Re: Surprise! Dr. John Bell Liked the Ether!
From: Sam Wormley (swormley1_at_mchsi.com)
Date: 06/29/04
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Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 18:53:12 GMT
John Bell liking aether doesn't make it so....
Einstein liking actualities doesn't make them so...
Quoting John Wheeler from "STEPHEN HAWKING'S A BRIEF HISTORY OF
TIME, A READER'S COMPANION", "I had worked with the other great man
in the quantum debate, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen. And I know no
greater debate in the last hundreds of years than the debate between
Bohr and Einstein, no greater debate between two greater men, or one
that extended over a longer period of time--twenty-eight years--at a
higher level of colleagueship. To put it in brief: Does the world
exist out there independent of us, as Einstein thought; or, as Bohr
thought, is there some sense in which we, through our choice of
observing equipment, have something to do with what comes about..."
Einstein refused to believe in a reality that precluded cause and
effect. "God does not play dice with the universe." he declared. He
especially objected to the theory's insistence that particles,
forces, and events seemed to come into existence only when a
measurement or observation was made.
For more than half a century physicists and philosophers debated
whether the quantum theory really was a complete and accurate
description of reality. Then in 1964, physicist John Bell proposed a
brilliant method to resolve the issue. "Bell's Theorem," says the
eminent physicist Henry Stapps, "is the most profound discovery of
science." By the early 1980's a number of elegant experiments
applying Bell's Theorem have proved that quantum theory, which
speaks in terms of probabilities rather than actualities, is indeed
a complete explanation of reality... God DOES play dice with the
universe!
Empirical results of observation and experiment... that's what makes
something so!
More--
Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics
Amir D Aczel
2002 John Wiley & Sons/Four Walls Eight
Windows 302pp 16.99/$28.00hb
There are two kinds of books about quantum
mechanics. There are those in which we learn
about abstract concepts such as Hilbert spaces,
state vectors and density matrixes, but where the
author never addresses - or only pays lip-service
to - the question of what quantum mechanics
actually means. This is the approach often taken in
textbooks. The other, quite opposite, approach
focuses on the interpretative question - drawing all
kinds of conclusions and analogies, talking about
telepathy and other mysteries, and perhaps even
claiming that quantum mechanics transcends
Western philosophy.
Neither approach is very helpful when one wants
to understand what quantum mechanics really
means in a deep philosophical sense. Amir Aczel's
new book on entanglement - falling as it does into
neither category - avoids such pitfalls.
Anton Zeilinger from the Institute of Experimental
Physics at the University of Vienna reviews the
book in the May issue of Physics World; email
anton.zeilinger@univie.ac.at
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