Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Post 125. June 27, 2022
Quantum Weirdness
To be and/or not to be, that is the conundrum
Phillip Ball introduces his topic by clarifying the murkiness of Quantum Physics : “what has emerged most strongly from this work on the fundamental aspects of quantum theory is that it is not a theory about particles and waves, discreteness or uncertainty or fuzziness. It is a theory about information.” [My emphasis] He then admits that “quantum information brings its own problems, because it raises questions about what this information is . . . because information is not a thing that you can point to . . .” Consequently, his book is more about Philosophy than Science. Ironically, the exotic mathematics of Quantum Theory has become the foundation of 21st century science, even though its implications cannot be understood intuitively, or in terms of 19th century Classical Physics. Hence the so-called “weirdness” of QT has remained as queer as ever over the last century.
Many of the QT pioneers (e.g. Neils Bohr), inadvertently gained a reputation for mysticism, due to some of their attempts to explain its strangeness, to Western eyes, in terms of metaphors borrowed from Eastern philosophy. So, although it is now labeled as “the most successful theory ever form-ulated”¹, it still predicts behaviors that seem more magical than mechanical. That’s why the more pragmatic practitioners decided to “just shut-up and calculate”, rather than to philosophically speculate on what’s actually happening in the unseen world of quantum ghosts, that can pass through solid walls. As Ball admits, it’s “on the border of metaphysics”, so “we’re going to need some philosophy”.
Although science is all about causes & effects, the connection between before & after can only be explained in terms of Fuzzy Logic². “Even the term “quantum” is misleading, since it implies “a description of the world granular and particulate”, but is ultimately “continuous and fluid”. So the quantum realm is a bit like whack-a-mole, in that you whack here and it pops up again over there. As Ball observes, “what distinguishes quantum mechanics from other empirically motivated theories . . . is that the quest for underlying causes doesn’t allow . . . the theory to be constructed from more fundamental ingredients.”
One of the least mechanical aspects of QT is the “wave/particle duality”. What Schrodinger’s wavefunction equation refers to is neither a wave in a medium, nor a particle standing alone, but BothAnd³. “In fact it’s not a wave that corresponds to any concrete physical property. It is just a mathematical abstraction . . .” Surprisingly, the equation that is the primary tool of QT includes Imaginary Numbers⁴. And its solution is not a “description of an entity”, but a “prescription” for a future measurement. It doesn’t refer to a physical thing, but information about a possible thing. Which is why Ball says that QT is a theory about Information⁵.
2. Fuzzy Logic : It’s a semi-logical method originally developed to deal with the vagueness & un-certainty of some gray areas of computer programming. And it has also found a place in interpreting the ambiguity of quantum math.
3. BothAnd Principle : Conceptually, the BothAnd principle is similar to Einstein's theory of Relativity, in that what you see ─ what’s true for you ─ depends on your perspective, and your frame of reference; for exam-ple, subjective or objective, religious or scientific, reduc-tive or holistic, pragmatic or romantic, conservative or liberal, earthbound or cosmic. Ultimate or absolute reality (ideality) doesn't change, but your conception of reality does. Opposing views are not right or wrong, but more or less accurate for a particular purpose. http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
4. Imaginary Numbers : Called “imaginary because they are Ideal concepts, abstractions that are not real — potential, not actual. They have no physical meaning, but a meta-physical implication.
5. Information : For humans, Information has the semantic quality of aboutness , that we interpret as meaning. In computer science though, Information is treated as meaningless, which makes its mathematical value more certain. It becomes meaningful only when a sentient Self interprets it as such. http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
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