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Proof that the qubit is not a concept of quantum mechanics: The second cosmological revolution and the Copenhagen interpretation 2.0

Liu, Bowen

Published Jan 1, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.13140/rg.2.2.35621.56800

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When quantum mechanics was developed in the '20s of the last century another revolution in physics was just starting. It began with the discovery that the universe is expanding. For a long time quantum mechanics and cosmology developed independently of one another. Yet the very discovery of the expansion would eventually draw the two subjects together because it implied the big bang where quantum mechanics wasimportant for cosmology and for understanding and predicting our observations of the universe today. Textbook (Copenhagen) formulations of quantum mechanics are inadequate for cosmology for at least four reasons: 1) They predict the outcomes of measurements made by observers. But in the very early universe no measurements were being made and no observers were around to make them. 2) Observers were outside of the system being measured. But we are interested in a theory of the whole universe where everything, including observers, are inside. 3) Copenhagen quantum mechanics could not retrodict the past. But retrodicting the past to understand how the universe began is the main task of cosmology. 4) Copenhagen quantum mechanics required a fixed classical spacetime geometry not least to give meaning to the time in the Schrödinger equation. But in the very early universe spacetime is fluctuating quantum mechanically (quantum gravity) and without definite value. A formulation of quantum mechanics general enough for cosmology was started by Everett and developed by many. That effort has given us a more general framework that is adequate for cosmology --- decoherent (or consistent) histories quantum theory in the context of semiclassical quantum gravity. Copenhagen quantum theory is an approximation to this more general quantum framework that is appropriate for measurement situations. We discuss whether further generalization may still be required.
The new discoveries of QM led to re-assessing, broadening the meanings of many physical concepts, and formulating a new logic that was no longer based on the classical principles of non-contradiction, identity, and causality. Heisenberg considered the classical logic and the conception of language expressed in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus inadequate for the understanding of the problems of language with which the physicists of the Copenhagen school had had to deal in order to define the foundations of Quantum Mechanics. On the contrary, he saw in Wittgenstein’s posthumous Philosophical Investigations the key to solving those problems. One may formulate a proportion and state that the use of language described in the Tractatus fits the use of language in Classical Mechanics, as the use of language described in PI fits the use of language in QM. I interpret the reflections of the physicists of the Copenhagen school on the limits of language relative to QM by highlighting how the epistemological revolution of quantum physics shares a conception of language similar to that expressed by late Wittgenstein in PI. I also aim to explain why Heisenberg considered it inappropriate to subsume the propositions and concepts of QM under the rules of the propositional logic of Tractatus. I explain why the philosophy of language expounded in PI, which is based on language games and resemblance families, sheds a light on how and why QM has contributed to renewing existing concepts (such as space, trajectory, observer, etc.) and to formulate a new logic (quantum logic).