For nearly 100 years, physicists have been trying to „understand“ quantum physics. Up to today no satisfying answer could be given concerning the surprising behavior of nature, especially if looking into microscopic scales. This article identifies an approach towards an answer to the questions arising from the quantum physics effects, which are preposterous to common sense, by first going one-step back: “understanding” as a terminus is defined, as well as the terms analogy, model, concept and theory. In addition, the role of mathematics for the understanding of physics is addressed. This generates a more accurate basis. The limitations of our mind and senses due to the fact that we are living in a mesoscopic world are taken into account. This may lead to an identification of our limits of insight. As an outcome, models may have to be replaced by concepts to achieve a different level of understanding compared to the “classical” expectation.
For nearly 100 years, physicists have been trying to „understand“ quantum physics. Up to today no satisfying answer could be given concerning the surprising behavior of nature, especially if looking into microscopic scales. This article identifies an approach towards an answer to the questions arising from the quantum physics effects, which are preposterous to common sense, by first going one-step back: “understanding” as a terminus is defined, as well as the terms analogy, model, concept and theory. In addition, the role of mathematics for the understanding of physics is addressed. This generates a more accurate basis. The limitations of our mind and senses due to the fact that we are living in a mesoscopic world are taken into account. This may lead to an identification of our limits of insight. As an outcome, models may have to be replaced by concepts to achieve a different level of understanding compared to the “classical” expectation.
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.
To date, quantum mechanics has proven to be our most successful theoretical model. However, it is still surrounded by a "mysterious halo" that can be summarized in a simple but challenging question: Why quantum phenomena are not understood under the same logic as classical ones? Although this is an open question (probably without an answer), from a pragmatist's point of view there is still room enough to further explore the quantum world, marveling ourselves with new physical insights. We just need to look back in the historical evolution of the quantum theory and thoroughly reconsider three key issues: (1) how this has developed since its early stages at a conceptual level, (2) what kind of experiments can be performed at present in a laboratory, and (3) what nonstandard conceptual models are available to extract some extra information. This contribution is aimed at providing some answers (and, perhaps, also raising some issues) to these questions through one of such models, namely Bohmian mechanics, a hydrodynamic formulation of the quantum theory, which is currently trying to open new pathways of understanding. Specifically, the Chapter constitutes a brief and personal overview on the historic and contextual evolution of this quantum formulation, its physical meaning and interest (leaving aside metaphysical issues), and how it may help to overcome some preconceived paradoxical aspects of the quantum theory.
This paper re-opens the debate on the failure of quantum mechanics to provide an understandable view of micro-reality. A critique is offered of the commonly accepted ‘Copenhagen Interpretation’ of a theory that is only a mathematical approach to the level of reality characterized by atoms and electrons. This critique is based on the oldest approach to thinking about nature for over 2500 years, known as Natural Philosophy. Quantum mechanics (QM) was developed over the first quarter of the 20th Century, when scientists were enthralled by a new philosophy known as Positivism, whose foundations were based on the assumption that material objects exist only when measured by humans – this central assumption conflates epistemology (knowledge) with ontology (existence). The present critique rejects this human-centered view of reality by assuming material reality has existed long before (and will persist long after) human beings (“Realism”). The defensive view that the micro-world is too different to understand using regular thinking (and only a mathematical approach is possible) is rejected totally. At least 12 earlier QM interpretations are critically analyzed, indicating the broad interest in “what does QM mean?” The standard theory of quantum mechanics is thus constructed on only how the micro-world appears to macro measurements - as such, it cannot offer any view of how the foundations of the world are acting when humans are not observing it - this has generated almost 100 years of confusion and contradiction at the very heart of physics. Significantly, we live in a world that is not being measured by scientists but is interacting with itself and with us. QM has failed to provide explanations: only recipes (meaningless equations), not insights. Physics has returned to the pre-Newtonian world of Ptolemaic phenomenology: only verifiable numbers without real understanding. The focus needs to be on an explicit linkage between the micro-world, when left to itself, and our mental models of this sphere of material reality, via the mechanism of measurement. This limits the role of measurement to confirming our mental models of reality but never confusing these with a direct image of ‘the thing in itself’. This implies a deep divide between reality and appearances, as Kant suggested. This paper includes an original analysis of several major assumptions that have been implicit in Classical Mechanics (CM) that were acceptable in the macroscopic domain of reality, demonstrated by its proven successes. Unfortunately, only a few of these assumptions were challenged by the developers of QM. We now show that these other assumptions are still generating confusions in the interpretation of QM and blocking further progress in the understanding of the microscopic domain. Several of these flawed assumptions were introduced by Newton to support the use of continuum mathematics as a model of nature. This paper proposes that it is the attempt to preserve continuum mathematics (especially calculus), which drives much of the mystery and confusion behind all attempts at understanding quantum mechanics. The introduction of discrete mathematics is proposed to help analyze the discrete interactions between the quintessential quantum objects: the electrons and their novel properties. A related paper demonstrates that it is possible to create a point-particle theory of electrons that explains all their peculiar (and ‘paradoxical’) behavior using only physical hypotheses and discrete mathematics without introducing the continuum mathematical ideas of fields or waves. Another (related) paper proves that all the known results for the hydrogen atom can also be exactly calculated from this new perspective with the discrete mathematics. * Surrey, B.C. Canada (604) 542-2299 spsi99@telus.net Version 2.015 08-05-2017 Begun 23-06-2008 {pp. 82, 70.2 Kw; 800 KB}
Mathematicians really understand what mathematics is. Theoretical physicists really understand what physics is. No matter how fruitful the interplay between the two subjects, the deep intersection of these two understandings seems to me to be quite modest. Of course, many theoretical physicists know a lot of mathematics. And many mathematicians know a fair amount of theoretical physics. This is very different from a deep understanding of the other subject. There is great advantage in the prospect of each camp increasing its appreciation of the other's goals, desires, methodology, and profound insights. I do not know how to really go about this in either case. However, the book in hand is a good first step for the mathematicians. The method of the text is to explain the meaning of a large number of ideas in theoretical physics via the splendid medium of mathematical communication. This means that there are descriptions of objects in terms of the precise definitions of mathematics. There are clearly defined statements about these objects, expressed as mathematical theorems. Finally, there are logical step-by-step proofs of these statements based on earlier results or precise references. The mathematically sympathetic reader at the graduate level can study this work with pleasure and come away with comprehensible information about many concepts from theoretical physics … quantization, particle, path integral … After closing the book, one has not arrived at the kind of understanding of physics referred to above; but then, maybe, armed with the information provided so elegantly by the authors, the process of infusion, assimilation, and deeper insight based on further rumination and study can begin.
Abstract The strange behaviour of photons described at the end of the last chapter immediately raises all sorts of questions about the meaning of quantum theory. We might be encouraged to look for this meaning by going back to the theory’s mathematical structure: perhaps by trying to find out how we might better interpret some of its elements. However, it is a central argument of this book that, no matter where we look, we are always led back to philosophy. At first sight, this might seem to be an odd thing to claim. After all, modern textbooks on quantum physics and chemistry rarely (if ever) discuss philosophy. We accept that the behaviour of photons is strange, but surely it is something that we can at least study experimentally-do we need philosophy in these circumstances? But this is the whole point. Quantum theory directly challenges our understanding of the nature of the fundamental particles and the process of measurement, and we cannot go forward unless we adopt some kind of interpretation. As we will see, this interpretation has to be based on some philosophical position.
We still lack any consensus about what one is actually talking about as one uses quantum mechanics. There is a gap between the abstract terms in which the theory is couched and the phenomena the theory enables each of us to account for so well. Because it has no practical consequences for how we each use quantum mechanics to deal with physical problems, this cognitive dissonance has managed to coexist with the quantum theory from the very beginning. The absence of conceptual clarity for almost a century suggests that the problem might lie in some implicit misconceptions about the nature of scientific explanation that are deeply held by virtually all physicists, but are rarely explicitly acknowledged. I describe here such unvoiced but widely shared assumptions. Rejecting them clarifies and unifies a range of obscure remarks about quantum mechanics made almost from the beginning by some of the giants of physics, many of whom are held to be in deep disagreement. This new view of physics requires physicists to think about science in an unfamiliar way. My primary purpose is to explain the new perspective and urge that it be taken seriously. My secondary aims are to explain why this perspective differs significantly from what Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli had been saying from the very beginning, and why it is not solipsism, as some have maintained. To emphasize that this is a general view of science, and not just of quantum mechanics, I apply it to a long-standing puzzle in classical physics: the apparent inability of physics to give any meaning to 'Now'-the present moment.