A Microcosm Theory Transformed Our World
It all began with three issues:
- In 1900, Max Planck was stumped as to why so-called black bodies radiate energy in "energy packets" of a specific size rather than in random quantities.
- Albert Einstein was obliged to admit that light is both a wave and a particle in 1905.
- In a surprising experiment in 1912, Ernest Rutherford revealed that the atom is made up of a nucleus of protons with electrons circling around it; nevertheless, according to classical physics, this should not be conceivable.
Physicists began on one of the most thrilling intellectual adventures in human history with these three phenomena in their backpacks.
Like the sailors of the fourteen and sixteenth centuries, they ventured out from the secure beaches of classical physics to traverse an undiscovered ocean in the first 30 years of the twentieth century, eager to see what lay on the other side.
Physicists realized around the turn of the twentieth century that the principles of classical physics do not always apply.
Tests revealed that many fundamental aspects of the atomic universe cannot be reconciled with either our everyday senses or Western philosophical conceptual systems:
• Superposition: Quantum entities can concurrently be in a mixture of different states that would be mutually exclusive in the classical world. For example, they can move simultaneously along different paths, i.e., they can be at different places at the same time.
• Randomness in behavior: The measurable properties of a quantum system and their temporal development can no longer be absolutely determined. With its ability to be both here and there at the same time, its observable properties can only be specified probabilistically.
• Dependence of a quantum state on measurement: In the micro world, measurements have a direct influence on the measured object. Even stranger is the fact that only observation assigns a definite state to a quantum particle. In essence, this means that quantum particles have no independent and objective properties. Any properties they have are obtained by an external observer.
• Entanglement: Quantum particles may be non-locally interconnected. Even if they are spatially far apart, they can still belong to a common physical entity (physicists say a single “wave function”). They are thus coupled together as if by some magic force.
Features of the micro world violates one of four key traditional philosophical principles:
1. The principle of uniqueness, according to which things are in definite states (the chair stands in front of the window and not next to the door);
2. The principle of causality, according to which every effect must have a cause (if the chair falls over, a force must have acted on it);
3. The principle of objectivity (related to the principle of reality ) according to which things have an objective existence independently of our subjective perception of them (when we leave the room, the chair remains exactly where it stands and is still there even when we no longer look at it); and
4. The principle of independence, according to which things behave individually and independently of one another (the chair is not influenced by the fact that there is another chair in the adjoining room).
Humanity's Existential Questions
For more than 2,500 years, philosophers have grappled with the existential questions of humanity.
Democritus wondered whether matter could be split endlessly into smaller and smaller parts and had come to the conclusion that there must be minute particles that are indivisible, the atoms. Parmenides was in search of the ultimate and changeless substance.
Aristotle and Plato were interested in how we as observers relate to the observed. There followed a hundred generations of philosophers who painstakingly sought clarity and coherent descriptions of the world.
But then, at the beginning of the 20th century, it became apparent that many philosophical principles found through this tireless and thorough reflection apply only to part of the world.
You may also want to read more about Quantum Computing here.
