“The Quantum Entanglement Radio is one of the great accomplishments
of mankind, although it had so far failed to supplant sliced bread for the top
spot in popular colloquialism. The QER operated through the principle of
quantum entanglement. At the core of each set of devices sat a pair of
neutrons. Once entangled, these neutrons precisely imitated each other’s
behavior instantly and over any distance as if by magic - which, if you’re
honest, is all quantum mechanics is, minus the hats, rabbits, and bisected
lovely assistants, but only because these things don’t exist at subatomic
scales. The rest of the device was comprised of an impossibly small
gravitational manipulator that controlled the spin directions and speed of the
particle, and very sensitive Heisenberg detectors to record the reply. These
functioned by surreptitiously observing the entangled particle from behind a
nanoscale newspaper and dark sunglasses, so as not to arouse suspicion.”
In “Gate Crashers” by Patrick S. Tomlinson
Review from my pedant
doppelgänger in a parallel universe:
““Naïve realism” and “good old commonsense” of causality based world
outlook (the “view of understanding” for Hegel) on which the edifice of physics
was built; now lies in ruins after the recognition of “biological evolution”
and the “quantum phenomena” in Nature. Thus physics (like everything else in
the world) through its own phenomenal developments has reached the inexorable
nodal point, where what was true and certain now proves to be false and
uncertain and vice versa. This is palpable in the despair and outrage of
physicists like Einstein and philosophers like Bridgeman:
In Einstein‘s own words: “Many physicists maintain - and there are
weighty arguments in their favour – that in the face of these facts (quantum
dynamical, F.H.), not merely the differential law, but the law of causation
itself - hitherto the ultimate basic postulate of all natural science – has collapsed”. A. Einstein, “Essays in Science”, p. 38-39 (1934)
The American mathematician and philosopher P.W. Bridgman laments in
despair that the quantum principle means: “nothing neither more nor less than
that the law of cause and effect must be given up, the world is not a world of
reason, understandable by the intellect of man”. Quoted in C. Suplee Ed.,
“Physics in the 20th Century”, N.H. Adams Inc. N.Y., p. 88 (1999).
So, what is to be done? Should physics remain dazed and perplexed
and try to rebuild the shattered edifice following the same principles of
causality and the old notions of rationalism? This is impossible, as Immanuel
Kant found out in philosophy (and long before natural science) that objective
reality is a mess of unknowable things-in-themselves, full of logical
contradictions, a horrible mixture of opposites – good and bad, true and false
etc. that lies in the very unit of a thing or a process! The only alternative
to deal with reality for philosophy, Kant posited is to take recourse to the
thought world and subjective idealism of his logical categories and impose
these on the messy objective reality to bring order! At the advent of these new
developments in natural science, Einstein, following Kant, took recourse to the
same thought world of mathematical idealism to comprehend objective reality.
The fact of the matter is that Kant was absolutely right about
logical contradictions in objective reality! This IS the real characteristics
of objective reality and one must accept it as such to be able to comprehend
it. Contradictions are the very reason there are self-induced change,
evolution, developments etc. in Nature, Life, Society and Thought. This also
leads to the fact that things and processes in the world are mediated not by
“cause and effect” of the old world outlook that conventional physics and
philosophy relied on, but through the dialectical contradiction of “chance and
necessity” – a fact that the quantum phenomena so dramatically demonstrates.
The quantum phenomena show that at micro-level Nature is inherently
in-deterministic and is mediated by chance, but with an iron necessity that is
inherent in chance itself! The uncertainty principle quantitatively formulated
by Heisenberg in not due to uncertainty in measurement alone or a mere
statistical problem only, as is commonly assumed; but Nature at micro-level is
inherently uncertain and follows the laws of dialectics. Attempts by modern
official physics to subjugate the “evil quanta” within the norms of the old
world outlook through the fantasy of “realism” of “multiverse” or through the
“certainty” of idealism, positivism, solipsism etc. will lead physics nowhere.
Only a dialectical synthesis from this nodal point, can rescue
physics from the lowest point that Einsteinian mathematical idealism has led it
to; the same way the dialectics of Hegel rescued philosophy from its own lowest
point it reached with Kantian subjective idealism. The recognition of the fact
that innumerable contradictions of chance and necessity at the micro-level are
resolved and average-out at macro-level to give net results that is
approximated by our good old commonsense and causality; is the kernel of the
dialectical world view. To understand Nature and Life, science has to follow
and understand the specific and deciding contradictions at each nodal point and
how these contradictions are resolved through discrete qualitative leaps,
leading to change, evolution, development etc. Causality as it is practised in
modern physics will either lead it to a Kantian unknowable mess of reality or
to the mystery of a “first cause”; which in fact is our well known God of
theology!
Someone in this universe waving
and screaming at my doppelgänger:
”Sometimes the cream puff for a clodhopper returns home, but a
ruffian always can be kind to an accurately saintly bubble! Another debutante
plans an escape from a girl the bubble bath related to a ballerina. Unlike so
many bonbons who have made their surly marzipan abhorrent to us, toothpicks
remain sprightly. An unseemly clock hibernates, and the dahlia reads a
magazine; however, a ménage à trois underhandedly negotiates a prenuptial
agreement with the ridiculously likeable toothpick!”
