Physicists Losing Their Grip??
From: Peter Kinane (pkinane_at_iol.ie)
Date: 12/22/04
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Date: 22 Dec 2004 11:31:06 -0800
"Consc" <cons_cie@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1103719993.670932.218330@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Great post, thanks.
>
> Got the following from somewhere. If you have time this holiday,
> pls. go over it. It's a serious comment about what is occuring
> inside quantum physics. What quantum reality versions (he
> mentions a lot) do you believe in. What part did the author
> make a wrong assumption, if ever. Thanks. - Consc.
>
> Nick Herbert talks about "Quantum Reality":
>
> "Physicists Losing Their Grip
>
> One of the best-kept secrets of science is that physicists have
> lost their grip on reality.
>
> News of the reality crisis hardly exists outside the physics
> community. What shuts out the public is partly a language
> barrier-the mathematical formalism that facilitates communication
> between scientists is incomprehensible to outsiders-and partly
> the human tendency of physicists to publicize their successes
> while soft-pedalling their confusions and uncertainties. Even
> among themselves, physicists prefer to pass over the
> uncomfortable reality issue in favor of questions "more
> concrete".
>
> "No development of modem science has had a more profound impact
> on human thinking than the advent of quantum theory. Wrenched out
> of centuries-old thought patterns, physicists of a generation ago
> found themselves compelled to embrace a new metaphysics. The
> distress which this reorientation caused continues to the present
> day. Basically physicists have suffered a severe loss: their hold
> on reality." - Bryce DeWitt Neill Graham
>
> Recent popularizations such as Heinz Pagels' Cosmic Code have
> begun to inform the public about the reality crisis in physics.
> In Quantum Reality I intend to examine how physicists deal with
> reality -- or fall to deal with it-in clear and unprecedented
> detail.
>
> Nothing exposes the perplexity at the heart of physics more
> starkly than certain preposterous-sounding claims a few outspoken
> physicists are making concerning how the world really works. If
> we take these claims at face value, the stories physicists tell
> resemble the tales of mystics and madmen. Physicists are quick to
> reject such unsavory associations and insist that they speak
> sober fact. We do not make these claims out of ignorance, they
> say, like ancient mapmakers filling In terra incognitas with
> plausi ble geography. Not ignorance, but the emergence of
> unexpected knowledge forces on us all new visions of the way
> things really are.
>
> The new physics vision is still clouded, as evidenced by the
> multiplicity of its claims, but whatever the outcome it is sure
> to be far from ordinary. To give you a taste of quantum reality,
> I summarize here the views of its foremost Creators in the form
> of eight realities which represent eight major guesses as to
> what's really going on behind the scenes. Later we will look at
> each of these realities in more detail and see how different
> physicists use the same data to justify so many different
> pictures of th e world.
>
> Quantum Reality #1 The Copenhagen Interpretation, Part I (There
> is no deep reality.) No one has influenced more our notions of
> what the quantum world is really about than Danish physicist
> Niels Bohr, and it is Bohr who puts forth one of quantum physics'
> most outrageous claims: that there is no deep reality. Bohr does
> not deny the evidence of his senses. The World we see around us
> is real enough, he affirms, but it floats on a world that is not
> as real. Everyday phenomena are themselves built not out of phe
> nomena but out of an utterly different kind of being.
>
> Far from being a crank or minority position, "There is no deep
> reality" represents the prevailing doctrine of establishment
> physics. Because this quantum reality was developed at Niels
> Bohr's Copenhagen institute, it is called the "Copenhagen
> interpretation." Undaunted by occasional challenges by mavericks
> of realist persuasion, the majority of physicists swear at least
> nominal allegiance to Bohr's anti-realist creed. What more
> glaring indication of the depth of the reality crisis than the
> official rejectio n of reality itself by the bulk of the physics
> community?
>
> Einstein and other prominent physicists felt that Bohr went too
> far in his call for ruthless renunciation of deep reality. Surely
> all Bohr meant to say was that we must all be good pragmatists
> and not extend our speculations beyond the range of our
> experiments. From the results of experiments carried out in the
> twenties, how could Bohr conclude that no future technology would
> ever reveal a deeper truth? Certainly Bohr never in tended
> actually to deny deep reality but merely counseled a cautious
> skepticism t oward speculative hidden realities.
>
> Bohr refused to accept such a watered-down version of the
> Copenhagen doctrine. In words that must chill every realist's
> heart, Bohr insisted: "There is no quantum world. There is only
> an abstract quantum description"
>
> Werner Heisenberg, the Christopher Columbus of quantum theory,
> first to set foot on the new mathematical World, took an equally
> tough stand against reality-nostalgic physicists such as Einstein
> when he wrote: "The hope that new experiments will lead us back
> to objective events in time and space is about as well founded as
> the hope of discovering the end of the world in the unexplored
> regions of the Antarctic."
At least some physicists have a clue.
>
> The writings of Bohr and Heisenberg have been criticized as
> obscure and open to many interpretations. Recently Cornell
> physicist N. David Mermin neatly summed up Bohr's anti-realist
> position in words that leave little room for misunderstanding:
> "We now know that the moon is demonstrably not there when nobody
> looks." (We will take a look at Mermin's "demonstration" in
> Chapter 13.)
I expect Bohr was quite able to sum up his opinion. Mermin coming into
relation with it effected a new (and probably) inferior effect.
>
> Quantum Reality #2. The Copenhagen interpretation, Part 11
> (Reality is created by observation.) Although the numerous
> physicists of the Copenhagen school do not believe in deep
> reality, they do assert the existence of phenomenal reality. What
> we see is undoubtedly real, they say, but these phenomena are not
> really there in the absence of an observation. The Copenhagen
> interpretation properly consists of two distinct parts: I. There
> is no reality in the absence of observation; 2. Observation
> creates reality . "You create your own reality," is the theme of
> Fred Wolf's Taking the Quantum Leap.
"Effect, through, and indeed as, relationship 'of forces' and somewhat
first person".
>
> Which of the world's myriad processes qualify as observations?
> What special feature of an observation endows it with the power
> to create reality? Questions like these split the
> observer-created reality school into several camps, but all
> generally subscribe to quantum theorist John Wheeler's memorable
> maxim for separating what is real in the world from what is not.
> "No elementary phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an
> observed phenomenon," Wheeler proclaims. Without a doubt,
> Mermin's description of the inconstant moon qualifies him for
> membership in the observer-created reality school.
When physicists, like 'philosophers', have tired of riggling their
butts they will say yes to "Effect, through, and indeed as,
relationship 'of forces', indefinite, dynamic and somewhat first
person".
>
> The belief that reality is observer-created is commonplace in
> philosophy, where it serves as the theme for various forms of
> idealism. Bertrand Russell recalls his fascination with idealism
> during his student days at Trinity College: "In this philosophy I
> found comfort for a time . . . There was a curious pleasure in
> making oneself believe that time and space are unreal, that
> matter is an illusion and that the world really consist of
> nothing but mind."
>
> Since pondering matter is their bread and butter, not many
> physicists would share Russell's enjoyment of matter as mere
> mirage. However, like it or not, through their conscientious
> practice of quantum theory more than a few physicists have
> strayed within hailing distance of the idealist's dreamworld.
Probably, Russell, like virtually all the rest of them, was still
struggling to get past the letter "A" of the philosophy alphabet.
>
> Quantum Reality #3 (Reality is an undivided wholeness.) The views
> of Walter Heider, author of a standard textbook on the
> light/matter interaction, exemplify a third unusual claim of
> quantum physicists: that in spite of its obvious partitions and
> boundaries, the world in actuality is a seamless and inseparable
> whole - a conclusion which Fritjof Capra develops in Tao of
> Physics and connects with the teachings of certain oriental
> mystics. Heitler accepts an observer-created reality but adds
> that the act of ob servation also dissolves the boundary between
> observer and observed: "The observer appears, as a necessary part
> of the whole structure, and in his full capacity as a conscious
> being. The separation of the world into an 'objective outside
> reality' and 'us,' the self-conscious onlookers, can no longer be
> maintained. Object and subject have become inseparable from each
> other."
>
> Physicist David Bohm of London's Birkbeck College has especially
> stressed the necessary wholeness of the quantum world: "One is
> led to a new notion of unbroken wholeness which denies the
> classical analyzability of the world into separately and
> independently existing parts . . . The inseparable quantum
> interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental
> reality.
>
> Quantum wholeness is no mere replay of the old saw that
> everything is connected to everything else, no twentieth-century
> echo, for instance, of Newton's insight that gravity links each
> particle to every other. All ordinary connection s-gravity, for
> one-inevitably fall off with distance, thus conferring
> overwhelming importance on nearby connections while distant
> connections become irrelevant. Undoubtedly we are all connected
> in unremarkable ways, but close connections carry the most
> weight. Quantum wholenes s, on the other hand, is a fundamentally
> new kind of togetherness, undiminished by spatial and temporal
> separation. No casual hookup, this new quantum thing, but a true
> mingling of distant beings that reaches across the galaxy as
> forcefully as it reaches across the garden.
>
> Quantum Reality #4 The many-worlds interpretation (Reality
> consists of a steadily increasing number of parallel universes.)
> Of all claims of the New Physics none is more outrageous than the
> contention that myriads of universes are created upon the
> occasion of each measurement act. For any situation in which
> several different outcomes are possible (flipping a coiWritingn,
> for instance), some physicists believe that all outcomes actually
> occur. In order to accommodate different outcomes without
> contradiction , entire new universes spring into being, identical
> in every detail except for the single outcome that gave them
> birth. In the case of a flipped coin, one universe contains a
> coin that came up heads; another, a coin showing tails. Paul
> Davies champions this claim, known as the many-worlds
> interpretation, in his book Other Worlds. Science fiction writers
> commonly invent parallel universes for the sake of a story. Now
> quantum theory gives us good reason to take such st ories
> seriously.
... a ring of "inferentially multi-faceted" here.
>
> Writing in Physics Today, a major magazine of the American
> physics community, Bryce DeWitt describes his initial contact
> with the manyworlds interpretation of quantum theory:
>
> "I still recall vividly the shock I experienced on first
> encountering this multiworld concept. The idea of 10 ^ 100+
> slightly imperfect copies of oneself all constantly splitting
> into further copies, which ultimately become unrecognizable, is
> not easy to reconcile with common sense
>
> Invented in 1957 by Hugh Everett, a Princeton graduate student,
> the many-worlds interpretation is a latecomer to the New Physics
> scene. DeSpite its bizarre conclusion, that innumerable parallel
> universes each as real as our own actually exist, Everett's
> many-worlds picture has gained Considerable support among quantum
> theorists. Everett's proposal is particularly attractive to
> theorists because it resolves, as we shall see, the Major
> unsolved puzzle in quantum theory-the notorious quantum
> measurement problem.
>
> These four quantum realities should give you some feeling for the
> diversity of claims regarding the world's ultimate nature. While
> followers of Everett bear witness to uncountable numbers of
> quantum worlds, plus more on the way, students of Bohr and
> Heisenberg insist that there is not even one quantum world. In
> their struggle to gain firm footing amidst the slippery bricks of
> quantum fact, physicists have invented more realities than four.
> Keep your wits about you as we press on.
>
> Quantum Reality #5: Quantum logic (The World obeys a non-human
> kind of reasoning.). Quantum logicians argue that the quantum
> revolution goes so deep that replacing new concepts with old will
> not suffice. To cope with the quantum facts we must scrap our
> very mode of reasoning, in favor of a new quantum logic.
>
> Logic is the skeleton of our body of knowledge. Logic spells out
> how We use some of the shortest words in the language, words such
> as and, or, and not The behavior of these little linguistic
> connectors governs the way we talk about things, and structures,
> in turn, the way we think about them.
>
> For two thousand years, talk about logic (in the West) was cast
> in the syllogistic mold devised by Aristotle. In the
> mid-nineteenth century, George Boole, an Irish schoolteacher,
> reduced logical statements to simple arithmetic by inventing an
> artificial symbolic language which laid bare the logical bones of
> ordinary language.
>
> Boole's clear codification of the rules of reason jolted logic
> out of the Middle Ages and launched the now-flourishing science
> of mathematical logic. Outside the mathematical mainstream, a few
> creative logicians amused themselves by constructing "crazy
> logics" using rules other than Boole's, These deviant designs for
> and/or/not, although mathematically consistent, were considered
> mere curiosities since they seemed to fit no human pattern of
> discourse.
>
> However, according to some New Physicists, one of these crazy
> logics may be just what we need to make sense out of quantum
> events. Listen to quantum theorist David Finkelstein calling for
> mutiny against the rules of Boole:
>
> "Einstein threw out the classical concept of time; Bohr throws
> out the classical concept of truth . . . Our classical ideas of
> logic are simply wrong in a basic practical way. The next step is
> to learn to think in the right way, to learn to think
> quantum-logically."
>
> As an example of the usefulness of changing your mind rather than
> changing your physics, quantum logicians point to Einstein's
> general theory of relativity, which achieved in the realm of
> geometry what they propose to do with logic.
>
> Geometry is the science of points and lines. For two thousand
> years only one geometry existed, its rules compiled by the Greek
> mathematician Euclid in his bestselling book The Elements, which
> once rivaled the Bible in popularity. The latest revival of
> Euclid's Elements is your high school geometry book.
And which is the better seller currently?
>
> Coincident with Boole's pioneer work in logic, a few adventurous
> mathematicians thought up "crazy geometries," games points and
> lines could Play outside of Euclid's rules. Chief architect of
> the New Geometry was the Russian Nicola] Lobachevski along with
> German mathematicians Karl Gauss and Georg Riemann. Their
> cockeyed geometries were regarded, like "on-Boolean logics, as
> high mathematical play, clever business but out of touch with
> reality. Euclidean geometry, as everyone knows, was the geometry,
> being after all, nothing but common sense applied to triangles
> and other geometric figures.
>
> However, in 1916 Einstein proposed a radical new theory of
> gravity that demolished the Euclidean monopoly. Einstein, in
> opposition to Newton and everybody else, declared that gravity is
> not a force but a curvature in space-time. Objects in free fall
> are truly free and move in lines as straight as can be-that is,
> lines straight by the standards of a gravity-warped geometry.
> Einstein's theory has testable consequences: for instance the
> deflection of starlight grazing the sun (confirmed by Eddington
> in 1919) and the existence of black holes (according to
> astrophysicists, in the constellation Cygnus, black hole Cygnus
> X-1 resides). On Earth, where our common sense was formed,
> gravity is weak and space almost Euclidean; out near X-1, high
> school geometry flunks.
Yeah, as well as speed being constant across frames ..., through time
dilation - matter contraction - curved lines are straight through
space being curved - thereby retaining c.
>
> Einstein's lesson is plain to see, say the quantum logicians. The
> question of the world's true geometry is not settled by common
> sense but by experiment. Likewise with logic. For the rules of
> right reason, look not inside your own head but get thee to a
> laboratory.
Elephant in a china shop.
>
> Quantum Reality #6. Neorealism (The world is made of ordinary
> objects.) An ordinary object is an entity which possesses
> attributes of its own whether observed or not. With certain
> exceptions (mirages, illusions, hallucinations), the world
> outside seems populated with objectlike entities. The clarity
> and ubiquity of ordinary reality has seduced a few physicists - I
> call them neorealists - into imagining that this familiar kind of
> reality can be extended into the atomic realm and beyond.
> However, the unrem arkable and common-sense view that ordinary
> objects are themselves made of objects is actually the blackest
> heresy of establishment physics.
>
> "Atoms are not things," says Heisenberg, one of the high priests
> of the orthodox quantum faith, who likened neorealists to
> believers in a flat earth. "There is no quantum world," warned
> Bohr, the pope in Copenhagen; "there is only an abstract quantum
> description."
>
> Neorealists, on the other hand, accuse the orthodox majority of
> wallowing in empty formalism and obscuring the world's
> simplicity with needless mystification. Instead they preach
> return to a pure and more primitive faith. Chief among neorealist
> rebels was Einstein, whose passion for realism pitted him
> squarely against the quantum Orthodoxy: "The Heisenberg-Bohr
> tranquilizing philosophy -- or religion? - is so delicately
> contrived that, for the time being, it provides a gentle pillow
> for the true believer from which he cannot very easily be
> aroused. So let him lie there."
'Easy on argumentation - and a little more assertion, please.'
>
> Despite their Neanderthal notions, no one could accuse
> neorealists of ignorance concerning the principles of quantum
> theory. Many of them were its founding fathers. Besides Einstein,
> prominent neorealists include ,max Planck, whose discovery of the
> constant of action sparked the quantum revolution; Erwin
> Schrodinger, who devised the wave equation every quantum system
> must obey; and Prince Louis de Broglie, who took quantum theory
> seriously enough to predict the wave nature of matter.
>
> De Broglie, a French aristocrat whose wartime involvement in
> radio swerved his research from church history into physics,
> fought for ordinary realism until 1928 when he converted to the
> statistical interpretation (another name for Copenhagenism).
> Twenty years later, however, influenced by David Bohm's
> neorealist revival, de Broglie recanted and returned to the faith
> of his youth:
>
> "Those interested in the psychology of scientists may be curious
> about the reasons for my unexpected return to discarded ideas . .
> . I am thinking not so much of my constant difficulties in
> developing a statistical interpretation of wave mechanics, or
> even of my secret hankering after Cartesian clarity in the midst
> of the fog which seemed to envelop quantum physics [but the fact
> that, as I examined the statistical picture) I could not help
> being struck by the force of the objections to it and by a
> certain o bscurity in the arguments in its defense . . . too
> abstract . . . too schematic . . . I realized that I had been
> seduced by the current fashion, and began to understand why I had
> been so uneasy whenever I tried to give a lucid account of the
> probability interpretation."
>
> One of the physics community's few traditions is the custom of
> celebrating the birthdays of its great men with a Festschrift - a
> festival of papers. In 1982, Louis de Broglie, ninety years old
> and gloriously unrepentant, was honored in this scholarly manner
> by his scientific colleagues. Virtually every neorealist In the
> world attended de Broglie's birthday party: there was no need to
> send out for extra chairs.
:)
>
> Einstein, despite his numerous contributions to its success,
> never accepted quantum theory into his heart and stubbornly held
> to the oldfashioned belief that a realistic vision of the world
> was compatible with the quantum facts. During the thirties
> Einstein and Bohr engaged in an extended debate on the quantum
> reality question. Bohr argued that as far a' reality was
> concerned, quantum theory was a closed book. By 1928 Perceptive
> physicists had already grasped the theory's essence. Quantum
> theory would devel op in detail but its principles would not
> change. Bohr's confidence has been upheld so far; fifty years
> later, physicists still follow the old rules.
Elephant in a china shop.
>
> Quantum theory is complete as it stands, said Bohr. It has no
> need of ordinary objects. Furthermore such objects cannot be
> added without spoiling its predictive success. Ordinary objects
> are not merely unnecessary luxuries in quantum theory, they are
> strictly impossible.
If I may say so, smart guy - well on the way to value as relational.
>
> Einstein's strategy was to confront Bohr with a series of thought
> experiments which aimed to show that quantum theory had left
> something out. He did not attempt to show that the theory was
> wrong, but by demonstrating that it was incomplete Einstein hoped
> to open the door for what he called "elements of reality."
>
> As the winners tell the story, Bohr closed each of Einstein's
> loopholes, but in the minds of each the debate was never settled.
> Long after their arguments had ended, on the day Bohr died, his
> blackboard contained a drawing of one of Einstein's thought
> experiments. Bohr struggled with Einstein to the end.
>
> Einstein too never gave up. In his autobiography he expresses his
> final thoughts on the quantum reality question: "I still believe
> in the possibility of a model Of reality - that is, of a theory
> which represents things themselves and not merely the probability
> of their occurrence."
As a Relativist, he would.
>
> Quantum Reality #7 (Consciousness creates reality.) Among
> observercreated realists, a small faction asserts that only an
> apparatus endowed with consciousness (even as you and 1) is
> privileged to create reality. The one observer that counts is a
> conscious observer. Denis Postle examines reality-creating
> consciousness in Fabric of the Universe. I include this quantum
> reality not only because it is so outlandish but because its
> supporters are so Illustrious. Consciousness-created reality
> adherents include ligh t/matter physicist Walter Heitler, already
> cited in connection with undivided wholeness, Fritz London,
> famous for his work on quantum liquids, Berkeley S-matrix
> theorist Henry Pierce Stapp, Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner, and
> world-class mathematician John von Neumann.
******* ****** ******* *************.
>
> Hungarian-born von Neumann was the mathematical midwife for some
> of the twentieth century's most exciting developments. Wherever
> things were hottest, the brilliant von Neumann seemed to be there
> lending a hand. In the late forties he invented the concept of
> the stored-Program computer; today's computer scientists refer to
> all computers from pocket calculators to giant IBMs as "von
> Neumann machines." In collaboration with Oskar Morgenstern, von
> Neumann laid the mathematical foundation for strategic game theo
> ry, on which much government and corporate policy in both the
> East and the West is based. He also worked on early robots and
> helped develop the atom bomb. In 1936 with Harvard mathematician
> Garrett Birkhoff he came up with the idea of quantum logic, but
> von Neumann's biggest contribution to quantum reality research
> was his book on quantum theory.
>
> By the late twenties physicists had constructed a quantum theory
> that met their daily needs: they possessed a rough mathematical
> structure which organized the quantum facts. At that point von
> Neumann entered the picture, putting physicists' crude theory
> into rigorous form, settling quantum theory into an elegant
> mathematical home called "Hilbert space" where it resides to this
> day, and awarding the mathematician's sea] of approval to
> physicists' fledgling theory.
>
> In 1932 von Neumann set down his definitive vision of quantum
> theory in a formidable tome entitled Die Mathematische Grundlagen
> der Quantenmechanik. Our most general picture of quantum theory
> is essentially the same as that outlined by von Neumann in Die
> Crundlagen (The Foundations). Von Neumann's book is our quantum
> bible. Like many other sacred texts, it is read by few, venerated
> by many. Despite its importance it was not translated into
> English until 1955.
>
> Many of the issues I discuss in Quantum Reality were first made
> public in von Neumann's book. For instance, there is von
> Neumann's proof that if quantum theory is correct, the world
> cannot be made of ordinary objects -Le., the neorealist
> interpretation is logically impossible. Von Neumann posed, but
> did not solve to everyone's satisfaction, the famous quantum
> measurement problem which is the central issue of the quantum
> reality question, In addition, von Neumann was the first to show
> how quantum theory sugg ests an active role for the observer's
> consciousness. Physical Objects would have no attributes, von
> Neumann said, if a conscious observer were not watching them.
>
> Von Neumann himself merely hinted at consciousness - created
> reality in dark parables. His followers boldly took his arguments
> to, their logical conclusion: if we accept von Neumann's version
> of quantum theory, they say, a consciousness - created reality is
> the inevitable outcome.
>
> At the logical core of our most materialistic science we meet not
> dead matter but our own lively selves. Eugene Wigner, von
> Neumann's Princeton colleague and fellow Hungarian (they went to
> the same high school in Budapest), comments on this ironic turn
> of events: "It is not possible to formulate the laws of quantum
> mechanics in a fully consistent way with out reference to the
> consciousness . . . It will remain remarkable in whatever way our
> future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external
> w orld led to the conclusion that the content of the
> consciousness is an ultimate reality."
>
> Quantum Reality #8. The duplex world of Werner Heisenberg (The
> world is twofold, consisting of potentials and actualities.)
> Most physicists believe in the Copenhagen interpretation, which
> states that there is no deep reality- QR # 1) and observation
> creates reality QR # 2). What these two realities have in common
> is the assertion that only phenomena are real; the world beneath
> phenomena is not.
>
> One question which this position immediately brings to mind is
> this: "if observation creates reality, what does it create this
> reality out of?
Here we go again, reverting back to presumed discrete entities.
(Matter is matter in so far as matter is matter,
And this matters in so far as it matters.
Yet some would ask, "If it all flew away would it matter?")
Are phenomena created out of sheet nothingness or
> out of some more substantial stuff?" Since the nature of
> unmeasured reality is unobservable by definition, many physicists
> dismiss such questions as meaningless on pragmatic grounds.
>
> However, since it describes measured reality with perfect
> exactness, quantum theory must contain some clues concerning the
> raw material out of which phenomena spring. Perhaps using the
> power of imagination we can peer beneath this theory and make
> some shrewd guess about the background world against which our
> familiar world of solid observations stands.
>
> Werner Heisenberg was fully aware of the difficulties of
> attempting to describe the subphenomenal world: "The problems of
> language here are really serious," he said. "We wish to speak in
> some way about the structure of the atoms and not only about the
> 'facts'-for instance, the water droplets in a cloud chamber. But
> we cannot speak about the atoms in ordinary language." Although
> he realized the difficulty in doing so, Heisenberg was one of the
> few physicists to try to express what he saw when he looked into
> quantum reality.
>
> According to Heisenberg, there is no deep reality-nothing down
> there that's real in the same sense as the phenomena] facts are
> real. The unmeasured world is merely and achieves full reality
> status during the act of observation: "In the experiments about
> atomic events we have to do with things and facts, with phenomena
> that are just as real as any phenomena in daily life. But the
> atoms and the elementary particles themselves are not as real;
> they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than
> one of things or facts . . .
>
> "The probability wave . - - means a tendency for something. It's
> a quantitative version of the old concept of potentia in
> Aristotle's philoso- phy. It introduces something standing in the
> middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a
> strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between
> possibility and reality."
>
> Heisenberg's world of potentia is both less real and more real
> than our own. It is less real because its inhabitants enjoy a
> ghostly quantum lifestyle consisting of mere tendencies, not
> actualities. On the other hand, the unmeasured world is more real
> because it contains a wealth of coexistent possibilities, most of
> which are contradictory. In Heisenberg's world a flipped coin can
> show heads and tails at the same time, an eventuality impossible
> in the actual world.
>
> One of the inevitable facts of life is that all of our choices
> are real choices. Taking one path means forsaking all others.
> Ordinary human experience does not encompass simultaneous
> contradictory events or multiple histories. For us, the world
> possesses a singularity and concreteness apparently absent in the
> atomic realm. Only one event at a time happens here; but that
> event really happens.
>
> The quantum world, on the other hand, is not a world of actual
> events like our own but a world full of numerous unrealized
> tendencies for action. These tendencies are continually on the
> move, growing, merging, and dying according to exact laws of
> motion discovered by Schrodinger and his colleagues. But despite
> all this activity nothing ever actually happens there. Everything
> remains strictly in the realm of possibility.
>
> Heisenberg's two worlds are bridged by a special interaction
> which physicists call a "measurement." During the magic
> measurement act, one quantum possibility is singled out, abandons
> its shadowy sisters, and surfaces in our ordinary world as an
> actual event. Everything that happens in our World arises out of
> possibilities prepared for in that other-the world of quantum
> potentia. In turn, our world sets limits on how far crowds of
> Potentia can roam. Because certain facts are actual, not
> everything is possibl e in the quantum world. There is no deep
> reality, no deep reality-as-we-know-it. Instead the unobserved
> universe consists of possibilities, tendencies, urges. The
> foundation of our everyday world, according to Heisenberg, is no
> more substantial than a promise.
>
> Physicists do not put forth these quantum realities as science
> fiction Speculations concerning worlds that might have been, but
> as serious pictures of the one world we actually live in: the
> universe outside your door.
>
> Since these quantum realities differ SO radically, one might
> expect them to have radically different experimental
> consequences. An astonishing feature of these eight quantum
> realities, however, is that they are experimentally
> indistinguishable. For all presently conceivable experiments,
> each of these realities predicts exactly the same observable
> phenomena.
>
> The ancient philosophers faced a similar reality crisis. For
> instance three ancient realities - 1. The World Tests on a
> turtle's back; 2. The World is bottomlessly solid,- 3. The world
> floats in an infinite ocean-led to identical consequences as far
> as anyone could tell at that time.
>
> Likewise modern physicists do not know how to determine
> experimentally what kind of world they actually live in. However,
> since "reality has consequences" we might hope that future
> experiments, not bound by our current concepts of measurability,
> will conclusively establish one or more of these bizarre pictures
> as top-dog reality. At present, however, each of these quantum
> realities must be regarded as a viable candidate for "the way the
> world really is." They may, however, all be wrong.
>
> Physicists' reality crisis is twofold: 1. There are too many of
> these quantum realities; 2. All of them without exception are
> preposterous, Some of these quantum realities are compatible with
> one another. For instance QR # I (There is no deep reality) and
> QR # 2 (Reality is observer-created) are in fact two halves of a
> single consistent picture of the world called the Copenhagen
> interpretation. But other quantum realities are contradictory: in
> the many-worlds interpretation QR #4), for instance, the world's
> deep reality consists of quadrillions of simultaneous universes,
> each one as real as our own, which maximally mocks Bohr's
> no-deep-reality claim. Not only can physicists not agree on a
> single picture of what's really going on in the quantum World,
> they are not even sure that the correct picture is on this list.
>
> None of the conflicting options which physicists have proposed as
> possible pictures of our home universe can be considered
> ordinary. Even that quantum reality closest to old-fashioned
> notions of how a world should behave -the neorealist contention
> QR #6) that the world is made out of ordinary objects-contains,
> as we shall see, the requirement that some of these objects move
> faster than light, a feature that entails unusual consequences:
> time travel and reversed causality, for example.
>
> This book is a snapshot of the reality crisis in physics taken at
> a moment when that crisis is not yet resolved. Nobody knows how
> the world will seem one hundred years from now. It will probably
> appear very different from what we now imagine. Here's what John
> Wheeler, a physicist actively concerned with the nature of
> quantum reality, imagines when he looks into the future:
>
> "There may be no such thing as the 'glittering central mechanism
> of the universe' to be seen behind a glass wall at the end of the
> trail. Not machinery but magic may be the better description of
> the treasure that is waiting."
"Not machinery but [Effectuationism] may be the better description of
the treasure that is waiting."
-- Peter Kinane http://www.effectuationism.com
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