The concept of the elementary particle, a small, cannon-ball-like component of matter is an abstraction. Many of the properties of one elementary particle, the electron, for example, can be visualised as if the electron really is a small bullet; it has properties of speed, momentum and mass. There are now nearly one hundred elementary particles each with different properties and each with some aspects of a small bullet and each with other complementary properties. Mind, machinery and matter are an indivisible whole in which we are forced by virtue of logic and reason to work. The physicist’s current view of nature is that mind is connected with matter; matter is composed largely of space with constant movements and change occurring in that space. Most of the work was based also on fiendishly difficult mathematics and not on supposition alone.
The concept of the elementary particle, a small, cannon-ball-like component of matter is an abstraction. Many of the properties of one elementary particle, the electron, for example, can be visualised as if the electron really is a small bullet; it has properties of speed, momentum and mass. There are now nearly one hundred elementary particles each with different properties and each with some aspects of a small bullet and each with other complementary properties. Mind, machinery and matter are an indivisible whole in which we are forced by virtue of logic and reason to work. The physicist’s current view of nature is that mind is connected with matter; matter is composed largely of space with constant movements and change occurring in that space. Most of the work was based also on fiendishly difficult mathematics and not on supposition alone.
Those defile the purity of mathematical and philosophical truthy who confound real quantities with their relations and sensible measures. —ISAAC NEWTON, Principia Before we say anything about quantum mechanics, let us take a quick look at the Newtonian (or ‘classical’) view of the physical universe. According to that view, nature consists of an enormous number of particles. When Newtonian physics is combined with the theory of the electromagnetic field, it becomes convenient to think of these particles as dimensionless (even if there is a kind of conceptual strain involved in trying to think of something as having a mass but not any size ), and as possessing electrical properties – negative charge, or positive charge, or neutrality. This leads to the well-known ‘solar system’ view of the atom – with the electrons whirling around the nucleons (neutrons and protons) just as the planets whirl around the sun. Out of atoms are built molecules; out of molecules, macroscopic objects, scaling from dust motes to whole planets and stars. These latter also fall into larger groupings – solar systems and galaxies – but these larger structures differ from the ones previously mentioned in being held together exclusively by gravitational forces. At every level, however, one has trajectories (ultimately that means the possibility of continuously tracing the movements of the elementary particles) and one has causality (ultimately that means the possibility of extrapolating from the history of the universe up to a given time to its whole sequence of future states).
It is difficult to venture into the world of the ultimately small, or even to talk about it, without a very good understanding of the laws of Nature that govern that world. The forces one finds there determine the way in which the tiny particles we wish to study move about, and also all their other properties. Whether, and how, we can actually observe them will also depend on these forces. And this is not easy, because the laws of Nature are complicated. More and more experts in this field seek refuge in a kind of mathematical gibberish no ‘normal’ person can follow, unless he or she belongs to the in-crowd. To really appreciate the rock-solid logic of the laws of physics, one actually cannot avoid math. Nonetheless, we physicists feel the need to share the joy of all our beautiful discoveries with whoever wants to listen. We are advised then to avoid all math. This then is what I shall reluctantly do. It is my intention to provide a narrative of twenty-five years of research on the very tiniest particles of matter. During those twenty-five years, I began to view Nature as an intelligence test to which humanity as a whole has been subjected, as a giant jigsaw puzzle given to us to play with. Time and again, we stumble upon new pieces, large or small, that fit beautifully with those we already have. I want to share with you the sense of triumph we feel at such moments.
“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?
The discovery of the microworld presented a serious trial for many systems of views held by mankind, including its logic. This world was found to lack the familiar solid bodies, the unchanging particles and interrelations between them, the reflection of which, in one way or another, is the logic of the macroscopic world. What elementary particle physics encountered in the microscopic world seemed illogical: the rest-mass of a particle equals zero; a part that is not smaller than the whole; a particle that in diffraction experiments moved like a wave; and much else that was unusual and strange in the properties of elementary particles. One of these properties was actually so named by physicists — "strangeness."
“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).
Philosophy is dissolved into quantum philosophy, which is really not the philosophy created by the hitherto existing human thought but its dissociation into ‘constituent’ aspects/processes/conversions such as time, space, matter, energy, measure, etc. Quantum world is a world of constant transformations, which is the only constant, from the point of view of the worldview. The quantum world leads to a rearrangement of the subject/object relationship. The nature of the reality or of what is being observed is qualitatively different from the one in the tangible world. When one applies quantum theory to the electrodynamics of “elementary” particles such as electrons, protons, etc. internal inconsistencies arise in theory. These inconsistencies are connected with the prediction of infinite values for values for various physical properties e.g. mass and charge of the electron.