From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Wed Sep 04 2002 - 17:41:26 MDT
Dan Fabulich wrote:
> In quantum mechanics: the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
> Subjectivists had been arguing for a world view in which we
> reify uncertainty as part of our world, in which there are no
> deeper facts than those about which *we* are certain. While this idea
> hasn't been a big success across the board...
Actually, unless you are referring to uncertainty at the macroscopic
level, this world-view has been a *huge* success across the board. That
there are no deeper [quantum] facts than those about which we are
certain [that we have measured] is the basic principle underlying the
conventional "Copenhagen" interpretation of QM, advanced by Niels Bohr
and accepted by the vast majority of practical nuts-and-bolts
physicists.
We hear a lot about alternate interpretations, some which lend
themselves to realism (e.g., Many Worlds), but these alternate
interpretations are topics of discussion primarily among a few
philosophers, cosmologists and popular science authors (rather than
actual physicists). In the words of one practical every-day physicist
(whose name I'm sorry I cannot recall) these alternate interpretations
"amount only to so much unnecessary metaphysical baggage."
The Copenhagenist majority sees no need for realism in QM -- they are
satisfied that the mathematics of QM predict empirical data and see no
need for speculation about "real" entities that may exist at some deeper
level of reality outside the scope of our measuring instruments. They
note correctly that, strictly speaking, it is the job of science only to
develop functional models for the prediction of empirical data.
However I understand this thread is not about QM, per se, so I won't
elaborate any further. :)
-gts
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