Anything approaching a fully satisfactory explanation of the phenomena of knowledge requires the co-operative efforts of all those who believe that there is a world of real existence independent of human minds and that this real existence can be truly known as it really is. |
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| — Francis Parker, “Realistic Epistemology” | |
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| June 26, 2018 I have been trying to learn a little bit about quantum mechanics. It is a difficult subject for anyone who — like myself — lacks the necessary arithmetical training and training in physics. But there are those scientists who attempt to translate the equations and experiments into English and so inform the lay audience.
They seem to forget that the object was to reduce the level of confusion and ignorance experienced by non-scientists, not to sneer at it. Jonathan P. Dowling is the worst offender in this regard that I have encountered. In his book Schrödinger’s Killer App: The Race to Build the World’s First Quantum Computer (New York: CRC Press, 2013) he seems to think it endearing to make fun of Einstein, so we lesser mortals can hardly hope to be treated any better. The book is dreadfully overpriced ($136 in hardcover, $34.39 in paperback, on amazon.com). I will say that the first chapter is probably worth reading (I, at least, intend to re-read it) just to get a few concepts under my belt. Two books that refrain from the sneer and treat the subject, the past, and the reader with respect are Louisa Gilder, The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), and Adam Becker, What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics (New York: Basic Books, 2018). The latter book has for its epigraph a quotation from Ursula Le Guin: “The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling.” I will be returning to that idea a little later. But it does remind me of an incident from my college days. To satisfy the science requirements for my bachelor’s degree, I took a course called “Physics for the non-physics major.” I was a philosophy major, and that seemed to be just the thing for me. Along about the second or third lecture, the professor wrote an equation on the board containing the mysterious element h. I raised my hand and when called on, I asked, “What is h?” He replied, “That's Planck’s constant.” It will not surprise you to learn that I was no more informed than I had been before I came to class. “But what is Planck’s constant?” I asked. “Oh!” he said. “It’s ...” and he wrote: “That’s not what I mean,” I continued. “If I ask you what is c in the equation E=mc2, you would tell me it’s the speed of light. So what is Planck’s constant?” I am not kidding when I tell you that he looked at me, paused, and then said, “I don’t understand what you are asking me.” This was my first inkling that scientists are unable to translate what they know into English. I did not realize it at the time, but it was also my introduction to Henry Veatch’s claim that material logic is “a logic that can’t say what anything is.” It was also my introduction to the idea that science and philosophy are different disciplines, and that a person accomplished in the former may be a dunce in the latter. There is really nothing wrong with that kind of specialization. Nothing, that is, until the specialist thinks he is a generalist. Today’s insult will come from a pair of popularizers of science. A little later this week I shall be a little more ambitious and discuss one from Werner Heisenberg. The popularizers are Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. Their book is The Quantum Universe (And Why Anything That Can Happen Does) (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2011). Their subtitle is a warning that they seem to think that introducing a bit of whimsy into their book will not hurt it. Some writers on quantum mechanics seem to believe that it is important to disparage Sir Isaac Newton before they are comfortable with what they have to say. Cox and Forshaw are two such writers. The fact that physics and astronomy have learned more about the universe than Newton could have divined apparently, to borrow a phrase from Henry Veatch, affords them the sort of amusement that only lesser lights can enjoy at the expense of the foibles and mistakes of their betters. First, they tell us about Newton’s three laws of motion:
“Newton’s three laws,” they write, “ provide a framework for describing the motion of things under the influence of a force. The first law describes what happens to an object when no forces act: the object either sits still or moves in a straight line at a constant speed. We shall be looking for an equivalent statement for quantum particles later on, and it’s not giving the game away too much to say that quantum particles do not just sit still — they leap around all over the place even when no forces are present. In fact, the very notion of ‘force’ is absent in the quantum theory, so Newton’s second law is bound for the wastepaper basket too. We do mean that, by the way — Newton’s laws are heading for the bin because they have been exposed as only approximately correct. They work well in many instances but fail totally when it comes to describing quantum phenomena. The laws of quantum theory replace Newton’s laws and furnish a more accurate description, and it is important to realize that the situation is not ‘Newton for big things and quantum for small’; it is quantum all the way.” I do not for a minute think that Cox and Forshaw do not know their physics. But what I do think is that they are such careless thinkers in terms of simple English that they have just said something (more than one something) that simply is insulting — insulting in the sense that they seem to think that the reader is not paying any attention to what they are saying and they can say any ramshackle thing they want. What they have done is drop context repeatedly. They know very well that Newton’s laws are discovered and formulated in a context in which are things we normally think of as solid. They know also that quantum particles are not such things. Why, then, should we expect Newton’s laws to apply to them? Moreover, we live in a world where we are familiar on a daily basis with the notion of force — even if most of us are unable to give a precise definition of it. And they know this. Then they tell us that the notion of “force” is “absent in quantum theory.” In that case, it is logically absurd to say that that causes Newton’s laws to be waste material. You would not expect a set of laws that depend on the concept of “force” to apply in a context in which there is no such thing as force. Moreover, if it really is quantum theory “all the way,” what are they saying about force? That it does not exist? That it is a phantom, like phlogiston? Let me reiterate: I do not say that they are wrong. What I am saying is that they have failed to express their subject (quantum physics) using English words and concepts that make sense. But that is the point of their book. Perhaps I am thin-skinned, but when I ask someone to explain something to me, and he offers me an explanation that does not make sense, and — and here we get to where I am thin-skinned — he pretends that he has explained that thing to me ... then I take it amiss. It is an insult to the intelligence, indeed to the intellect of those one was thought to be addressing. I have a suspicion for why this happens, and not just in Cox and Forshaw’s book. It is this: we live in a world that so disparages the intellect outside the rarefied contexts of science and mathematics that most people do not expect things to make sense. The basic metaphysics that most people carry around with them — scientists included — is so muddled that people do not know when they are making sense and when they are not, and their philosophy, which in many cases they cannot even articulate, but which only makes itself felt in such cases as this one, is so muddled, that they are sometimes incapable of saying just what they mean. When it comes to relativity and quantum mechanics most scientists seem to be no more able to express what they know from the equations than the high-schooler who summarizes The Magic Mountain as “A bunch of sick guys sit around talking.” There are those who contend that the mathematics of quantum physics cannot be expressed in normal terms. The people who believe this should not become popularizers. When they are not talking to other physicists in equationese, they should simply | |
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There is an unexpected difficulty here: a good many of the so-called popularizers of science seem to enjoy being a little smark-alecky in their presentations. They take a smug and superior stance and smirk at their unseen audience for not being their intellectual equals. (One sees this pretty quickly in the video presentations of Brian Greene, for example.) They seem to like saying things they can be pretty sure will befuddle their audience, and then they refrain from addressing the befuddlement they have just created.
