Hi Serafino,
Thanks for your pointers. You obvious know your
physics quite well and I think you got my point
precisely!
Godfrey Kurtz
(New Brunswick, NJ)
-----Original Message-----
From: scerir <scerir.domain.name.hidden>
To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
Sent: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 19:22:10 +0200
Subject: Re: "Naive Realism" and QM
Godfrey:
> There is no energy flux directly associated with
> wave-functions (like with electomagnetic or
> mechanical waves) but is a probability density
> and a probability flux associated with the square
> of linear functionals of the wave-function.
[Scerir]
The question, at this point, should be:
probability of what?
[GK]
Exactly!
[Scerir]
Because, leaving
aside those who think (Weinberg, Dyson, etc.)
that only fields exist and are real,
there are at least a couple of solutions.
There are physicists (followers of Bohr [1],
more or less) who think [2][3][4] that quantum
physics is about 'correlations without correlata',
or about 'fotuitousness and clicks'. There are
physicists (followers of Einstein, and his idea
of Gespensterfeld, etc.) like Born [5], Fock [6],
Barut [7], etc., who think that a 'probability' wave,
even in 3n-dimensional space, is a real thing,
much more than a mathematical tool, and who also
think that physics is not just about apparata,
or clicks.
s.
[GK]
Maybe I would not divide things exactly that way but,
yes, that is basically the choices you have! Either you
keep looking for an ultimate ontological category on
which quantum information is predicated, or you
try and build some understanding of probability as
a "material" of sorts (that was not Bohr, but actually
Schrodinger and Madelung on the latter side.)
There are however some possible ontological grey areas
between these two positions that can be explored and
Heiseinberg tried that at some point. Bohr's position
(the infamous Copnehagen Interpretations)
was a bit more complicated than what the sentence you
quote expresses, I would say, so it is hard to know where
to place him...
-Godfrey
[1[ Niels Bohr:
'However, since the discovery of the quantum of action,
we know that the classical ideal cannot be attained in the
description of atomic phenomena. In particular, any attempt
at an ordering in space-time leads to a break in the causal
chain, since such an attempt is bound up with an essential
exchange of momentum and energy between the individuals and
the measuring rods and clocks used for observation; and just
this exchange cannot be taken into account if the measuring
instruments are to fulfil their purpose. Conversely, any
conclusion, based in an unambiguous manner upon the strict
conservation of energy and momentum, with regard to the dynamical
behaviour of the individual units obviously necessitates
a complete renunciation of following their course in space
and time.'
[2] Carlo Rovelli
Relational Quantum Mechanics
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609002
[3] David Mermin
What is quantum mechanics trying to tell us?
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9801057
[4] Aage Bohr
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-10/p15.html
[5] Max Born:
'Quite generally, how could we rely on probability
predictions if by this notion we do not refer to
something real and objective?'
[6] V.A.Fock
'Disskussija S Nilsom Borom', in 'Voprosy Filosofii',
1964 (a memorandum, about the interpretation of QM
and the meaning of wavefunction, he gave to Bohr,
in Copenhagen, 1957, who read it and changed his mind
about several points, but not all).
[7] A.O.Barut
http://streaming.ictp.trieste.it/preprints/P/87/157.pdf
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Received on Sun Aug 21 2005 - 16:15:24 PDT