Failures in solving a number of physical problems associated with the structure of the microworld began due to two fundamental mistakes made in the old classical physics, when interpreting the results of the experiments of Oersted (1821) and Fizeau (1851). Because of them, it was not possible to develop a detailed understanding of the true structure of the atom; this was due to the inability of physicists to eliminate the indicated fundamental errors. Blaming the “classical” Newtonian methods for this failure, physicists proceeded to build a “new” physics - quantum theory and theories of relativity. Without realizing this, they brought into the new physics old fundamental errors that entered the paradigms of the new physics and made them inadequate. This is illustrated with specific examples.
Failures in solving a number of physical problems associated with the structure of the microworld began due to two fundamental mistakes made in the old classical physics, when interpreting the results of the experiments of Oersted (1821) and Fizeau (1851). Because of them, it was not possible to develop a detailed understanding of the true structure of the atom; this was due to the inability of physicists to eliminate the indicated fundamental errors. Blaming the “classical” Newtonian methods for this failure, physicists proceeded to build a “new” physics - quantum theory and theories of relativity. Without realizing this, they brought into the new physics old fundamental errors that entered the paradigms of the new physics and made them inadequate. This is illustrated with specific examples.
Modern knowledge about the structure of the microworld turned out to be inferior due to two fundamental errors made as far back as the century before last when interpreting the results of the experiments of Oersted (1821) and Fizeau (1851). Refusing, due to these errors, to take into account the ether and magnetic interactions between microobjects, physics was not able to use Newton's “classical” formalism to study the microworld and turned to a quantum worldview. Despite the stream of self-praise and Nobel prizes, quantum theory failed to achieve a full, detailed understanding of the structure of the atomic nucleus, unexcited atom, photon, excited atom, electron, neutron, proton, ... In 1979, experimental evidence was published in the Central Russian Physical Academic Journal of the absence of undivided energy quanta in Nature [1]. The theory of nonlinear oscillations, operating on the classical methods of Newton, tells how it corrects the mentioned physical misunderstandings..
On a number of physical problems, a comparison is made of the effectiveness of the methods of cognition of quantum theory and the classical methods of Newton. The well-known statements of physicists about their excellent knowledge of classical methods turned out to be untrue. The theory of nonlinear oscillations, operating with Newton's classical methods, has shown how to solve physical problems that do not lend themselves to the methods of new physics - quantum theory and the theory of relativity.
Due to the idea of atomism, there were discovered atoms, nucleons, and electrons. The atomic theory incorporated seeds of the idea of infinite divisibility of matter aimed at perceiving the structure of the entire material world. The next step in that perceiving should have been the recognition of ether discovered in Fizeau’s experiment. However, physicists did not recognize the discovery. The neglect of ether in physical theories resulted in physicists’ failure to use the methods of “classic”, Newtonian physics to gain a detailed understanding of atomic structure, and to build a “classic” microworld theory. As consequence, there emerged the quantum hypothesis that became a basis for the quantum physics of microworld. As the quantum hypothesis appeared to be in irreconcilable contradiction with the idea of infinite divisibility of matter, because of the neglect of ether, the quantum physics failed to understand the real structure of electrons and nucleons, even though all the necessary and ample experimental facts there had been obtained on microobject accelerators. Instead of objective ideas of the structure of electrons and nucleons or further development of knowledge regarding the structure of matter, there appeared fake concepts of quarks, myons, pions, bosons, etc., that do not exist in the real material world Experimental evidence as to the lack of indivisible quanta in nature [1] seemed to have fixed the intolerable situation but quantum physicists did not “notice” that.
Abstract The development of quantum theory was driven by a consistently repeated failure of classical physics to accommodate the results of ever more sophisticated experiments on the microphysical world of radiation, elementary particles, atoms, and molecules. Each break-through in the development of the theory’s conceptual structure was followed (sometimes very rapidly) by new experimental data that just did not fit, pointing to the need for yet further refinements. As is typical in such a radical change in the approach to acquiring scientific understanding, old and often unsuitable concepts were forced into service to meet the needs of the new description. Confusion reigned. The major figures in the theory’s early development took up radically different positions on the theory’s interpretation, and, as we will see, the debate became polarized in ways that remain relevant today.
When physicists began to explore the world of atoms more precisely, as they endeavoured to understand its structure and the laws governing its behaviour, they soon encountered serious difficulties. Our intuitive concepts, based on our daily experience of the macroscopic world around us, proved to be completely erroneous on the atomic scale; the atom was incomprehensible within the framework of classical physics. In order to uncover these new mysteries, after a great deal of trial and error, entirely new concepts therefore had to be elaborated: the concepts of quantum physics. What are the main stages that have led us to this modern understanding of the atom? What is the present state of atomic physics? How has it contributed to the development of our knowledge and where is it heading?
The difficulties of the old quantum theory were largely dispelled by the development of quantum mechanics in the 1920s. First Heisenberg (1925) developed the rather abstract matrix mechanics and soon after Schro¨dinger (1926; see also Eckart, 1926) developed the physically more appealing wave mechanics. Subsequently he showed them to be mathematically equivalent. The physicists were greatly relieved; now they had once again a mathematical formalism that enabled the results of experiments to be calculated. It was possible to move forward. It is certainly a very elegant and indeed beautiful formalism, and does enable the results of many physical measurements to be calculated with great accuracy. It is used daily by atomic and nuclear physicists; there is no other way to make calculations. From the earliest days there has been intense debate about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and it shows no signs of being settled; if anything it is becoming more intense over the years. As Penrose has remarked, no one understands quantum mechanics. Feynman (1967; see also Sykes, 1994) also admitted that ‘nobody understands quantum mechanics’, and Einstein once remarked: ‘I have thought a hundred times as much about the quantum problems as I have about general relativity theory’ (Pais, 1994, p. 57). It should therefore be evident that the most that can be done here is to try to show where the real difficulties lie, and how the failure to recognize that quantum mechanics is an essentially statistical theory has led to a series of confusing quantum paradoxes. It is just these paradoxes that have often been used to support theological speculations. It is useful to ask what ‘understanding quantum mechanics’ actually means. Certainly it means being able to calculate the results of many measurements. The same applies to Newton’s theory of gravitation, which we understand in the sense that we can use it as a basis of calculation, although we do not really understand the gravitational force itself. Very often, especially in modern physics, the mathematical formalism does not give us the sort of intuitive physical feeling for what is going on that we often obtain from classical mechanics. Perhaps we can never achieve more than this for quantum mechanics. In classical mechanics we can assume that a property that is measured objectively exists prior to the interaction of the measuring apparatus with the observed system. Quantum mechanics, however, ‘is incompatible with the proposition that measurement discovers some unknown but pre-existing property’ (Peres, 1997, p. 14). There is an important distinction between mysteries and absurdities. We may be forced to live with mysteries, but there is no reason why we should put up with absurdities such as the wave-particle duality, tunnelling through potential barriers, acausal events and the collapse of the wave function. These are the quantum paradoxes that will be discussed later on. They arise within the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and are solved by other interpretations. These alternative interpretations enable us to make conjectures about what is going on, even though we cannot understand it in detail. This is acceptable and a stimulus to further research. It is certainly difficult enough to understand quantum mechanics, but there is no need to try to visualize logical absurdities in the effort to do so. Quantum mechanics is a mathematical formalism that makes it possible to calculate the results of some experiments. Anything more than this, such as questions about the interpretation of what is measured and whether it tells us what is actually going on in the system being studied, belongs to philosophy. Thus we are concerned here with what is essentially a philosophical debate; if it were just a matter of physics the debate would have been settled long ago. One of the difficulties is that it invokes the results of experiments and uses the language of quantum mechanics. Inevitably this language uses philosophical terms and then it is easy to give the impression that the philosophical propositions are in some way entailed by the physical results. These in turn can influence theological thinking. In order to be quite clear which arguments are justified and which are not, it is essential to separate the three levels of discourse: physical, philosophical and theological. Our task is to relate these together, and this immediately raises the traditional problems of the philosophy of science, including the relation of experiment to theory, and of theory to explanation. We begin by discussing experiments, distinguishing between those that are real and those that are imaginary.