From the archive: more quantum quandaries
A retrospective (Part II)
See here for Part I and here for Part III of this retrospective.
“Decoherence can sometimes help understand why it seems to us that things happen, but it does not address the question as to why anything does in fact happen (if in fact it does)”.1
“Most physicists have no clear conception of the interpretation of their most basic theory, quantum mechanics. They are largely unaware of the exact nature of the problems in giving a detailed and consistent account of the physical meaning of the theory; and if they are aware, they often don’t care very much. Only very small numbers of researchers have given serious thought to the interpretational problems of quantum mechanics and have expressed more or less detailed points of view. As can perhaps be expected from the statistics of small numbers, the diversity of opinion is large. Very different ideas have been put forward, none of them supported by great numbers of physicists”.2
“Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover”.3
“There is a straight ladder from the atom to the grain of sand, and the only real mystery in physics is the missing rung. Below it, particle physics; above it, classical physics; but in between, metaphysics.” — Tom Stoppard, Hapgood
“Electrons seem to have modes of being, or modes of moving, available to them which are quite unlike what we know how to think about”.4
Arthur Fine in: Maximilian Schlosshauer, Elegance and Enigma: The Quantum Interviews, p. 146 (Springer, 2011).
Dennis Dieks, The quantum mechanical world-picture and its popularization, Communication & Cognition 29 (2), pp. 153–168 (1996).
Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Philosophy, p. 163 (George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1927).
David Z. Albert, Quantum mechanics and experience, p. 11 (Harvard University Press, 1994).
“If the wood had no material form and was as immaterial as the seeing of my eye, then we could truly say that the piece of wood and my eye share a single being in the act of seeing.” (Meister Eckhart, Sermon 7.3, DW48, W60)