I wish someone could explain how the physics of subatomic particles can tell me that reality doesn't exist? Maybe this really is the Matrix! The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle has been used by radical constructivists as evidence that reality is all in our own minds. If that is true then what is the point of studying anything? If there is no ecosystem then why study it? If there is no Earth then why try to save it? If there is no fat, then why not just eat chocolate? Sounds like a deal to me (the chocolate thing that is). Now there is a new study that is supposedly backing up this idea. http://www.world-science.net/othernews/070425-reality.htm. I am a relatively bright person but I still don't get this whole idea. Just because something is unstudiable does that mean it doesn't exist? Sounds like a bit of scientific arrogance if you ask me. According to John Wheeler, "No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon". Basically, as I read it, since particle movement and velocity are random and, since position, spin or speed can be observed at a moment but cannot be predicted before or after that moment, if you aren't looking, reality doesn't exist. Little children think that, when they play peek-a-boo the person disappears (or child psychologists and learning theorists think they think this). These theories are like that. If no one is observing then it isn't real. Again, that seems really arrogant.
I can buy the randomness - Einstein apparently had problems with that. Perhaps it is the randomness that keeps it all together. Too much order might result in events of harmonics that would break the universe apart like the Tacoma Narrows bridge or other bridges that suffer due to resonance: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bridge/meetsusp.html#clips.
This is just science according to Carolyn, of course. I am not an atomic physicist but I wonder how they justify studying anything if it isn't there at all?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Some very thought provoking questions here in your writing and within the article “Is reality a misunderstanding?”. Thank you for providing these questions/insights. It got my brain thinking over early morning coffee this morning. One section of the article provided that stood out for me was:
“Physicists determined that the randomness (of subatomic particles) wasn’t just an appearance due to our ignorance of the details of the motion, but an inescapable property of the particles themselves.
Rather persuasive evidence for this lay in math. Particles, for reasons no one quite knows, sometimes act like waves. When they come together, they create the same types of complex patterns that appear when water ripples from different directions overlap.”
Is this to say that the exact location of subatomic particles next point is near impossible to predict due to its randomness, but the overall pattern after time does in fact resemble a kind of pattern, dare I say fractal, like overlapping water ripples?
Just trying to digest the paradox implicit within the two above quoted paragraphs.
Some very thought provoking questions here in your writing and within the article “Is reality a misunderstanding?”. Thank you for providing these questions/insights. It got my brain thinking over early morning coffee this morning. One section of the article provided that stood out for me was:
“Physicists determined that the randomness (of subatomic particles) wasn’t just an appearance due to our ignorance of the details of the motion, but an inescapable property of the particles themselves.
Rather persuasive evidence for this lay in math. Particles, for reasons no one quite knows, sometimes act like waves. When they come together, they create the same types of complex patterns that appear when water ripples from different directions overlap.”
Is this to say that the exact location of subatomic particles next point is near impossible to predict due to its randomness, but the overall pattern after time does in fact resemble a kind of pattern, dare I say fractal, like overlapping water ripples?
Just trying to digest the paradox implicit within the two above quoted paragraphs.
I wonder the same thing. Studying chaos theory, I find that so many "random" things are not, in actuality, random. Maybe nothing is random but we just don't have the theoretical knowledge or skills to operationally define the pattern.
I read a hypothesis once (I wish I remember where I read it) that suggested that subatomic particles may "communicate" with each other. That would certainly create a random-appearing pattern.
Post a Comment