The ghost of my father sat in front of me sprinkling salt into its beer. The floor, wooden and sole soaked slick I could just push my feet and rub my fingers. “Give me more life,” I whispered. I wanted to touch the flakes of rust on the cooler, mingled with sweat. Bottle caps everywhere; it didn't understand the boredom. My only sound was that of a screen door. “My son will be a professor of physics in three years.” 14 February 1995, “Turtle Wax” Let me wax just a little. A few quotes by Wolfgang Pauli on quantum mechanical randomness and objective reality. (Taken from the English translation of a paper titled “Matter.”) “Like an ultimate fact without any cause, the individual outcome of a measurement is, however, in general not comprehended by laws. This must necessarily be the case …” “In the new pattern of thought we do not assume any longer the detached observer , occurring in the idealizations of this classical type of theory, but an observer who by his indeterminable effects creates a new situation, theoretically described as a new state of the observed system. In this way every observation is a singling out of a particular factual result, here and now, from the theoretical possibilities, thereby making obvious the discontinuous aspect of the physical phenomena.” “Nevertheless, there remains still in the new kind of theory an objective reality , inasmuch as these theories deny any possibility for the observer to influence the results of a measurement, once the experimental arrangement is chosen.”
The ghost of my father sat in front of me sprinkling salt into its beer. The floor, wooden and sole soaked slick I could just push my feet and rub my fingers. “Give me more life,” I whispered. I wanted to touch the flakes of rust on the cooler, mingled with sweat. Bottle caps everywhere; it didn't understand the boredom. My only sound was that of a screen door. “My son will be a professor of physics in three years.” 14 February 1995, “Turtle Wax” Let me wax just a little. A few quotes by Wolfgang Pauli on quantum mechanical randomness and objective reality. (Taken from the English translation of a paper titled “Matter.”) “Like an ultimate fact without any cause, the individual outcome of a measurement is, however, in general not comprehended by laws. This must necessarily be the case …” “In the new pattern of thought we do not assume any longer the detached observer , occurring in the idealizations of this classical type of theory, but an observer who by his indeterminable effects creates a new situation, theoretically described as a new state of the observed system. In this way every observation is a singling out of a particular factual result, here and now, from the theoretical possibilities, thereby making obvious the discontinuous aspect of the physical phenomena.” “Nevertheless, there remains still in the new kind of theory an objective reality , inasmuch as these theories deny any possibility for the observer to influence the results of a measurement, once the experimental arrangement is chosen.”
The new physics just described was still based largely on Newtonian ideas. Indeed, in its theoretical aspects, it might not unfairly be described as a final attempt to explain the world in materialistic terms—as particles being pushed and pulled about in space and time. Nevertheless, the new physics had found it necessary to abolish most of the forces of pushing and pulling, replacing the gradual changes of motion of the particles under these forces by sudden and unpredictable jumps. These appeared to involve violations of the law of causality, both in the disintegration of radioactive atoms and also in the internal changes of ordinary atoms. We seemed to see Fate defying this law as she picked out certain atoms for disintegration or collapse and, by her apparently capricious acts, sent the universe along one path or another according to her whim. On such lines the new physics had explained many phenomena which had hitherto seemed inexplicable, but it had by no means met with complete success. For instance, while it gave a perfect interpretation of the simplest spectrum of all, namely that of the hydrogen atom, it failed with more complex spectra. This was not necessarily a fatal objection; a few emendations and possibly a few new ad hoc assumptions might have effected a complete reconciliation, although this seems improbable.
Attitudes toward quantum mechanics differ interestingly from one generation of physicists to the next. The first generation are the founding fathers, who struggled through the welter of confusing and self-contradictory constructions to emerge with the modern theory of the atomic world and supply it with the “Copenhagen interpretation.” On the whole they seem to have taken the view that while the theory is extraordinarily strange (Bohr is said to have remarked that if it didn't make you dizzy then you didn't really understand it), the strangeness arises out of some deeply ingrained but invalid modes of thought. Once these are recognized and abandoned the theory makes sense in a perfectly straightforward way. The word “irrational,” which appears frequently in Bohr's early writings about the quantum theory, is almost entirely absent from his later essays. The second generation, those who were students of the founding fathers in the early postrevolutionary period, seem firmly—at times even ferociously—committed to the position that there is really nothing peculiar about the quantum world at all. Far from making bons mots about dizziness, or the opposite of deep truths being deep truths, they appear to go out of their way to make quantum mechanics sound as boringly ordinary as possible. The third generation—mine—were born a decade or so after the revolution and learned about the quantum as kids from popular books like George Gamow's. We seem to be much more relaxed about it than the other two. Few of us brood about what it all means, any more than we worry about how to define mass or time when we use classical mechanics. In contemplative moments some of us think the theory is wonderfully strange and others think it isn't; but we don't hold these views with great passion. Most of us, in fact, feel irritated, bored, or downright uncomfortable when asked to articulate what we really think about quantum mechanics. I'm one of the uncomfortable ones. If I were forced to sum up in one sentence what the Copenhagen interpretation says to me, it would be “Shut up and calculate!” But I won't shut up. I would rather celebrate the strangeness of quantum theory than deny it, because I believe it still has interesting things to teach us about how certain powerful but flawed verbal and mental tools we once took for granted continue to infect our thinking in subtly hidden ways.
“I refute it thus!” Samuel Johnson famously dismissed Bishop George Berkeley's argument for the unreality of matter by kicking a large stone (Boswell, 1823). In the light of modern physics, however, Johnson's simple reasoning evaporates. Apparently solid matter is revealed, on closer inspection, to be almost all empty space, and the particles of which matter is composed are themselves ghostly patterns of quantum energy, mere excitations of invisible quantum fields, or possibly vibrating loops of string living in a ten-dimensional space–time (Greene, 1999). The history of physics is one of successive abstractions from daily experience and common sense, into a counterintuitive realm of mathematical forms and relationships, with a link to the stark sense data of human observation that is long and often tortuous. Yet at the end of the day, science is empirical, and our finest theories must be grounded, somehow, “in reality.” But where is reality? Is it in acts of observation of the world made by human and possibly non-human observers? In records stored in computer or laboratory notebooks? In some objective world “out there”? Or in a more abstract location? THE GROUND OF REALITY When a physicist performs an experiment, he or she interrogates nature and receives a response that, ultimately, is in the form of discrete bits of information (think of “yes” or “no” binary answers to specific questions), the discreteness implied by the underlying quantum nature of the universe (Zeilinger, 2004).
April 1999, “Thinking Kantian Thoughts?” The other day I wrote the little essay below [cf. “Fuchsian Genesis” addressed to Greg Comer, dated 22 April 1999] for myself, and then searched up a reason to send it to my friend Greg Comer. It would have been better to send it to you I think. It strikes me as sounding a little Kantian, though with an extra twist: namely, that we are even further removed from the “ding an sich” than he had imagined. On my view, we know that the quantum formalism CANNOT correspond to reality (whatever it may be). My understanding of Kant is that he would have said that classical physics may or may not be a reflection of the real thing, but we can never know. It does form part of the categories of understanding and is therefore necessary to make sense of the world; but correspondence to reality is a different issue – in fact, one that cannot be decided. In the case of the quantum world, I think it is (reasonably) safe to assume that the terms in quantum theory cannot be mapped to any sort of “ding an sich.” That's why it strikes me as a still stronger form of Kantianism. Am I way off track here? Any thoughts? Jon's Reply Chris said: My understanding of Kant is that he would have said that classical physics may or may not be a reflection of the real thing, but we can never know.
Quantum mechanics is our most successful physical theory. It predicts the behavior of atoms, molecules, and light to ten decimal places. No experiment has ever contradicted it. It also contains a crack at its foundation. The theory’s central equation—the Schrodinger equation—describes a smooth, continuous, perfectly predictable evolution of the quantum state. But whenever anyone performs a measurement, they get a single, definite result. Which result they get appears to be random. The transition from smooth evolution to random outcome is called the “collapse of the wavefunction,” and after nearly a century of analysis, there is no agreed-upon explanation for what causes it, when it occurs, or whether it occurs at all. This is the measurement problem. The measurement problem is not a minor puzzle at the margins of the theory. It is a failure to explain the most basic operation in science: looking at the result of an experiment. Around it cluster other puzzles. Light behaves like a wave in some experiments and like a particle in others—two contradictory descriptions. Two particles that have interacted remain correlated across arbitrary distances, as though communicating faster than light. The probabilities that govern measurement outcomes appear as a postulate—the Born rule—inserted by hand with no deeper justification. And the theory offers no unified picture of reality: quantum mechanics, general relativity, and the standard model of particle physics speak incompatible mathematical languages. A century of effort has produced many interpretations of quantum mechanics. Copenhagen. Many-worlds. De Broglie-Bohm. Objective collapse. Quantum Bayesianism. None has achieved consensus. The measurement problem remains. This document proposes that the source of these puzzles is not quantum mechanics itself. It is a single, invisible assumption made at the very beginning of the theory in 1900—an assumption so deeply embedded that nobody noticed they were making it. Change that assumption, and the puzzles do not get solved. They dissolve. They stop being puzzles. They become predictable consequences of geometry.
My life has been a blessing from God in many ways.First and foremost, I would like to thank professors Cass Sackett and Bill Soffa for encouraging and never giving up on me.The completion of my study could not have happened without them.In reaching the apex of my endeavor, I am forever indebted in gratefulness.Without their help, this would have been an impossible journey.They also inspired me to consider teaching as my new goal.Despite other lucrative offers, I believe teaching has a true meaning and purpose for me.I'd also like to thank graduate students in Casslab, especially Rob Horne, who shared the burden of making our experiment a successful one.My life re-started in the states at ten years old, when barely speaking a word of English, Bob Schmitt and Greg Bartman became my lifelong friends.Mr. & Mrs (Mom) Bartman never seemed to get tired of my coming over to their house/beach house living like a son who never paid rent.In Laurel high school, I would like to thank Mr. Swartz for making math an approachable subject.I must also thank Mr/Coach Chuck Hickes for believing in my success -not only were you my football coach, you coached me in so many other ways in life!At Swarthmore, Professor John Gaustad took me under his wings and taught me how to study and do research.You did everything you could to make sure I could be successful at research through experiments.My 6 years spent at NASA proved to be a very valuable experience in many ways.Ed Cheng, Dale Fixsen, and John Mather were three significant influences in my life.I still remember Casey Inman teaching me how to make circuits.I had an unforgettable experience at Antarctica, running the CMBR experiment.It's funny how one opportunity leads to another, who would have thought I'd meet my wife Yeonju (Sarah) there, and name our daughters Erebus and Terranova after the mountains in Antarctica.My 14 years at the Naval Research Lab are unforgettable ones.It took me everywhere including Afghanistan.My thanks go to Charmaine Gilbreath, who provided the opportunity for me to pursue graduate studies.Before coming to UVa, my short stint at GWU was not a waste.I'd like to thank professor Helmut Haberzettl for his German way of physics.I also like to