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Physics World

Post-modern physics, bathtub style

Andrew M. Robinson

Published Jan 1, 2008• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We recently renovated our bathroom. One of the things that my wife – also a physicist – and I both agreed on was the absolute necessity for a large bathtub in which to stretch out, read a book and think. I find that most of my best ideas occur to me in the bath, and apparently I am not alone – the distinguished nuclear physicist Leo Szilard is also reputed to have used bathtub meditation.

DOI
10.1088/2058-7058/21/01/40

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We recently renovated our bathroom. One of the things that my wife – also a physicist – and I both agreed on was the absolute necessity for a large bathtub in which to stretch out, read a book and think. I find that most of my best ideas occur to me in the bath, and apparently I am not alone – the distinguished nuclear physicist Leo Szilard is also reputed to have used bathtub meditation.
ENERAL philosophy claims to be the critical subject which lays down for all of us what we may be allowed to think, and yet it has played no part whatever in the great revolutions of human thought of the present century-those connected with relativity and the quantum theory. It might have been expected that the scientists would have been constantly consulting the philosophers as to the legitimacy of their various speculations, but nothing of the kind has happened. Since no one can dispense with some sort of metaphysic, each scientist has made one for himself, and no doubt they contain many crudities, but it would seem that a deep interest in metaphysic is a disadvantage rather than an advantage to the physicist-at least I have the impression that those of my friends who are most inclined to speculate on the ultimate things appear to be the ones whose scientific work is most hampered by doing so. Now I propose to risk a similar indiscretion. I want to embody in it the practical philosophy of a physicist, and I do not mean it as an attack on the pure philosophers, who are very reasonable people, only chargeable with the minor offence of not having made me want to read their books! I had better begin by stating shortly the ideas I intend to discuss. There is a notable contrast between the way we think about things and the way we think we ought to think about them.
Dedicated to my wife Laura and my parents. Without their help, none of this would have been possible. Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Mark Raizen. I was so fortunate that he took a chance on a kid with no experience with atomic physics experiments. He let me into the lab, showed me the exciting world of atomic physics, and taught me how to be an experimental physicist. He has always found the interesting topics to study and has creative ideas to tackle any problem that comes along. I am grateful for my time in the lab, and I look forward to the new results that will come from the experiments. Next I would like to thank my co-workers: Todd Meyrath, Florian Schreck and Chih-Sung Chuu. For the past several years we have worked side by side on a variety of projects most of which are described in the last chapter. Todd is a very talented man who I have had the pleasure to know since beginning graduate school. He is the one who got me interested in cold
January 1999, “The (Un-)Detached Observer” Yesterday I ran across your paper “On the Interpretation and Philosophical Foundation of Quantum Mechanics” posted on the web, and was very much impressed with its depth. Most importantly, however, I am sad to say, it reminded me that I still owe you some papers. I have remedied that now by sending you a pile of things that I have written on the relation between information gain and quantum state disturbance. These are relevant to your request above, and, I think, even more relevant to the thoughts in your paper. I am in great agreement with the idea that there may be a deeper foundation to quantum mechanics, one along the lines that Pauli and Wheeler attempted to sketch. Quantum mechanics, it seems to me, is an expression of the best we can say in a world where the observer is not detached (to use Pauli's phrase). Recognizing and appreciating that lack of detachedness is the most exacting tool we have for peering into the greater future of quantum theory. This I think is the ultimate role of quantum information theory. (For the opposite point of view, however, you may be interested in having a look at John Preskill's paper “Quantum Information: Its Future Impact on Physics” at http://theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/.) I hope you will enjoy the things I have sent you; it is always my attempt to be as clear as I possibly can be when I write.