Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-sh8wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T17:17:48.986Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Epilogue: Beneath reality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

John Marburger
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Stony Brook
Get access

Summary

The odd concepts of quantum physics are nearly a century old. They may seem difficult and forbidding at first sight, but the barrier to understanding is not their difficulty but their differentness. Unlike classical models, quantum theory does not attempt to simulate Nature. It gives us information about observations of Nature. But it does contain a “theoretical entity” that claims to contain all information, observation notwithstanding, namely the quantum state vector in Hilbert space. Scientists routinely use the language of Hilbert space, and nonscientists do not use it at all, which is understandable but unfortunate. A sort of baby-talk has become the lingua franca for much of the popular journalism of quantum physics, an awkward patois that combines some of the early groping language of Bohr, de Broglie, Schrödinger, and Heisenberg with more modern words about symmetries and states. Earnest amateurs still ask me about the mystery of Bohr orbits. There is no mystery because there are no orbits, except as historical curiosities. Same for “wave–particle duality.” Same for “quantum jumps.” A friend once asked me to address a philosophy seminar about the “paradoxes of quantum mechanics.” He said he had approached C. N. Yang first, who replied “What paradoxes?” There are some mathematical and logical rough spots in our current best theory of matter, and perhaps some of them can be framed as paradoxes. But the theory is actually rather straightforward, and it has a perfectly clear interpretation linked to experiments that, in their simplest form, anyone can perform (and students do routinely in college laboratories). No empirical observations are known that are inconsistent with the quantum framework.

Type
Chapter
Information
Constructing Reality
Quantum Theory and Particle Physics
, pp. 262 - 265
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Epilogue: Beneath reality
  • John Marburger, State University of New York, Stony Brook
  • Book: Constructing Reality
  • Online publication: 05 August 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511792441.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Epilogue: Beneath reality
  • John Marburger, State University of New York, Stony Brook
  • Book: Constructing Reality
  • Online publication: 05 August 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511792441.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Epilogue: Beneath reality
  • John Marburger, State University of New York, Stony Brook
  • Book: Constructing Reality
  • Online publication: 05 August 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511792441.009
Available formats
×