DETERMINISM vs. NON-DETERMINISM
Hi Struan, Ken and LilaQs,
Struan (25th Jan) claimed that Pirsig misrepresented
complementarity, and implied that I also did in my first post about
Shroedinger's Cat. I'm not going to pretend to be a licensed Quantum
Mechanic, but I think the real argument is about determinism (prominent
advocate Einstein) vs. non-determinism (The Quantum theory mainstream).
Ken Clark <clark@netsites.net>
on Monday, January 25, 1999 6:13 AM
>Struan,
> Thanks for your explanation of the effect of the Quantum level. I did
not
>look at it in this way before.
> However, you have made me very nervous. It seems to me that there is
a
>chance, however slight, that the coin will come up with 10,000,000
matches.
>If this occurs will our goose be cooked? :>).
That's pretty much what happens in the opening scene to Tom Stoppard's
play "Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are dead". The one who is winning
doesn't seem to care, but when asked what he would do if the tables were
turned, he very sensibly replies that he would carefully examine the
coin!
To put it another way, he would question the hypothesis that the heads
vs. tails distribution was 50:50.
A more practical example would be weather forecasting. How often have we
heard that "there is a 20% chance of rain tomorrow". The determinist
would argue that it absolutely IS, or absolutely IS NOT going to rain
tomorrow, but the forecaster doesn't know. The non-determinist would
argue that whether or not it rains tomorrow is a probability function
with a 20:80 split. In a practical sense, there is not much difference
between the two positions. Determinism is an idealistic viewpoint, while
non-determinism is empirical. The latter is highly practical in a
forecast, but it is not a good description of yesterday's weather! This
is why non-determinism demands that the observation changes the
descriptive function.
It seems to me that even though Quantum Mechanics is clearly
non-deterministic, the underlying philosophy is IDEALISTIC. The
statistical function is not a cop out by the "don't knows". It is a true
and "absolute" description of reality. The weatherman is not guessing
about rain falling tomorrow. There really *IS* a 20% chance -
absolutely. The truth of this can of course be verified if rain actually
falls after one in five such forecasts.
Struan:-
<<<Whatever the merits and demerits of Complementarity (and I make no
judgement here), it doesn't say
what Schrodinger's Cat, Einstein or Pirsig claim it does and so can get
along fine without having
the MoQ foisted onto it. Those who want to marry quantum physics with
the MoQ will have to
reformulate this aspect completely.>>>
I see no problem here. Pirsig certainly shouldn't be our reference for
understanding quantum physics. Pirsig has simply latched on what plenty
of others also see - a discrepancy between modern physics and common
sense. MoQ has little to add to physics, but has a lot to say about
common sense. After all, isn't "shared values" another way of saying
common sense?
What I slightly disagree about, is that this "topsy turvy" feeling
which results from the above discrepancy is a new 20th century
phenomenon. We've been there before - the determinism vs. non
determinism issue previously (though implicitly) raised its head in
resolving the mechanical vs. thermodynamic descriptions of how matter
behaves. This was something mostly resolved in the 19th century, before
relativity and quantum theory burst on the scene. For anyone interested,
I have a prototype essay at
http://indycc1.agri.huji.ac.il/~marder/Science_Philosophy/Causality.htm
entitled "The End of Causality". I'm still working on it, so would
appreciate feedback.
Jonathan
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