My summary and notes of the book “What is Real?” by Adam Becker
Chapter 1 - The Measure of All Things
The Copenhagen interpretation was the reigning leader of quantum physics interpretation. Formulated by Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, and Jordan, they say that there is no quantum world. That quantum particles don’t exist unless measured and that it was meaningless to discuss the nature of reality. The existence of a reality separate from observation was non-existent because of its impossibility to measure. This was reinforced by John von Neumann’s proof, which was proved to be flawed by Grete Hermann and later John Bell.
Chapter 2 - Something Rotten in the Eigenstate of Denmark
Heisenberg introduced matrix mechanics to solve for atomic spectra when electrons jump energy levels. Neils Bohr first discovered this with hydrogen. Bohr describes the model of an atom, with electrons orbiting at certain energy levels, jumping from one to the other, releasing or absorbing light proportional to their energy differenece, as measured in quanta. Einstein confronts Heisenberg about his discovery, asking why he does not consider electron orbits within an atom. Heisenberg attributes his new insight to Machain’s principles that you cannot observe the orbit and it, therefore, cannot be accounted for. He assumed Einstein had used it for relativity. Einstein disagrees, saying that maybe he once thought this way, but not so much anymore. Heisenberg returns to Copenhagen.
Schrodinger develops wave mechanics in a resort in the Swiss Alps with his mistress, describing the probability of finding an electron at any given location, trumping Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics, as it is easier to use as opposed to matrix mechanics. This became the new standard for measuring the positions of electrons probabilistically. Pauli used it to derive the brightness of spectral lines in hydrogen. Different eigenstates correspond to different energy levels with constant energy. However, as Max Born discovered, along with the fact that it predicts probabilities and the wave equation collapses upon observation, confusing physicists of the time.
Heisenberg develops the uncertainty principle in response to Schrodinger wave mechanics. The act of measuring the position of a particle sent it flying off, eliminating your ability to know how fast it was going or where it went upon measuring. This corresponded with Bohr’s complementary theory. Objects in the quantum world could be either waves or particles, but never both simultaneously. His is known as wave-particle duality. This wasn’t an issue, according to Bohr, as these two properties complement each other.
Chapter 3 - Street Brawl
At a conference in Brussels, the Fifth Solvay Conference, Louis de Broglie suggested that particles can have both particle and wave properties, known as the Pilot-Wave Theory. Waves that govern the particles’ motion; particles surfing on waves. At the conference, Einstein introduced a problem with the positivistic, the principle that talking about what happens when not observing is meaningless, the attitude of quantum physics. He says to think of electrons passing through a hole into a phosphorescent hemispherical screen. Quantum Physics will tell you the probability of where they will be located as an average sum, but not a single electron. The single electron, even when passing through one at a time, will still map out the probability wave function. Therefore, Quantum Physics isn’t complete. This, he says, is a problem in locality. The wave function is evenly spread on the film, but when the electron hits the screen, it instantaneously drops to zero everywhere but that location. The electron must have been somewhere before hitting the screen, not everywhere and not nowhere. Bohr thought he was trying to get around the uncertainty principle after he introduced another quantum thought experiment with a quantum clock at the next Solvay conference. Although this was never Einstein’s intent.
Einstein came out with a third thought experiment, one addressed in the Einstein-Pedolsky-Rosen (EPR) paper. Two particles, A and B, collide and fly off in opposite directions, conserving their momentum. This makes their position easy to measure by measurement of just one of the particles. You can measure A’s momentum, then B’s position, and now you know their position and velocity since particles can’t affect each other at distances. But this wasn’t the whole point Einstein wanted to make, Pedolsky wrote it unsatisfactory, he wanted to emphasize locality. He said that particles can’t affect one another from far away. The measurement thought experiment wouldn’t work at the quantum level because they share a wave function upon collision, preventing you from knowing their position or momentum before measurement. So, if you are producing the momentum of the particle by observing it, this would directly cause the action at a distance, which violates locality. Either quantum physics violated locality or was incomplete. This shared wave equation was dubbed by Schrodinger as entanglement.
The war caused many physicists to flee Germany, changing the centrality of Physics to America and other countries. Einstein, Born, von Neumann, Wigner all game to America at the University of Princeton. Von Neumann wrote a textbook while there, with his flawed impossibility proof. However he disagreed with Bohr in the book, Bohr said that large measurement devices are exempt from quantum physics with no wave function. Von Neumann striving for mathematical rigor disagreed, this leads to the Schrodingers cat paradox where the cat has a wave function and is in a state of superposition until observed both dead and alive. His solution was that the observer was the collapser of the wave equation, some interpreted this as consciousness causing the collapse of the wave equation including Wigner. But what classifies consciousness? This conversation came to a halt when Otto Hahn had split the atom in Germany, Bohr and Rosenfeld came to Manhattan upon the news to solve the problem with Physicist John Wheeler about the mysteries of Uranium.
Chapter 4 - Copenhagen in Manhattan
Electric attraction causes electrons to stay in the atom being attracted to the positive charge of protons. But it also repels the like charges as they get closer together. This repelling force is countered by the strong nuclear force that binds protons and neutrons together, neutrons increase the stickiness of the strong force without changing the charge. For small nuclei the strong nuclear force wins out the contrasting forces and gets stronger with the addition of more neutrons and protons. But the strong force only acts over short distances, comparable to the size of the proton itself, as the atom grows to greater than a Fermi length, a trillionth of a millimeter, the repulsion wins making the atom unstable. Uranium is an example of this, it begins to decay. Certain forms take longer to decay, billions of years, such as Uranium-235 and 238 isotopes of Uranium. Hitting a 235 atom of Uranium with a neutron leads to fission- it splits into 2 smaller nuclei , releasing massive amount of energy along with free neutrons. With enough U235 the left over neutrons will collide with more U235 which creates a chain reaction. With 120 pounds of U235 would level a small city. Controlling the reaction by absorbing neutrons could power a city instead. U238 has more stability so it won’t split as easy, this makes up 99.3 percent of Uranium found. Heavy water and graphite can moderate a controlled decay of Uranium. At the end of the war Physics changed, emphasis was put in military research. This caused the Copenhagen interpretation to take precedence as it allowed others to simply calculate and not interpret. This led to solid state physics and the invention of the silicon transistor.
Chapter 5 - Physics In Exile
David Bohm re ignites the pilot-wave theory, stating that objects have definite positions at all times, regardless of an observer. He denounced complementary but Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle still held. In Schrödinger’s cat scenario, the cat is either dead or alive and the observation just reveals which is true. Seems easy, but mathematics still is true. Double slit experiment says that even if you send a single photon through the slit at a time, the wave interference pattern still appears. In a new experiment attach a photon detector to determine which slit it goes through, now they don’t form a pattern acting as a particle. So asking where the particle was before observation was meaningless according to Copenhagen, waves aren’t in any particular spot. Bohm says photons are particles on waves, it’s pilot wave can pass through both slits and interferes with itself. He also says that large objects also follow quantum laws to lesser degrees as opposed to Bohr who said to treat the large only classically. This view was denounced by almost the entire Physics community, forgotten about eventually as Bohm went on to more practical theories in Brazil, after his US deportation, and eventually London, refusing to re enter the US due to refusal to denounce his Marxist ideologies.
Chapter 6 - It Came From Another World!
Albert Einstein gave the last lecture of his life on April, we 1954, in attendance was Hugh Everette who took note of His denunciation of the Copenhagen Interpretation, with Einstein saying, “When a mouse observes, does that change the state of the universe? While studying game theory at Princeton, he also dabbled quantum theory recognizing a hole at the heart of the theory. Von Neumann’s textbook said that the wave function collapse was separate from the schrodinger equation. His advisor John wheeler worked on the problem of marrying relativity and quantum theory to formulate quantum cosmology. Everett tackled the measurement problem by saying there is no wave function collapse, which Bohm also stated. Everett insisted there was just one giant wave equation for the entire universe, the universal wave equation. This obeyed the schrodinger equation at all times, never collapsing but splitting. This branching created multiple universes in which one event had many outcomes, this was dubbed the many world theory. In a system such as the schrodinger cat situation, the wave function of the radioactive material entangles with the entire system causing the whole system, including the cat to be a single wave function with two equal parts. When opening the box, instead of collapse, you become entangled also and split in two. This happens for every observation in the universe and thus the many worlds interpretation. Although we only experience one universe. This view was denounced by he Copenhagen camp and forgotten about.
Chapter 7 - The Most Profound Discovery In Science
John Bell set out to disprove Von Neumann’s Impossibility Proof of there being no hidden variables by saying the theory needed contextuality. This means the outcome of your measurement can depend on what other stuff you measure about the thing at the same time. The theory however is still non-local. He set up an inequality that violates local theory. If violates then nature is non-local. In two triple roulette wheels, balls are sent down a shoot landing on 1 of 3 wheels and on red or black. When the two balls chose the same wheel they always landed on the same color. It is concluded then that they are programmed to do so. When they landed on different wheels they got the same outcome only 25 percent of the time. No matter what instruction set a ball has, the correlation should always be higher, 33 percent. 2 out of 6 scenarios correlate with the same color when landing on different numbered wheels Therefor there can’t be instruction sets or hidden variables, so they must be communicating to each other when they know the wheel they are landing on. This actually happens with entangled photons and three different polarizers. That means some communication is happening faster than the speed of light. This means either abandon locality or accept many worlds by presenting more than one outcome. The third possibility is one of superdeterminism, this says that the two photons hitting the polarizer were destined to do so since the beginning of the universe. There is no randomness in the universe and everything is pre determined. Copenhagen supporters say that Bells theorem doesn’t work because he assumes realism, that the quantum world actually exists. But his assumption is one of locality, he simply states the conclusion of quantum observations and proves how this does not correlate with locality. This shows that quantum physics needs further work done to account for this violation of Einstein’s principles. Physicists went on misinterpreting Bells theorem and had trouble understanding the implications of the theory
Chapter 8 - More Things in Heaven and Earth
During this time, philosophy was undergoing a revolution. The popular view of quantum orthodoxy for the past years has been that of positivism, saying that unless something is capable of being observed, you can’t say anything about that thing. There is only knowledge from experience and empiricism. They dismissed metaphysics and talking of what can not be verified as useless. This went along with the philosophical ideology of the Copenhagen interpretation. They wanted a grand unification of science, with all the sciences based in the same principles. This caught on around the world as a social ideology, reasoning over traditionalist views and emphasis on what we can sense rather than metaphysics and faith. During and after the war many scientists adopted a form of this view, thinking of the meaning of quantum physics as “why bother?” And just used it for practicality. This began to change as the leaders of these movements died and a counter argument was written by philosopher Willard Quine. He says that you can not verify something without some assumed truth. Such as if your TV remote stops working and you change the batteries and it begins working again. You can’t assume that changing the batteries actually fixed it because it could have been the batteries were upside down or any other number of things. This left the verification theory in doubt, he also stated that unverifiable things do have meaning because no particular statement is verifiable by itself. This philosophy was further aided by Thomas Kuhn who stated that observable and unobservable content played a vital role in the practice of science, things called paradigms. An example being the discoveries in Chemistry, their view on what atoms were influenced the experiments they did which led to further discoveries like the periodic table. This change in scientific worldview came to be know as scientific realism. There is a real world out there, separate from our observations. There is no need for separating observable and unobservable. The positivist claim that atoms viewed through a microscope weren’t real because they weren’t directly perceived was viewed as inaccurate. So does that then mean that things viewed through glasses aren’t real? This shows that just because something isn’t observable doesn’t mean it’s not real, because before microscopes or telescopes we weren’t able to view planets or atoms.
Chapter 9 - Reality Underground
Physicists wouldn’t adapt to this new philosophy unless something was changed about quantum physics. The first step of this was done by putting John Bell’s theorem to the test. John Claud set out to do this, at John Bell’s approval. At this same time a theoretical physicist named Dieter Zeh was having similar doubts about the Copenhagen interpretation. He was thinking of a way around the measurement problem by assuming the measuring apparatus followed quantum laws as well. This would lead sub-sequentially to the entire universe becoming entangled and branching at every measurement, with observants in each branch only being able to see one outcome. Similar to Everett’s Many Worlds theory. He developed a sophisticated mathematical account for why different branches couldn’t interact called decoherence. His paper was viewed as nonsense and many publishers didn’t accept it. He contacted Wigner who won a Nobel prize in Physics and had his own speculations in the measurement problem, he advised him to send it to a publisher he was affiliated with. Meanwhile one of his students Shimony, with a PhD in Philosophy and Physics took interest in Bell’s inequality and the measurement problem by trying to figure out how to test it. He thought he was alone until learning of John Clauses similar intentions at an American Physics conference. They teamed up and proposed an experiment similar to the roulette balls but instead used photons and polarizers. Clause performed the test at Berkeley. The data showed quantum physics is right and Bell’s inequality was violated, nature was non local or something strange was happening. At a summer school dubbed the “Woodstock of quantum dissidents”, Zeh, Bell, Wigner, de Broglie, Bohm and Jaunch were all there to address their concerns of the measurement problem.
Despite his groundbreaking experiment, Clauser couldn’t get a permanent academic job because it was viewed as “junk science” which his advisor had written in his recommendation letter. He landed in Berkeley with a group of eccentric Physicists who were inspired by the hippie movement and the mind expanding powers of psychedelics, called the Fundamental Fysiks Group. They discussed the real meaning behind quantum physics. Questioning the foundations of quantum physics was heavily discouraged throughout schools everywhere. Doing so meant hindering your ability to get a job or even earn a PhD as physicist David Albert discovered. An underground journal arose to discus these issues called Epistemological letters. French physicist Alain Aspect took interest in Bell’s paper and specifically the idea that rotating the polarizers after the photons were sent would eliminate the possibility of the photons knowing the orientation prior to release, which would explain the result in purely local terms. He did this experiment with the result being, Bell’s inequality was violated and reality was still non local. The new field of quantum foundations had arrived.
Chapter 10 - Quantum Spring
Reinhold Bertlmann worked at CERN alongside John Bell, unknowing to his theories or who he was. Bertlmann was a standoutish guy at CERN with hair to his shoulders and wearing different color socks every day. John Bell never said anything about his socks until he published a paper Bertlmann’s socks and he nature of reality. Emphasizing if you knew one sock was pink you knew the other wasn’t. He had his moral convictions on the meaning of quantum physics but mostly kept to himself and advised younger students not to pursue the problem unless they had a secure job position. Bertlmann didn’t read Bell’s theorem until his paper about his socks, then he became enamored with the subject.
Many older physicist began to as well, back when Clauser was working on his experiment his father a professor at cal tech set him up an appointment with Richard Feynman. Feynman was hostile and uninterested and told him to come back when he found something wrong with quantum mechanics. But when Alain Aspect came to speak at Caltech in 1984 he changed his tone saying it was excellent. People became interested books on quantum physics being released and a series of articles by David Mermin became the standard way of teaching Bell’s theorem, which Feynman was a fan. Feynman explained Bell’s theorem inadvertently during his keynote address at a Caltech conference in 1981 saying it held a crucial question in the field. “Can physics be simulated by a universal computer?” “The physical world is quantum mechanical, and therefore the proper problem is the simulation of quantum physics— which is what I really want to talk about” no was the answer currently but he speculated, “can you do it with a new kind of computer—a quantum computer?”
A physicist David Deutsch picked up this question proving that a quantum computer could work more efficiently than a classical computer. Finding an algorithm for a computer not in existence that would outperform all other computers was a tall order. Peter shot filled this order in 1994 when he devised a quantum algorithm that could rapidly factor extremely large numbers. This was the basis of practical cryptography, the difficulty of factoring numbers that classical computers had, especially for secure communications of the emerging internet. Shor demonstrates that any kind of secure financial transaction over a computer network would be impossible with quantum computers. But quantum information theory yielded a solution: quantum cryptography.
Based on the no cloning theorem, Charles Bennett and Giles brassard devised a solution based on work by the Fundamental Fysiks Group. Another solution by Artur Ekert based on Bell’s theorem was also devised, they both made eavesdropping impossible by the laws of physics. Now interest from the government and military came and the philosophical interest of Bell’s theorem and entanglement changes to practical purposes. The race to build a quantum computer is on. By 2016 multiple US government agencies were funding quantum information technologies, google and Microsoft are doing research into this technology. It is now a billion dollar industry. Grants were for practical purposes only though, to build a quantum computer not for the foundations of quantum physics.
The computer generation was changing physics just as physics was changing computers. Using simulations, three physicists, Chris Dewdney, Chris Philippidis, and Basil Hiley showed David Bohms pilot wave trajectories, reviving the old theory. Many others tried to merge Bohms theory with relativistic quantum field theory, Bohm died before seeing much of the successful work for his theory that was thrown aside in the 50’s.
Zeh also regained recognition for his thrown aside theory, by John Wheeler. At the University of Texas, his student Wojciech Zurek wrote a paper on decoherence similar to Zehs work only he left the interpretation part out which led to a wider reception. He went on to be successful at Caltech and wrote many papers on decoherence. Zurek wrote an article in Physics today which was controversial as he implied denunciation of the Copenhagen interpretation by saying it eliminated superposition, without an explanation for questions like why don’t we see dead and alive cats in every day experience made him retract. He tried to mix Copenhagen and many worlds, this led to misinterpretations that the measurement problem was solved. In 2001 Philip Anderson stated that decoherence describes the process of wave function collapse with experimental proof. But this was not supposed to replace the Copenhagen interpretation.
A new class of interpretations and revitalization of old ones took place in the 80s and 90s with many being based on information theory, using computer science. Wheeler saying, “it from bit”. Saying that the wave function is just information rather than physical makes interpretation easier, when you measure something your information changes. Except this isn’t like Bertlmanns socks, photons don’t behave this way. John Bell particularly didn’t like this idea, it led to Solipism, saying you are the only real person and everyone else are hallucinations. Physicists began to interpret information theory as the new Copenhagen interpretation thinking this is what Bohr meant all along.
Bell took up a new emerging theory Spontaneous Collapse theory, which modified the mathematics of quantum physics to satisfy the measurement problem. It says the wave function is real but collapse is entirely random, like the wave function hitting the jackpot once every 10 million billion billion pulls of a slot machine being pulled a million times a second. Then why don’t macroscopic objects collapse? Because they are comprised of many subatomic particles and they all share a wave function so when one particle collapses the whole system collapses meaning the macroscopic object can’t be in more than one spot for more than a microsecond. While one particle might not collapse for a billion years, many particles on average one will collapse more frequent. Bell died soon after of a massive stroke in 1990 never completing his quest to find a definitive solution to the mysteries of quantum physics. He was remembered as one of the greatest physicists in the past century, deserving of a Nobel Prize. His final lecture he says that he believes the mystery lies in the spontaneous collapse theory or the pilot wave, but also entertaining the many worlds interpretation. The many worlds interpretation grew in notoriety after his death but not because of quantum physics, but because of the study of something much bigger, the entire universe.
Chapter 11 - Copenhagen Versus the Universe
Many worlds theory, according to Byrge Dewitt who published articles on the theory in Physics Today, is the only conception that within the framework of quantum theory to play a role in the foundation of cosmology. At the time, the idea that the universe as a whole could be used for scientific investigation was questionable for many physicists. They thought Einstein’s reworking of Newtonian gravity by warped space time for massive objects like stars was useless. In 1962 Physicist Kip Thorne was planning to go to Princeton to study cosmology under John Wheeler despite the discretion of his advisor. Relativity is mathematically very complex, more so than quantum mechanics, Einstein himself recruited the help of a mathematician friend Marcel Grossman to learn the differential geometry necessary. He had a hard time accepting the implication of his theory that the universe was expanding, which he explained using a cosmological constant. Hubble and others thought the universe was expanding but only appeared that way and was actually static. Others agreed it was expanding but proposed modifications to the laws of physics that would ensure the universe looked the same at all times in the past and future, this was called steady state theory.
In 1938, using an early form of a computer, Robert Oppenheimer and student George Volkoff at Berkeley, calculated that supermassive stars must end their lives by collapsing down to a fabulously dense object that nothing can escape, this generated intense debate. Einsteins theory predicted what was called gravitational waves but he himself didn’t believe this implication. He thought it was mathematical fiction and not physically real. He eventually came to change his mind from talks with Howard Robertson.
Gravitational waves were detected in 2015 by LIGO and Kip Thorne won a Nobel prize for it in 2017. In the 60s, new mathematical formalism showed the as John Wheeler called them “black holes” must be real. In 64 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected the hiss of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation giving credence to the Big Bang theory. A need for a mixture of quantum mechanics and relativity was needed to describe time early universe. Meanwhile Dewitt was promoting Everett’s many world theory. John Wheeler was credited with his theory as well but his support for the Copenhagen interpretation made him separate himself from Everette. He was offered to speak in Texas and had an impact on David Deutsch who claimed in his paper on quantum computing that many worlds is the only way to explain the fabulous increase in speed. Stating that it’s delegated subtasks were sent to its other universe copies. That was the only explanation of how it computed so quickly. There is other ways however. Many worlds also caught on in cosmology, with physicists claiming observation couldn’t be a fundamental aspect of a theory about the universe because there was nobody to observe then claimed Murray Gell-Mann, who won a Nobel Prize for suggesting the existence of quarks and James Hartle, who worked with Stephen Hawking in quantum cosmology. They combined Everett’s interpretation with Zurek and Zehs decoherence to develop decoherence-histories interpretation.
Everette died in 1982, a decade before cosmology entered a golden age. With advances such as Hubble space telescope and the cosmic microwave background explorer gave experimental data to cosmologists. High speed computing allowed simulations of the entire universe. In 1996 the age of the universe was estimated between 10-20 billion years old but in 2006 it was precisely measured to be 13.8 billion years old give or take a percent. The WMAP measured the differences in intensity of the CMB.
This lent support to the theory of the early universe called inflation that says the early universe expanded extraordinarily quickly for a mini exile fraction of a second then slowed down. This was driven by hypothetical inflations, high energy subatomic particles that decayed into normal matter at the end of inflation. The theory dictated that tiny quantum fluctuations in the density of inflations were blown up by the inflation process and then led to the tiny fluctuations in the density of normal matter in the small hot universe immediately after inflation. This led to fluctuations in the CMB and seeded formation of all structure in the universe today. WMAPs data suggested that galaxies were quantum mechanics writ large across the sky.
A theory of everything, quantum gravity, has yet to be discovered. The most promising theory is string theory and was the best hope in early 2000s. According to inflation the universe is unable to escape eternal inflation, as it ends in one part of universe it continues in others and bubbles of non-inflating universe appear in inflating regions. Each bubble is its own universe, cut off from the rest. String theory describes instead a string landscape, a huge number of possible universes.
Consider Schrödinger’s cat, if we look earlier than the probability of it being alive or dead is more like 75% alive and 25% dead, so in many worlds scenario is the dead version less real than the alive one? Probability doesn’t fit into a deterministic universe obeying Schrodingers wave function and the many world interpretations. There is an infinity of universes that you are reading this book and an infinity that you aren’t. Probability isn’t assigned to an outcome but rather where you are in the universe. This is one of the pressing issues in cosmology, no solution is widely accepted. Some use Everett’s other mathematical formalism game theory.
Those that denounce many worlds complain of Occam’s razor and falsifiability. But simplicity is subjective others claim. But Poppers falsifiability isn’t taken seriously by philosophers of science any more. Science is evolving, new theories replace old ones, observations arise out of new technologies. You can’t claim a theory unscientific out of falsifiability or verification, just as early astronomers struggles with the phantom planet Vulcan until Einstein explained it. Despite all of this, Copenhagen interpretation is still taught in every textbook of quantum physics. David Albert is still a professor of philosophy at Columbia University and works in the field of quantum foundations. He says the 20th century was the most popular century for physics and the most bizarre. He find it psychotic that many physicists still ignore the logical problem at the center of it all.
Chapter 12 - Outrageous Fortune
A physicist named Anton Zeilander has managed to send single photons and reflect them back to be recorded at distances over 100 kilometers. Yet he has no qualms with the Copenhagen interpretation, he says there exists no boundary between quantum and classical. That quantum physics is only math and classical objects are all that exists objectively. He has proven this by showing a carbon ball is able to interfere with itself just like subatomic particles. He believes there is no measurement problem, measurements live in the classical world and quantum mechanics only predicts your measurements. But then if quantum mechanics apply to everything, what is classical and what is not? He does not even know what that question means he says.
Many Physicists today share similar positions. Some don’t though, claiming by day they solve schrodinger equations but at night question the nature of reality. Many opinions are that of a positivist note, stating unobservable theories are scientifically meaningless as Freeman Dyson put it. Contrastingly, philosophers of physics almost all disagree with the Copenhagen interpretation.
Physicists like Stephen Hawking, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Lawrence Krause have all said philosophy is no longer a viable field. But how can they speak on something they have no formal training in? Many schools don’t teach philosophy as a part of core curriculum any more like they used to. Einstein knew that after the war in 1940s this would change. The misconception of philosophy comes from the analytic and continental philosophy divide. Many continental philosophers do not like science.
Textbooks today describe the measurement as any time a large object encounters a small one. They are taught that quantum and classical are two separate worlds. By using the idea of shutting up and calculating many scientific advancements have came along with it; medical imaging, the internet, nuclear power, leaving little time to concern over the problems even Einstein himself couldn’t solve.
Science is riddled in biases and political ideologies, it is not as clean and dedicated to truth as one might hope. For the general public it is hard to distinguish controversies like that in quantum physics to that of evolution, global warming or homeothapy. Those that are pushing the questioning of these theories are doing so motivated by their own agenda. They aren’t interested in talking science seriously, in setting aside their biases to take evidence and data as the true source. People perceive science as having a political agenda and push back on claims of evolution and global warming.
The quantum theories has seen its own share of misinterpretations and feeding of pseudo science. There is a lot of quantum medicine scams that claims reshaping you thoughts can heal you. This is a result of the Copenhagen interpretation putting the self as the center of the universe, having the powers of observation. This is a problem as it allows a comfortable and familiar view of the universe rather than a deeper humbling and true view of it. The view of the positivist that we can’t experimentally prove the difference between theories shouldn’t be as widely accepted. But interpretations matter in finding new theories and how we shape our view of the universe. Without the view that the Earth isn’t the center of the universe Darwin wouldn’t have dared to suggest that we came from apes, and Kubrick wouldn’t have made 2001. It affects our culture. A new formulation of quantum physics will affect the daily lives of everyone, not just physicists.
Many theories are being developed to try to solve this, and many that were discussed in the book are still around. Roger Penrose believes wave function collapse is real and that the Schrodinger equation must be modified. He believes though rather than like the spontaneous collapse theory, that collapse is caused by gravity. So which interpretation is right? Physicists should learn them all and keep them in mind while working, hold on to them loosely. Learning the past can give hints of the way forward.
Albert Einstein
So many people today — and even professional scientists — seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is — in my opinion — the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker of truth.