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Quantum Physics and Welfare Policy

Jack C. Straton

Published Jan 1, 2007• 1 citation
OpenAlex

Abstract

Welfare policy is examined through the paradoxical logic of Nagarjuna’s tetralema, providing a lens through which wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics is then viewed. Through this process students are challenged to radically expand their critical-thinking horizons beyond conventional dualistic bounds. They learn not only this key property of quantum reality, but have to come to grips with the nature of knowledge itself, and the degree to which they censor their own awarenesses.

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Welfare policy is examined through the paradoxical logic of Nagarjuna’s tetralema, providing a lens through which wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics is then viewed. Through this process students are challenged to radically expand their critical-thinking horizons beyond conventional dualistic bounds. They learn not only this key property of quantum reality, but have to come to grips with the nature of knowledge itself, and the degree to which they censor their own awarenesses.
In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of phenomena but only to track down as far as possible relations between the multifold aspects of our experience." -Niels Bohr (1934, p.18) "The conception of the objective reality of the elementary particles has evaporated not into the cloud of some new reality concept, but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of the particles but our knowledge of this behavior." -Werner Heisenberg (1958, p. 95.) "In short, orthodox quantum mechanics is Cartesian dualistic at the pragmatic/operational level, but mentalistic on the ontological level." -Henry Stapp (2009, p. 8).
The odd concepts of quantum physics are nearly a century old. They may seem difficult and forbidding at first sight, but the barrier to understanding is not their difficulty but their differentness . Unlike classical models, quantum theory does not attempt to simulate Nature. It gives us information about observations of Nature. But it does contain a “theoretical entity” that claims to contain all information, observation notwithstanding, namely the quantum state vector in Hilbert space. Scientists routinely use the language of Hilbert space, and nonscientists do not use it at all, which is understandable but unfortunate. A sort of baby-talk has become the lingua franca for much of the popular journalism of quantum physics, an awkward patois that combines some of the early groping language of Bohr, de Broglie, Schrödinger, and Heisenberg with more modern words about symmetries and states. Earnest amateurs still ask me about the mystery of Bohr orbits. There is no mystery because there are no orbits, except as historical curiosities. Same for “wave–particle duality.” Same for “quantum jumps.” A friend once asked me to address a philosophy seminar about the “paradoxes of quantum mechanics.” He said he had approached C. N. Yang first, who replied “What paradoxes?” There are some mathematical and logical rough spots in our current best theory of matter, and perhaps some of them can be framed as paradoxes. But the theory is actually rather straightforward, and it has a perfectly clear interpretation linked to experiments that, in their simplest form, anyone can perform (and students do routinely in college laboratories). No empirical observations are known that are inconsistent with the quantum framework.
The physics education research (PER) literature on quantum mechanics (QM) often acknowledges and minimizes what we refer to as the enigma of QM, viewing these aspects of QM as a challenge to overcome, rather than an inherent feature to be leveraged for learning. Using the overlapping theories of knowledge-in-pieces and resource theory as connected to an epistemological framing perspective, we focus on students’ descriptions of the enigma of QM and the epistemological frames that students view as relevant when approaching QM. Data comes from interviews with 10 undergraduate physics students who had learned quantum physics topics across different courses in the curriculum, ranging from sophomore-level modern physics to an advanced undergraduate-level QM course. To elicit students’ ideas on QM, the interview protocol emphasized their perspectives and empowerment when possible. Iterative rounds of qualitative analysis coded the data for how students described enigmatic aspects of QM, along with three epistemological frames students identified as their reasoning strategies: reasoning about scale, reasoning about the connections between QM and mathematics, and reasoning about the connections between QM and classical mechanics. The results document that students are aware that something about QM is unexplainable, an enigma to acknowledge. We argue that acknowledgment of the enigma of QM is a key part of what we refer to as thinking quantumly. Additionally, the epistemological frame of reasoning about scale has not been widely discussed in the QM-PER literature, which students use to distinguish QM from classical mechanics and to explain why mathematical models are needed. These results are important for amplifying students’ voices in how they approach enigmatic aspects of QM. Thus, our results begin to move the QM-PER literature beyond viewing enigmatic aspects of QM as obstacles to be corrected through refined instruction, toward an asset-based orientation as a source of meaningful insights for the learning process.
Quantum mechanics is an exemplary case of something that calls for critical philosophical reflection. One philosophical path is to seek a logic or ontology for quantum theory, another is to understand quantum mechanics by examining how and why physicists were pushed into developing it, and still another is to construe laboratory measurements of quantum phenomena not as connected with beliefs about types of real or irreal objects but as actions that produce experiences, and the quantum formalism as a guide for anticipating future such experiences.
In this study, consistent with the interpretivist paradigm, focus group discussions (FGDs) were used together data about tertiary physics students’ multiple ontologies / realities on wave – particle duality. Findings of the study show the need to afford tertiary physics students opportunities to critically think so that they develop ontologies which may contribute to debates aiming to solve pertinent wave – particle issues. Therefore physics educators should expose tertiary physics students to teaching and learning contexts which develop flexible ontologies about wave – particle duality. Such exposure encourages tertiary physics students to engage in exploring alternatives which may be scientifically significant.