Philosophical Shorts (1) Short philosophical pieces.
The science journalists and writer Michael Brooks kinda gives the game away when he says that
“[quantum] theory allows for quantum particles [] to exist in more than one state at any one time”.
Brooks doesn’t say that quantum particles do “exist in more than one state at any one time”. He says that quantum theory “allows” for such a thing. It will therefore turn out that this is nearly all down to measurements, probabilities, what-ifs, predictions, interpretations, etc. and not about what actually is. In other words, this is nothing like a cat or even a sand particle existing in more than one state at any one time.
And everything just said equally also applies to Brooks’ other words about an electron “spin[ning] clockwise and anticlockwise at the same” and a photon being both “here and there” at the same time. Finally, it also applies to an atom “hold[ing] two different energies”.
So, apart from our experimental arrangements and interpretations, there’s also no reason at all to be surprised that things at the quantum scale have different things said about them than things at the “classical” scale.
Yet it’s not only about size.
Indeed the physicist Sabine Hossenfelder says that “it’s not about size” at all. Yet clearly it’s definitely partly about size. And it also depends on what “it” means.
More clearly, the problems begin with the size and that, in turn, changes everything else when it comes to experiments, observations, interpretations, etc. (The physicist and mathematician Roger Penrose argues that different energy levels make all the difference — see here.) This particularly problematises the issue of whether or not we can talk of “particles” and “waves” at all. It also necessarily brings in matters about the nature of experiments, measurements, mathematical probabilities, predictions and theory generally — all of which are nothing like these things as they occur at the classical level.
Again, it’s not just that particles or quantum states are exceedingly small: it’s that this fact alters almost everything else about the science of these particles, waves and states. So the words we use about what happens when the exceedingly small is measured, experimented upon, predicted, etc. become the subject of probabilities, interpretations, etc.
This, in turn, means that any weirdness is largely brought about by what physicists do. It’s also brought about by how physicists (or laypersons) interpret matters — i.e., when physicists (or laypersons) attempt to explain and interpret quantum phenomena using classical words, images, analogies and metaphors.
No comments:
Post a Comment