For a century, quantum mechanics has been hailed as both the most profound revolution in physics and the ultimate failure of human reason. Wave-particle duality, superposition, collapse, the uncertainty principle, quantum entanglement—these concepts have been enshrined as fundamental laws of the microscopic world, yet no one has ever truly understood them. Feynman said, "Nobody understands quantum mechanics." Dirac said, "Shut up and calculate." Where does this century-old dream come from? Not from any mystery inherent in the world, but from wearing the wrong lens. We tried to understand waves using the concept of "particles." A wave spreading through space was described as "a particle being in many places at once." A traveling wave forming a standing wave at a boundary was described as "a particle suddenly collapsing." Quantum entanglement was described as "spooky action at a distance between particles." Every mysterious concept in quantum mechanics is a distorted image—a wave's true nature seen through the funhouse mirror of the particle perspective. This series of twelve papers declares: the dream is over. There are only two things in the universe—traveling waves and standing waves. Light is a traveling wave. The electron is a photon confined as a ring-shaped standing wave. A moving electron is a standing wave carrying a traveling wave. That a wave spreads through space is its nature—not superposition. That a traveling wave forms a standing wave at a boundary is ordinary physics—not collapse. That waves obey the Fourier relation is a mathematical theorem—not the uncertainty principle. Quantum entanglement is phase memory—not nonlocal connection. Return to the world of waves, speak the language of waves, and all phantoms vanish instantly. This is not a denial of quantum mechanics. It is the disenchantment of quantum mechanics. The mathematics survives. The interpretation dies. The particle perspective ends. The era of waves begins. --- 一百年来,量子力学被视为物理学最深刻的革命,也被视为人类理性最彻底的失败。波粒二象性、叠加态、坍缩、不确定性原理、量子纠缠——这些概念被奉为微观世界的基本法则,却从未被真正理解。费曼说:“没有人理解量子力学。”狄拉克说:“闭嘴计算。” 百年梦幻的根源是什么?不是世界本身神秘,而是我们戴错了眼镜。我们用“粒子”的概念去理解波——波覆盖空间,被说成“粒子同时处于多处”;波在边界处形成驻波,被说成“粒子突然坍缩”;量子纠缠被说成“粒子间有超距作用”。量子力学的所有神秘概念,都是波的本性在粒子观这面哈哈镜中的扭曲像。 本系列十二篇论文宣告:梦幻结束了。宇宙中只有两种东西——行波与驻波。光是行波,电子是光子环形驻波,运动电子是驻波携带着行波。波覆盖空间是本性,不是叠加态;行波在边界处形成驻波是普通物理,不是坍缩;波的傅里叶性质是数学定理,不是不确定性原理;量子纠缠是相位记忆,不是非定域关联。回到波的世界,用波的语言说话,所有幻象瞬间消失。 这不是对量子力学的否定,而是对量子力学的祛魅。数学幸存,解释死亡。粒子观终结,波的时代开始。
For a century, quantum mechanics has been hailed as both the most profound revolution in physics and the ultimate failure of human reason. Wave-particle duality, superposition, collapse, the uncertainty principle, quantum entanglement—these concepts have been enshrined as fundamental laws of the microscopic world, yet no one has ever truly understood them. Feynman said, "Nobody understands quantum mechanics." Dirac said, "Shut up and calculate." Where does this century-old dream come from? Not from any mystery inherent in the world, but from wearing the wrong lens. We tried to understand waves using the concept of "particles." A wave spreading through space was described as "a particle being in many places at once." A traveling wave forming a standing wave at a boundary was described as "a particle suddenly collapsing." Quantum entanglement was described as "spooky action at a distance between particles." Every mysterious concept in quantum mechanics is a distorted image—a wave's true nature seen through the funhouse mirror of the particle perspective. This series of twelve papers declares: the dream is over. There are only two things in the universe—traveling waves and standing waves. Light is a traveling wave. The electron is a photon confined as a ring-shaped standing wave. A moving electron is a standing wave carrying a traveling wave. That a wave spreads through space is its nature—not superposition. That a traveling wave forms a standing wave at a boundary is ordinary physics—not collapse. That waves obey the Fourier relation is a mathematical theorem—not the uncertainty principle. Quantum entanglement is phase memory—not nonlocal connection. Return to the world of waves, speak the language of waves, and all phantoms vanish instantly. This is not a denial of quantum mechanics. It is the disenchantment of quantum mechanics. The mathematics survives. The interpretation dies. The particle perspective ends. The era of waves begins. --- 一百年来,量子力学被视为物理学最深刻的革命,也被视为人类理性最彻底的失败。波粒二象性、叠加态、坍缩、不确定性原理、量子纠缠——这些概念被奉为微观世界的基本法则,却从未被真正理解。费曼说:“没有人理解量子力学。”狄拉克说:“闭嘴计算。” 百年梦幻的根源是什么?不是世界本身神秘,而是我们戴错了眼镜。我们用“粒子”的概念去理解波——波覆盖空间,被说成“粒子同时处于多处”;波在边界处形成驻波,被说成“粒子突然坍缩”;量子纠缠被说成“粒子间有超距作用”。量子力学的所有神秘概念,都是波的本性在粒子观这面哈哈镜中的扭曲像。 本系列十二篇论文宣告:梦幻结束了。宇宙中只有两种东西——行波与驻波。光是行波,电子是光子环形驻波,运动电子是驻波携带着行波。波覆盖空间是本性,不是叠加态;行波在边界处形成驻波是普通物理,不是坍缩;波的傅里叶性质是数学定理,不是不确定性原理;量子纠缠是相位记忆,不是非定域关联。回到波的世界,用波的语言说话,所有幻象瞬间消失。 这不是对量子力学的否定,而是对量子力学的祛魅。数学幸存,解释死亡。粒子观终结,波的时代开始。
Unlike special relativity, quantum mechanics was not the inspired product of one mind. It developed, in fits and starts, over a period of 25 years (1900–1925), and many cooks stirred the broth. Even now, a century later, quantum mechanics raises profound conceptual questions. Every competent physicist can “do” quantum mechanics, and the predictions it makes are in spectacularly good agreement with experimental results; there can be little doubt that quantum mechanics is “right.” On the other hand, as Richard Feynman once remarked, “nobody understands quantum mechanics.” I'll tell the story in two parts. First the history (how the essential pieces of the puzzle were assembled), and then the implications (what the finished picture has to say about our world). Photons Like relativity, quantum mechanics began with the study of light. In both cases, this historical association is misleading. Relativity, really, has nothing to do with light – to be sure, it involves that magic speed limit, c , and of course the most familiar thing that travels at speed c is light. So light is a convenient vehicle for introducing the subject. But it is perfectly possible to imagine a universe in which there is no such thing as light, and yet relativity might still be valid. Quantum mechanics, too, starts with light – in this case the “quantum” of light (the photon). But, as it turns out, this is just one rather specialized example of much more general principles – in fact, a rather bad example, because photons are by their nature relativistic (they travel at the speed of light), and it would be more natural to begin with the quantum mechanics of slow-moving objects, in analogy with Newtonian mechanics.
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.
In the early decades of this century physics was revolutionised by the advent of quantum mechanics. Observed atomic spectra could only be explained if the seemingly unshakeable concept of a particle moving along a path (trajectory), sharply defined and uniquely determined by the initial position and momentum coordinates, was dropped in favour of a description of electrons as standing waves or wave packets, whose position and momentum carry inherent uncertainties. In the course of the quantum revolution, generations of physicists were taught that the concept of classical paths is wrong on the atomic scale.
(The narrative around the various mathematical and physical techniques broadly known as quantum mechanics has suffered due to the influence of social pressures. The incredible strengths of the theories and their predictive powers have become subject to a number of sensationalized story lines, which we refer to here as “quantum mysticism”. In this paper we demonstrate a three-pronged counterattack which combats these forces. A precise use of terms coupled with an accurate and intuitive way to describe the behavior of discrete and microscopic phenomenon effectively demystifies quantum mechanics. We don't go into the mathematical details here to keep our discussion accessible to the layperson. After our demystification the discipline withholds its incredible predictive power without scaring away a rational thinker. In fact quantum mechanics is an entirely rational, intuitive, and accessible discipline. The world is full of mystery; however, a discipline devoted to quantifying and rationalizing behaviors of certain specific systems is hardly the place to go searching for mystery.) 由于社会压力的影响，围绕着各种数学和物理技术的叙述而被熟知的量子力学遇到了挫折。这些理论及其预测能力的不可思议的力量已经变成了一些耸人听闻的故事情节，我们称之为“量子神秘主义”。本文对这些力量进行了三方面的反击。精确的使用准确的术语，用直观的方法描述离散和微观现象的行为，这有效地揭开了量子力学的神秘面纱。我们不会在这里讨论数学细节，以使我们的讨论能够被普通人所理解。在我们揭开了这个学科的神秘性之后，它拥有了不可思议的预测能力，同时又不会吓跑一个理性的思考者。事实上，量子力学是一个完全理性的、直观的、易于理解的学科。这个世界充满了神秘；然而，这门学科致力于对某些特定系统的行为进行量化和合理化，并不是去寻找神秘事物的地方
A DIFFERENT PARADIGM At the beginning of the 20th century many physicists felt there was little left to uncover. 1 It took the genius of Albert Einstein to challenge the prevailing Newtonian laws of motion.Einstein showed that what was thought to be inherent in phenomena was merely a manifestation of how we chose to talk about them.Relativity reveals an integrated and dynamic universe.Time, for example, is not absolute, but part of the fabric of the universe and relative to observer perspective.The faster an observer travels, the slower time passes relative to the perspective of one travelling at slower velocity.Einstein was also pivotal in the development of quantum theory, which successfully predicts the workings of subatomic particles.Quantum theory successfully explains all of chemistry and most of physics, and has enabled the development of important resources such as computers, electron microscopes, and MRI scanners.Many of quantum theory's fundamental features hint at an underlying reality that is probabilistic and not fully knowable.Wave-particle duality, for example, demonstrated that every elementary particle can be described in terms of both a particle and a wave.Another fundamental, first captured in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, 2 demonstrated that observation of the quantum world alters its qualities.Quantum objects seem to exist in many different states at one time, only being forced to collapse and adopt definite states by the act of measurement, which is encapsulated in Schrödinger's formula.3 Both relativity and quantum theories changed how we look at the world.Both recognise that cause and effect is not always linear and our view of the world is inherently biased.They were built mathematically on thought experiments and partially confirmed by empirical findings.Gödel's incompleteness theorem, which showed that mathematical-based theory will always be incomplete, 4 and the uncertainty principle illustrate fundamental limitations to our abilities to understand and predict the universe.This is perhaps unsurprising as our brains have evolved to observe and rationalise the physical world from the perspective of living on Earth.In addition, our right brain enables us to view the world as dynamic, interconnected, and implicit, and to accept that things may never be fully known.5
The odd concepts of quantum physics are nearly a century old. They may seem difficult and forbidding at first sight, but the barrier to understanding is not their difficulty but their differentness . Unlike classical models, quantum theory does not attempt to simulate Nature. It gives us information about observations of Nature. But it does contain a “theoretical entity” that claims to contain all information, observation notwithstanding, namely the quantum state vector in Hilbert space. Scientists routinely use the language of Hilbert space, and nonscientists do not use it at all, which is understandable but unfortunate. A sort of baby-talk has become the lingua franca for much of the popular journalism of quantum physics, an awkward patois that combines some of the early groping language of Bohr, de Broglie, Schrödinger, and Heisenberg with more modern words about symmetries and states. Earnest amateurs still ask me about the mystery of Bohr orbits. There is no mystery because there are no orbits, except as historical curiosities. Same for “wave–particle duality.” Same for “quantum jumps.” A friend once asked me to address a philosophy seminar about the “paradoxes of quantum mechanics.” He said he had approached C. N. Yang first, who replied “What paradoxes?” There are some mathematical and logical rough spots in our current best theory of matter, and perhaps some of them can be framed as paradoxes. But the theory is actually rather straightforward, and it has a perfectly clear interpretation linked to experiments that, in their simplest form, anyone can perform (and students do routinely in college laboratories). No empirical observations are known that are inconsistent with the quantum framework.