Uncertainty may result from (1) an impossibility to measure what we want to measure, or an impossibility to observe the system, (2) the limited precision of our measurement, (3) the measurement fundamentally disturbing the system and, as such, causing the information to be unreliable, (4) an uncertainty that is inherent to Nature (Copenhagen interpretation). We agree with Lorentz’s and Einstein’s viewpoint: there is no need to elevate indeterminism to a philosophical principle. The more important question is: how does quantum physics model it? How does it deal with it? This paper wants to offer some thoughts on that, supporting Lorentz’s (and Einstein’s) position: we only have statistical indeterminism. Quantum physics should, therefore, not be seen as a radical departure from classical physics. Quantum-mechanical uncertainty is nothing but statistical indeterminism. This is, effectively, the fifth interpretation of uncertainty which should be added to the list above, and may well be the final one. The position is illustrated with a detailed discussion of the wavefunction(s) in the context of Schrodinger’s wave equation for the hydrogen atom. We also further explore the question in regard to the (possible) physical dimension of the real and imaginary part of the wavefunction. To paraphrase Feynman, we wonder what could be ‘sloshing back and forth’ between the real and imaginary part of the wavefunction? We think it is kinetic and potential energy. We, therefore, briefly present our two-dimensional oscillator model again, but using the metaphor of a multi-piston radial engine as a metaphor this time.
Uncertainty may result from (1) an impossibility to measure what we want to measure, or an impossibility to observe the system, (2) the limited precision of our measurement, (3) the measurement fundamentally disturbing the system and, as such, causing the information to be unreliable, (4) an uncertainty that is inherent to Nature (Copenhagen interpretation). We agree with Lorentz’s and Einstein’s viewpoint: there is no need to elevate indeterminism to a philosophical principle. The more important question is: how does quantum physics model it? How does it deal with it? This paper wants to offer some thoughts on that, supporting Lorentz’s (and Einstein’s) position: we only have statistical indeterminism. Quantum physics should, therefore, not be seen as a radical departure from classical physics. Quantum-mechanical uncertainty is nothing but statistical indeterminism. This is, effectively, the fifth interpretation of uncertainty which should be added to the list above, and may well be the final one. The position is illustrated with a detailed discussion of the wavefunction(s) in the context of Schrodinger’s wave equation for the hydrogen atom. We also further explore the question in regard to the (possible) physical dimension of the real and imaginary part of the wavefunction. To paraphrase Feynman, we wonder what could be ‘sloshing back and forth’ between the real and imaginary part of the wavefunction? We think it is kinetic and potential energy. We, therefore, briefly present our two-dimensional oscillator model again, but using the metaphor of a multi-piston radial engine as a metaphor this time.
In previous chapters we presented and discussed the standard, generally accepted Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics according to which there exists in nature at the most fundamental level an irreducible and ineliminable indeterminism. Although we saw that what historically constituted the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is difficult to specify with precision, three central commitments do characterize it. (1) In general, no particle trajectories can exist in a space–time background. (2) No deterministic description of fundamental physical phenomena is possible. (3) There exists in the laws of the fundamental physical phenomena of nature an essential and ineliminable indeterminism or probability (unlike the probability of classical physics, that there reflects our ignorance of the finer details of complex physical phenomena). A flavor of these features of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics can be gotten from the quotations at the beginning of Part VIII ( Some philosophical lessons from quantum mechanics ). On this view, it is in principle impossible to predict, say, the exact future behavior of an electron (that is, to give its position and velocity as functions of the time). According to the Copenhagen school, there can be no causal description of microphenomena in terms of a continuous space–time background (as there is in classical physics). It is generally believed that a causal interpretation of quantum mechanics is impossible, although no proof of this exists.
Abstract Quantum mechanics is our most successful and versatile account of the basic constituents of matter, of their interaction and of their compounds. We introduce the theory via a sketch of its history and lay out its mathematical structure in some detail. Before this background we address the important and controversial question of how to interpret that structure. We contextualise our own position, which is linked to our account of ontological emergence as detailed in Chap. 2 , and which is mathematically best expressed in the Heisenberg picture of quantum dynamics. Indeterminism and irreversible processes are fundamental for our approach. We discuss the dialectics of the deterministic challenge to our position and argue that indeterminism in the form of quantum randomness has turned from a philosophical riddle to a technological resource. This claim is supported by a discussion of quantum information science, including some of its basic protocols. Towards the end of the chapter we argue that agency and quantum mechanics come as a package deal. For one, quantum mechanics describes the world as offering open possibilities for the future at a fundamental physical level, which is needed for real higher-order organisation, including agency. Of course, this does not in any way show that the actual existence of agents in our world is guaranteed. But it does show that general agency scepticism has no basis in physics. Second, we show that quantum mechanics is best understood as a theory that describes our agential interactions with nature, and not as a theory that represents nature from the point of view of an inert, detached observer.
This book examines in detail two of the fundamental questions raised by quantum mechanics. Is the world indeterministic? Are there connections between spatially separated objects? In the first part of the book after outlining the formalism of quantum mechanics and introducing the measurement problem, the author examines several interpretations, focusing on how each proposes to solve the measurement problem and on how each treats probability. In the second part, the author argues that there can be non-trivial relationships between probability (specifically, determinism and indeterminism) and non-locality in an interpretation of quantum mechanics. The author then re-examines some of the interpretations of part one of the book in the light of this argument, and considers how they are with regard to locality and Lorentz invariance. One of the important lessons that comes out of this discussion is that any examination of locality, and of the relationship between quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, should be undertaken in the context of a detailed interpretation of quantum mechanics. The book will appeal to anyone with an interest in the interpretation of quantum mechanics, including researchers in the philosophy of physics and theoretical physics, as well as graduate students in those fields.
The word 'uncertainty', in the context of quantum mechanics, usually evokes an impression of an essential unknowability of what might actually be going on at the quantum level of activity, as is made explicit in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and in the fact that the theory normally provides only probabilities for the results of quantum measurement. These issues limit our ultimate understanding of the behaviour of things, if we take quantum mechanics to represent an absolute truth. But they do not cause us to put that very 'truth' into question. This article addresses the issue of quantum 'uncertainty' from a different perspective, raising the question of whether this term might be applied to the theory itself, despite its unrefuted huge success over an enormously diverse range of observed phenomena. There are, indeed, seeming internal contradictions in the theory that lead us to infer that a total faith in it at all levels of scale leads us to almost fantastical implications.
Because the particles follow a wave pattern of probability prescribed by schrodinger equation and we are guided by uncertainty principles, we often wrongly interpret the nature of reality. Heisenberg only prescribes the measurement problems of very small due to limitations of wave length of the observing beam and that is the natural limitation but wrongly we say that nature is acting indeterministi. Thus we wrongly understand uncertainty principles connecting t to saying that nature can never be precisely defined in momentum and position.In the same way we measure time in relativity theory confusing the very notion of time.