[ExI] When Reality Came Undone
BillK
pharos at gmail.com
Wed Aug 28 21:04:42 UTC 2024
Interesting article about the history and meaning of quantum mechanics.
BillK
When Reality Came Undone
100 years ago, a circle of physicists shook the foundation of science.
It’s still trembling.
By Philip Ball August 28, 2024
<https://nautil.us/when-reality-came-undone-796994/>
Quote:
Reality, previously a world in which well-defined particles interacted
through precise laws, so that in principle the future could be
predicted from a complete knowledge of the present, seems to dissolve
into a haze of possibilities, within which there was no longer any
objective viewpoint for an observer to stand. The position that denies
any pre-existing reality, independent of our knowledge of it, is
called anti-realism. Was this then really what the Copenhagen
interpretation amounted to?
Some think so, but it’s not obvious. Regarding quantum mechanics as a
theory about the probabilities of measurement outcomes is not the same
as saying that there is nothing before a measurement is made.
It is simply to recognize the limitations of what the theory permits us to
say about that.
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