reilly said:
koantum -- Both you and Prof. Dieks use an old propaganda technique, sometimes called the strawman attack. Without any apparent supporting empirical evidence, you both claim that many physicists are "blissfully ignorant''; basically you both say much of the physics community is mired in bad thinking, is blessed with an erroneous conceptual background.
reilly—You evidently use the same technique. I claimed (and continue to do so, because by reading, correspondence, and conversation I have collected a mass of evidence to this effect) that "the vast majority of physicists substitutes its blissful ignorance of these deep issues in the philosophy of modern physics with a naïve semiclassical hotchpotch of mutually inconsistent ideas." You attribute to me the claim that many physicists are "blissfully ignorant''—period. This isn't quite the same, is it?
Both Dieks and myself are much more generous than you paint us. We both agree that the theoretical and/or experimental expertise of most contemporary physicists is nothing short of awe-inspiring. (I say "theoretical" rather than "mathematical" because mathematicians might disagree, given the nonchalance with which mathematically ill-defined expressions are used—with great success—by theoretical physicists. In this context I recommend "http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0603155" " by Fredenhagen, Rehren, and Seiler, to appear in:
An Assessment of Current Paradigms in the Physics of Fundamental Phenomena, Springer, 2006.) The necessity to acquire this expertise leaves no time for deep philosophical reflection. Nobody therefore
blames physicists for their philosophical naivety.
Again, nobody doubts that images can be of considerable help in dealing with mathematical concepts or in manipulating complicated expressions, e.g., Feynman diagrams. As far as the theoretical predictions (for comparison with experimental data) are concerned, it doesn’t even hurt if you believe something as philosophically naïve and absurd as Zee's claim that Feynman diagrams "are literally pictures of what happened." But if at the end of the day you base your worldview on the mental images that accompany your theoretical activities, then ... (well, the less said the better).
Seems to me you are both saying that much of the physics community doesn't have a clue about what they are doing.
This is pure polemic. Nobody questions their theoretical and/or experimental expertise. But consider this: In
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Feynman tells a general audience that "by explaining quantum electrodynamics to you in terms of what we are
really doing [his emphasis], I hope you will be able to understand it better than do some of the students." Imagine! One of the greatest physicists of the past century believes that it is possible, in only four lectures, to make a lay audience understand quantum electrodynamics better than do some of the physics students. And we all know that this genius, who perhaps understood quantum mechanics better than anyone, thought it "safe to say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." You get my drift? I am saying that there are many different ways of understanding. Please don’t mix them up, at least not deliberately.
But, being a confirmed reductionist
This statement alone is sufficient to demonstrate your philosophical naivety. If you applied the same scientific standards in the ideological domain, you ought to keep an open mind. The success of contemporary physics, however great and astonishing, is far from being a proof of the correctness of reductionism. In Newtonian mechanics the 3 body problem was insoluble. With general relativity the 2 and 1 body problems became insoluble. In quantum field theory the 0 body (vacuum) problem is insoluble. Nothing is already too much. It is clear therefore that even for a protein molecule it is impossible (i) to predict with sufficient accuracy and (ii) to measure with sufficient accuracy so as to be in a position to check whether its behavior is governed strictly by physical laws.
Besides, there are clear indications that subjective consciousness eludes reductionism. It is much like the little discrepancy that existed between classical theory and observations at the beginning of the 20th century. Some quotes:
"Sometimes I really regret that I did not live in those times when there was still so much that was new; to be sure enough much is yet unknown, but I do not think that it will be possible to discover anything easily nowadays that would lead us to revise our entire outlook as radically as was possible in the days when telescopes and microscopes were still new.—Heinrich Hertz as a physics student, ca. 1875
The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote... Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.—Albert. A. Michelson, speech at the dedication of Ryerson Physics Lab, University of Chicago. 1894
There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement"—Lord Kelvin, 1900
the human mind functions with "classical " ideas and concepts -- what else can it do, with brains being wired as they are? Of course, that's the rub -- nature and our conceptual and perceptual apparatus don't entirely get along, but given time, history suggests to me that our current "paradigm" will change, and in 100 years or so, in no small measure due to the pragmatic success of QM, the standard "pragmatic Born, knowledge interpretation" will seem quite natural.
I couldn't agree more with what you're saying here, except I would credit Bohr before Born, and I believe that one can go further. Probabilities are fundamental but not necessarily subjective. The central role played by probabilities in the fundamental theoretical framework of physics argues that quantum-mechanical probabilities are objective and, as such, are the quantitative expression of an objective fuzziness. Several important ontological conclusions can be drawn from this, and these (I believe) will be common knowledge by the end of the 21st century.
Here is a part of the abstract of http://cogprints.org/4480/" :
The problem of making sense of quantum mechanics (QM) is as much a psychological problem as it is a physical one. There is a conflict between the spatiotemporal structure of the quantum world (which is discussed in some detail) and the way in which the (visual aspect of) the phenomenal world is constructed by our minds (which is also discussed in some detail). Unlike the quantum world, the phenomenal world conforms to the cookie cutter paradigm (CCP)---the idea that the synchronic multiplicity of the world rests on surfaces that carve up space much as cookie cutters carve up rolled-out pastry. The attempt to model the physical world in conformity with the CCP gives rise to pseudoproblems (including most versions of the notorious measurement problem) that foil our attempts to understand the quantum world. The genuine problems arising from the fact that the fundamental theoretical framework of contemporary physics is an algorithm for calculating the probabilities of possible measurement outcomes on the basis of actual measurement outcomes, are solved not by adding physically unwarranted assumptions to the quantum formalism but by rejecting unwarranted assumptions that are all but universally made.
Further, in my opinion, by that time neuroscientists will understand the human perceptual system well enough to have a good handle on measurements.
I beg to differ. The human perceptual system has nothing to do with the measurement problem.
Just for the record, I have, in fact read a fair amount of the rump approach to QM, all of which I find less than convincing, and some I find to be wonderfully fanciful and mystical-- cf. David Deutsch and his shadow photons. I'm also somewhat familiar with the fancy mathematical approach to QM -- Mackey(my undergraduate advisor for the year I was a math major), Gleason, and my college roommate, Marc Rieffel -- they are playing a different ballgame than most physicists, but their work is, obviously, of great value.
Complete agreement.
Just as my wife is a minimalist artist, I'm a minimalist in science.
Off the record, my wife too is an artist, though I wouldn’t call her minimalist. (You can check that out http://vishwajyoti.com" .) The way I see it, minimalism is beneficial to science, but there is much that is beyond the reach of science, and when it comes to a world view, I demand from it more than science can achieve.
I feel quite free to accept or reject ideas, concepts and theories according to my personal notions, which, after 68 years of life, have been, I hope, honed to a reasonable "T."
I believe that everybody
must have this freedom. But maybe, just maybe, you are in for a surprise, just like the physicists quoted above.
re Dieks, where is it written that physics is something other than a highly empirical science?
Nowhere. But this also means that it makes no sense to base a comprehensive world view on physics alone.
The whole point of applied probability theory (as in sales forecasting, survey research,...), and of the knowledge interpretation of QUANTUM MECHANICS...
As Mermin (another crank in your opinion?) wrote: "In a non-deterministic world, probability has nothing to do with incomplete knowledge. Quantum mechanics is the first example in human experience where probabilities play an essential role even when there is nothing to be ignorant about." So please don’t give me that $%*# about sales forecasting and survey research.
... is to avoid such ridiculous... notions about properties existing only when measured—seems to me that such an idea only could make sense unless and when we as physicists are backed into a corner from which we cannot escape due to the press of empirical evidence. The plain fact is simply that until you measure, you don't know.
Is this statement intended to mislead, or are you really ignorant of the many "no-go theorems" that leave no room for any other conclusion than that (to paraphrase a famous dictum by Wheeler, no run-of-the-mill physicist either)
no property or value is possessed unless it is measured (that is, unless there is an actual event or state of affairs from which it can be inferred). The average physicists' naïve and internally inconsistent world view is precisely their defense against this "ridiculous" conclusion—as ridiculous, I presume, as the notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
