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Routledge eBooks

Quantum states of three-dimensional systems

A.P. French, Edwin F. Taylor

Published May 11, 2018• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Where is the good, old-fashioned solid matter that obeys precise, compelling mathematical laws? The stone that Dr. Johnson once kicked to demonstrate the reality of matter has become dissipated in a diffuse distribution of mathematical probabilities .
DOI
10.1201/9781315137308-12

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“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). Does reality then lie in the string of bits that come back from the set of all observations and experiments – a dry sequence of ones and zeros? Do these observations merely transfer really-existing bits of information from an external world reality to the minds of observers, or are the bits of information created by the very act of observation/experiment? And – the question to which this entire discussion is directed – are bits of “classical” information the only sort of information that count in the reality game, or does an altogether different form of information underpin reality? In short, where is the ontological ground on which our impression of a really-existing universe rests?
It must have been around 1950. I was accompanying Einstein on a walk from The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton to his home, when he suddenly stopped, turned to me, and asked me if I really believed that the moon exists only if I look at it. The nature of our discussion was not particularly metaphysical. Rather, we were discussing the quantum theory … (Abraham Pais, 1982) There is an old debate in philosophy about whether the world outside our minds exists at all. In the early-seventeenth century, Descartes pioneered the new mechanical and geometrical view of material reality in which every event was determined. But he also believed that we each had a soul and that our will was free. Thus he had to insist that matter and the soul were entirely different: the mind-body split was born. Descartes's critics soon pointed out that a soul confined within the “veil of perception” had no direct evidence that its perceptions were true. Perhaps they were mere illusions or some sort of cinematic film projected by God? Bishop Berkeley went so far as to suggest that there are no bodies outside the mind, and that perceptions were the only reality: “to be is to be perceived”. Samuel Johnson thought this was all twaddle. He famously rebutted Berkeley by kicking a stone, as if to say that its reality was painfully obvious. During the past 30 years, there has been a resurgence of these sorts of questions.