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: : Dear all, : : Are there any physicists out there who understand quantum theory well enough to tell me what it makes of human consciousness, of the aesthetics of art or math (why do scientific theories or a good equation, like 1 + 1 = 2, have an inherent beauty, a rightness of form)? How are these features of our universe explained at the quantum level? I am a literature student trying to figure out how Beckett's reading of geometry and physics influenced his idea of what constituted art. : : I look forward to hearing from you, either here or direct to my e-mail address. : : Mick Hall. : I am at a disadvantage not having read Beckett in this area but your posting touched on a hobby horse of mine and I can't resist putting my thoughts in print. I promise to try to answer your query directly but I need to back up into a general introduction first. Please bear with me. : Historically QM was developed to predict events on the atomic scale although it has been shown to predict behaviour on the human scale of things that is also startling and counter intuitive. Its development was prompted by observations of light, thought to be a wave, behaving as a group of particles, and particles such as electrons behaving as waves. : QM makes the right predictions but the truth is that no one actually understands how. It deals with probabilities rather than any deterministic cause for the behaviour of light, atoms and sub atomic particles. It is more a mathematical description rather than an intuitively physical explanation. : For example, if you arrange atoms in a regular pattern, as in a crystal, QM says you'll create the conditions in which it is more probable to find electrons confined to a specific range of velocities. This happens but QM does not describe any underlying mechanism by which the atoms interact with the electrons, as particles, to bring this about. It simply says you will observe this because it is an overwhelmingly probable outcome. : The early fathers of QM theory were so anxious about the lack of a deterministic mechanism (direct cause and effect explanation) that it provoked Einstein's famous quote "God does not play with dice" To which the physicist Niels Bohr is said to have replied " Albert, stop telling God what to do!" An interpretation of QM theory was needed and duly provided by what is now known as the Copenhagen Interpretation (CI). : Put somewhat roughly, the CI states that a particle is represented by a wave whose amplitude (crest height) varies in space according to the probability of the particle being present at any point. But once a measurement is made it exhibits the discrete, bullet behaviour we associate with the notion of a particle as we move from probability to certainty. We now know where the particle is and the probability wave is then said to "collapse" to a single value at the point in space where the measurement was taken. For example, a click in a Geiger counter caused by a radioactive particle or a scintillation flash on a TV screen when an electron strike the phosphor, are both measurement events. : This interpretation makes us believe that reality is really all particles and that the waves are just a mathematical device to predict where they are likely to be but now comes the intriguing bit that leads (at last!) to the territory I think you are interested in. : In some experiments the waves seem to have a reality of their own, altering the behaviour of the particles they represent, over a considerable distance, without any means of physical interaction between these particles and the change in the experimental apparatus that altered their probability waves. Not only that, these spooky, "non local" effects between apparatus change and particle behaviour are theoretically instantaneous. In Einstein's universe nothing is supposed to travel faster than the speed of light and quite understandably he thought he had found a fatal flaw in QM theory. But he hadn't. These crazy counterintuitive phenomena have now been well demonstrated. : Which leaves the very awkward question of an interpretation of QM still hanging. : Some take the view that QM theory simply represents changes in the state of knowledge the observer has, or can ever potentially have, about the system under investigation. Many believe that theoretical advances in QM will come about through research into information theory. In fact there is some fascinating work based on a concept called Fisher Information about which I know nothing except what I read in a New Scientist article. This provides a measure of the total information that can exist in a physical system and the maximum that can ever be obtained by experiment. It transpires that the major physical laws of nature, including Newton's Law of Motion and Schroedinger's QM Wave Equation can be derived from a mathematical treatment that minimises the unobtainable Fisher Information. This is said to explain why these laws have a similar mathematical formulation. : But cutting back to the chase, some have dared to go further and suggest that QM is a description of how human consciousness actually creates reality. Just exactly when does measurement occur? When the particle hits the detector or when the observer observes this to be the case? The act of observation is the act of creation, it is claimed. Perception is reality. : At this point I should say there is an alternative interpretation, called the "Transactional" interpretation of QM, based upon R.P Feynmann's work, which is claimed to be preferable to physicists wishing for an "objective" approach that does not require a role for the observer. The truth is that the one thing physicists really cannot stand are philosophers nosing their way in. Especially when there is also a whiff of mysticism about their arguments. Here, as a substitute for the observer we are offered another wave associated with the particle, a twin counterpart of the wave I've previously described but running backwards in time to meet its twin at the moment of measurement. It is mathematically allowable in QM theory and apparently the theory holds together quite elegantly as a mathematical construct but I cannot come to grips with the idea of anything arriving before it has set out. The interpretation is as unintuitive as the QM phenomena it seeks to explain but perhaps that might be entirely appropriate. : Personally I cannot see how the observer can ever be left out of any theory. Our reality is a construct. The extent to which we regularly observe mathematical patterns in natural phenomena should remind us that the reality we experience is created behind our eyes, in our minds. It is not sensed directly. There is no such thing as "raw" data. The sensory data is already prefiltered by the modes of operation permitted by our neural pathways. Firstly our eye's retina filters light for its spatial and spectral content, our ears structure incoming sound according to its harmonics. Subsequently, a synthesis of this sensory data occurs within the brain itself based on modes of pattern matching. I believe we experience these modes, in the abstract, as the vast array of mathematical forms and reasoning permitted by the particular construction of the human brain. In my view, mathematics is ultimately an exploration of one aspect of the working our mind and theoretical physics is the discovery of how, in explicit terms, this aspect structures our physical reality. : I believe this also explains the similar role that the feeling for beauty plays in the search for ideal musical and mathematical forms. I have heard that people who are good at one are usually good at the other. : The fact of the matter is, we only know reality as it stands in relation to ourselves. Reality, as we can ever experience it, is not what is "out there" but is an interaction between the latter and ourselves. The counter intuitive aspects of quantum mechanical behaviour only come as a surprise if we remain unaware of this. : And as for the "real", that is to say the "objective" reality, if there is any reality that exists independently of an observer then clearly, by definition, neither we nor any other observer can know it directly. : I always liked the quote of JBS Haldane: : "The world is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose." : But I still don't think he went quite far enough. : Best Regards, : Gerry Smith

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