can influence its present.
Te ao Māori also recognises time as relational, he wā taketake: the past, present, and future existing within one continuum. Wairua flows through them all.
When we collapse time into straight lines, we lose wisdom. Both frameworks invite us to think cyclically, not chronologically.
- Ethics of Interconnection
Quantum thinking without ethics becomes power. Te ao Māori insists on balance of mana, tapu, and mauri.
Technology is not neutral. The values we weave into our systems determine whether they serve or extract.Te Ao Matihiko – The Digital Realm
To me, Te Ao Matihiko is a modern expression of this ancient worldview. The digital realm is not separate from nature, it is an extension of human intention. Each algorithm, dataset, and network carries mauri. And our job, as kaitiaki, is to ensure that mauri remains intact.
Quantum mechanics offers the scientific grammar; te ao Māori offers the moral compass. One explains how; the other teaches why. Together, they offer a way forward, a science of care.
Practice:
- When designing or analysing data, ask: Whose mauri does this affect?
2. Before measuring, reflect: What do I change by observing?
3. In governance, trace whakapapa, connect every decision to its wider system.
When our tūpuna navigated by the stars, they were already reading quantum signals – waves of energy, patterns of light, unseen but felt.
Perhaps quantum physics is not a new story at all. Perhaps it’s our old story, written in another language, waiting to be remembered.Onwards, with wonder and responsibility.