Abstract Quantum physics describes a strange, but exquisitely beautiful world in which science and the philosophical discipline of semiotics come into a perfect union with one another. Quantum physics describes the underlying basis of the realities of our world’s physical foundations. Semiotics explains the way in which we interact with this world. It is only through a synthesis of these two ways of knowledge that we can possibly hope to know this marvelous, awe-inspiring, yet puzzling world we live in and how our interaction with it plays a part in its existence as we experience it. Heisenberg’s concept of probability is essential to an understanding of this process. Through the process of semiosis, we create an entire world out of probabilities. What quantum physics indicates about how we influence this world in a semiotic fashion is of prime importance in understanding who we are as semiotic animals, the only animals who consciously use signs.
Abstract Quantum physics describes a strange, but exquisitely beautiful world in which science and the philosophical discipline of semiotics come into a perfect union with one another. Quantum physics describes the underlying basis of the realities of our world’s physical foundations. Semiotics explains the way in which we interact with this world. It is only through a synthesis of these two ways of knowledge that we can possibly hope to know this marvelous, awe-inspiring, yet puzzling world we live in and how our interaction with it plays a part in its existence as we experience it. Heisenberg’s concept of probability is essential to an understanding of this process. Through the process of semiosis, we create an entire world out of probabilities. What quantum physics indicates about how we influence this world in a semiotic fashion is of prime importance in understanding who we are as semiotic animals, the only animals who consciously use signs.
[I] think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law Quantum mechanics [is] that mysterious, confusing discipline, which none of us really understands but which we know how to use. It works perfectly, as far as we can tell, in describing physical reality, but it is a ‘counter-intuitive discipline’… Murray Gell-Mann, Questions for the Future [The quantum] postulate implies a renunciation as regards the causal space-time co-ordination of atomic processes. Niels Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature It should be emphasized, however, that the probability function does not in itself represent a course of events in the course of time. It represents a tendency for events and our knowledge of events. The probability function can be connected with reality only if one essential condition is fulfilled: if a new measurement is made to determine a certain property of the system. [T]he idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist, independently of whether or not we observe them…is impossible … Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy [In] quantum theory it is the principle of causality , or more accurately that of determinism , which must be dropped and replaced by something else.… We now have a new form of the law of causality.… It is as follows: if in a certain process the initial conditions are determined as accurately as the uncertainty relations permit, then the probabilities of all possible subsequent states are governed by exact laws. Max Born, The Restless Universe
When a physical theory is in its early stages of development, it presents many concepts and constructs that may not be necessary for its interpretation, or may simply be equivocal. As the theory is developed by the physics community, it hopefully passes through a depuration process that washes away many of these constructs and introduces others not initially devised. This process can be viewed, and modeled, as a semiotic process by which the suggested interpretations of the theory, initially dispersed in the space of concepts, taper off in a way that leaves only a small number of possibilities, ideally only one. However, to qualify this process and impose semiotic and epistemological constraints on the depuration process, it seems natural to consider a physical theory as an excerpt of a language and its suggested interpretations as texts, endowed with syntactics and semantics. In this paper we present this framing of general physical theories and apply the resulting semiotic and epistemological constraints we uphold to the special case of quantum mechanics, which shows particular resistance to interpretation tapering. We then show that the findings of this paper are especially important for allowing one to form a hierarchy of interpretations of the same formal structure of a physical theory, even in the case of an experimental underdetermination of these interpretations, which is precisely the case for quantum mechanics. This result is particularly important for more modern physical theories, which are becoming increasingly more abstract and difficult to interpret.
Introduction Chapter 1 dealt with one of the deepest mysteries in modern science: how to explain consciousness. This Part deals with another mystery: how to make sense of quantum mechanics. Both involve a problem of reconciliation with the classical worldview, which is one hint that the two mysteries might be related. A second is that, unlike classical physics, which makes no reference to or allowance for consciousness, quantum theory raises the issue of consciousness and its relationship to the physical world in a very direct way. These hints do not necessarily mean there is a connection between the two mysteries, but by the end of this Part I hope to have shown why it would be natural to look for one. My more immediate aim here is to give the social scientific reader an introductory understanding of the experimental findings of quantum theory, its key concepts, and the debates about its interpretation. The discussion assumes no prior knowledge of quantum physics and makes no use of mathematics. Quantum theory without equations might seem like an oxymoron, and certainly reading this Part will not enable anyone to use quantum theory. But to a perhaps surprising degree it is possible to understand quantum theory without being able to use it. Its findings can be communicated in ordinary language, and the same goes for its main concepts and interpretive debates. One consequence of this has been the emergence of a virtual cottage industry of books on quantum theory for a lay audience. Most are written by physicists, and many are quite good. However, it is not just popular treatments that do without equations: much of the professional philosophical literature does as well. (I draw on both kinds of literature below.) Philosophers of physics are trained to understand the math, of course, which is necessary for a full appreciation of the issues.
Modern scientists describe the universe in terms of two basic partial theories: firstly, the general theory of relativity proposed by Albert Einstein, and secondly, the theory of quantum mechanics. This theory introduces an immense reality and simultaneously creates complex questions for the world of physics. Quantum mechanics is an incompletable knowledge however scientists are finding the basic theories from this theory. They propose complex mathematical expressions from quantum mechanics to prove the basic law of atoms. Quantum mechanics is the entire knowledge of subatomic particles such as electrons, protons, and neutrons. Quantum mechanics reveals that what we see is just a part of a deeper reality. Then we can grasp from this theory that the material world is not the completed reality; there are other things beyond human physical senses. The concept of quantum mechanics describes particles that can exist in multiple states. The concept of quantum mechanics is directly proportional to contemporary world technologies. The super specialty of this theory is that scientists cannot be explained universe without quantum mechanics. The uncertainty principle of Heisenberg in quantum mechanics suggests that there are limits to what we can know about a particle state of an atom. Humans cannot yet find out what it looks like and how we can imagine the existence of subatomic particles in an atom. That was an unseen dynamite for humans' perspective observation of the material world.
In classical physics there is, in accordance with common sense, an objective world ‘out there’. That world evolves in a clear and deterministic way, being governed by precisely formulated mathematical equations. This is as true for the theories of Maxwell and Einstein as it is for the original Newtonian scheme. Physical reality is taken to exist independently of ourselves; and exactly how the classical world ‘is’ is not affected by how we might choose to look at it. Moreover, our bodies and our brains are themselves to be part of that world. They, also, are viewed as evolving according to the same precise and deterministic classical equations. All our actions are to be fixed by these equations - no matter how we might feel that our conscious wills may be influencing how we behave. Such a picture appears to lie at the background of most serious 1 philosophical arguments concerned with the nature of reality, of our conscious perceptions, and of our apparent free will. Some people might have an uncomfortable feeling that there should also be a role for quantum theory - that fundamental but disturbing scheme of things which, in the first quarter of this century, arose out of observations of subtle discrepancies between the actual behaviour of the world and the descriptions of classical physics. To many, the term ‘quantum theory’ evokes merely some vague concept of an ‘uncertainty principle’, which, at the level of particles, atoms or molecules, forbids precision in our descriptions and yields merely probabilistic behaviour. Actually, quantum descriptions are very precise, as we shall see, although radically different from the familiar classical ones. Moreover, we shall find, despite a common view to the contrary, that probabilities do not arise at the minute quantum level of particles, atoms, or molecules - those evolve deterministically - but, seemingly, via some mysterious larger-scale action connected with the emergence of a classical world that we can consciously perceive. We must try to understand this, and how quantum theory forces us to change our view of physical reality.
The file on this site provides the slides for a lecture given in Hangzhou in May 2018, and the lecture itself is available at the URL beginning 'sms' in the set of links provided in connection with this item. It is commonly assumed that regular physics underpins biology. Here it is proposed, in a synthesis of ideas by various authors, that in reality structures and mechanisms of a biological character underpin the world studied by physicists, in principle supplying detail in the domain that according to regular physics is of an indeterminate character. In regular physics mathematical equations are primary, but this constraint leads to problems with reconciling theory and reality. Biology on the other hand typically does not characterise nature in quantitative terms, instead investigating in detail important complex interrelationships between parts, leading to an understanding of the systems concerned that is in some respects beyond that which prevails in regular physics. It makes contact with quantum physics in various ways, for example in that both involve interactions between observer and observed, an insight that explains what is special about processes involving observation, justifying in the quantum physics context the replacement of the unphysical many-worlds picture by one involving collapse. The link with biology furthermore clarifies Wheeler’s suggestion that a multiplicity of observations can lead to the ‘fabrication of form’, including the insight that this process depends on very specific ‘structures with power’ related to the 'semiotic scaffolding' of the application of sign theory to biology known as biosemiotics. The observer-observed 'circle' of Wheeler and Yardley is a special case of a more general phenomenon, oppositional dynamics, related to the 'intra-action' of Barad's Agential Realism, involving cooperating systems such as mind and matter, abstract and concrete, observer and observed, that preserve their identities while interacting with one another in such a way as to act as a unit. A third system may also be involved, the mediating system of Peirce linking the two together. Such a situation of changing connections and separations may plausibly lead in the future to an understanding of how complex systems are able to evolve to produce 'life, the universe and everything'. (Added 1 July 2018) The general structure proposed here as an alternative to a mathematics-based physics can be usefully characterised by relating it to different disciplines and the specialised concepts utilised therein. In theoretical physics, the test for the correctness of a theory typically involves numerical predictions, corresponding to which theories are expressed in terms of equations, that is to say assertions that two quantities have identical values. Equations have a lesser significance in biology which typically talks in terms of functional mechanisms, dependent for example on details of chemistry and concepts such as genes, natural selection, signals and geometrical or topologically motivated concepts such as the interconnections between systems and the unfolding of DNA. Biosemiotics adds to this the concept of signs and their interpretation, implying novel concepts such as semiotic scaffolding and the semiosphere, code duality, and appreciation of the different types of signs, including symbols and their capacity for abstraction and use in language systems. Circular Theory adds to this picture, as do the ideas of Barad, considerations such as the idea of oppositional dynamics. The proposals in this lecture can be regarded as the idea that concepts such as those deriving from biosemiotics have more general applicability than just conventional biology and may apply, in some circumstances, to nonlinear systems generally, including the domain new to science hypothesised to underlie the phenomena of present-day physics. The task then has to be to restore the mathematical aspect presumed, in this picture, not to be fundamental as it is in conventional theory. Deacon has invoked a complex sequence of evolutionary steps to account for the emergence over time of human language systems, and correspondingly mathematical behaviour can be subsumed under the general evolutionary mechanisms of biosemiotics (cf. also the proposals of Davis and Hersh regarding the nature of mathematics), so that the mathematical behaviour of physical systems is consistent with the proposed scheme. In conclusion, it is suggested that theoretical physicists should cease expecting to find some universal mathematical ‘theory of everything’, and focus instead on understanding in more detail complex systems exhibiting behaviour of a biological character, extending existing understanding. This may in time provide a more fruitful understanding of the natural world than does the regular approach. The essential concepts have an observational basis from both biology and the little-known discipline of cymatics (a discipline concerned with the remarkable patterns that specific waveforms can give rise to), while again computer simulations also offer promise in providing insight into the complex behaviours involved in the above proposals. References Jesper Hoffmeyer, Semiotic Scaffolding of Living Systems. Commens, a Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce (on Commens web site). Terrence Deacon, The Symbolic Species, W.W. Norton & Co. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Duke University Press. Philip Davis and Reuben Hersh, The Mathematical Experience, Penguin. Ilexa Yardley, Circular Theory.