The Daily Insult

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.

— Francis Parker, “Realistic Epistemology”

In this section, I shall post brief discussions of errors in logic in commercials, news items, fiction — errors that just vex me. I just need a place to get this stuff out of my system. [Note: “Daily” in this context should not lead the reader to expect that I will be posting something every day.]

July 6, 2018

Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw continue to vex me with their book The Quantum Universe (And Why Anything That Can Happen Does) (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2011). There is a good chance that there will be additional vexations related to this book, and writing about them may therefore turn out to be, as it were, a series.

Early in their book (page 19), they write, “Can we really be sure that things are definitely here or there, and they are not actually in two different places at the same time? Of course, your garden shed is not in any noticeable sense sitting in two distinctly different places at once — but how about an electron in an atom? Could that be both ‘here’ and ‘there’? Right now that kind of suggestion sounds crazy, mainly because we can’t picture it in our mind’s eye....”

Later (on page 28) they tell us that “we should follow Heisenberg and learn to feel comfortable with views of the world that run counter to tangible experience.”

This is a good example of what I mean when I write of popularizers who seem to like to pretend that they have explained things when they have not, and write with an undertone of sneering.

I will begin by reiterating what I have already said: I am not challenging the math or the physics of quantum mechanics. And I am not claiming that writers such as Cox and Forshaw do not know their physics. My complaint is that their project seems to be to explain things, and explaining things is exactly what they do not do, and they do not seem to take seriously the confusion they create. Indeed, they seem to think it is cute.

In this case, note that they say that their suggestion sounds crazy because “we can’t picture it.” That is exactly false. Their suggestion sounds crazy because they have not bothered to tell us what they mean by it. And I am going to dare to suggest that they have not told us what they mean by it because they cannot. They do not know how to translate the math into ordinary English, and so they are satisfied with saying things that they know will perplex their readers.

One of the problems in saying that an electron is in two places at once is the phrase “in an atom.” Is it in the atom and in some other place? What other place is it in, in addition to the atom? What is there about an atom that will not permit the electron to be in another place at the same time? Another problem is the phrase “at once.” If I have understood the popularizers of relativity theory, there is no such thing as simultaneity. We can discuss that at another time. For now, I want to know whether Cox and Forshaw are denying the claims of relativity or not. Are they saying that there is such a thing as simultaneity on the subatomic level after all?

I do not expect anyone to be able to say exactly what he means about anything in any given setting. But when he says something that he knows will not make sense, he owes us the courtesy of trying to say more about it. (The physicist David Bohm seems to have had a sense of that debt and his students are said to have profited immensely from his attempt to pay it.)

Let me offer some examples.

If someone says the name “Wyatt Earp” to you and to me, we both have more or less the same idea. There are probably differences in details, but let’s leave that alone for now. What I want to focus on is that the same idea (more or less the same idea) now exists in my mind and in yours. To say now that it exists in more than one place does not confuse us.

When we think about it, we understand that we are using words like “place” and even “in” in ways that are a bit metaphorical. But that is okay, and not just because we understand that we are being metaphorical. It is okay because we also understand that thoughts or ideas are not the sorts of things that are really in a place at all. The are immaterial. They are not extended. And immaterial, non-extended things do not need to be in an extended place. Our minds are also immaterial, and so not extended. We get used to this sort of talk both by recognizing the ways in which there are similarities to the literal things and the ways in which there are differences.

Now ... are Cox and Forshaw saying that electrons are immaterial? It does not appear so because they are prepared to discuss experiments that tell us that an electron moves (immaterial things do not move — they are not in space) and that it can hit a screen in an experiment. Can immaterial things hit screens? Do immaterial things suddenly become material?

Somehow, I don’t think that this is what they have in mind. So what do they have in mind?

Let us consider a completely different case, the case of St. Pio of Pietrelcina, better known as Padre Pio. He is best known for bearing the Stigmata, but he is also reported — while he was still alive — to have, on occasion, bilocated. That is, he was in two different places at once.

In the case of St. Pio, we know what being in two places at once would mean. It means that if we had cameras in two separate rooms, we would see the saint in both rooms simultaneously, where “simultaneously” is to be understood in the ordinary sense without concerns about the theory of relativity.

The case of St. Pio does not create difficulties for the question of what we mean when we say he bilocated. The difficulties come into existence when we ask how it was possible. And here we are only a little bit assisted by the recognition that the event came about as the result of some supernatural event, quality, or intervention.

Are Cox and Forshaw prepared to suggest that there is a supernatural intervention in the “bilocation” of the electron? Again, I don’t think so.

Finally, let me take a famous paradox: the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. We are told that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all God, and yet that there are not three gods, but one God. We are told that there are three persons in this one God, that they are One, and yet the Father is not the Son, and neither the Father nor the Son is the Holy Spirit.

I am not asking my readers to accept these assertions. I am merely presenting them as a counterexample to what Cox and Forshaw do. The ancient Christian writers knew that when they said things like “the Father is fully God and the Son is fully God and the Holy Spirit is fully God, and yet there are not three gods,” they were saying something that, in the words of Cox and Forshaw, “sounds crazy.” And then they were at pains to write about it extensively to try to help pagans and atheists get some idea of what they meant.

They did not merely sneer at catechumens and tell them just to put all their intuitions aside and believe them. No, there are volumes and volumes written on this subject in an effort to make it clear, all the while admitting that there is much more to the matter than they can articulate.

Cox and Forshaw urge us to “learn to feel comfortable” with their views, without giving us any assistance whatever. Do they say that “by ‘here’ and ‘there’ we do not mean exactly the same thing we mean when we use those words about garden sheds”? They do not. Do those words mean exactly the same thing when talking about electrons and garden sheds? I do not know, but I don’t think so.

For one thing, they tell us about an experiment that involves shooting an electron at a screen that has two slits in it. The electron goes through the slits and hits a second screen behind the one with the slits. If the experiment is repeated many times, we see that the electron does not hit the second screen in the same place every time and in fact it hits the second screen in a predictable pattern. But here: each electron hits the second screen in only one place. Not two places at the same time? Sometimes the electron does not go through the slits. It does not both go through and not go through. And yet, those are the kinds of results one would expect if the phrase “in two places at the same time” means something.

In other words, I am not insisting that particles must behave in ways that satisfy our intuitions. What I am insisting on is that the terms we use to describe what the particles do must to some extent satisfy our intuitions of the what those terms mean. Merely repeating them in countless ways in different words will not satisfy; it explains nothing, clarifies nothing. If the terms mean something a little different from what they mean when we are talking about garden sheds, can the popularizers tell us something about that difference?

Physicists and mathematicians, in developing their equations, would not tolerate the existence of a single — even the tiniest — contradiction in developing their equations. Why, then, should we tolerate that the equations mean things that seem to be contradictory? Popularizers should have respect for our intellects and either express themselves without sneering paradoxes or else confess that they are unable to tell us in nontechnical English what the equations mean or predict.

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