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Author Topic:   The implications of quantum physics.
mitchellmckain
Member (Idle past 6423 days)
Posts: 60
From: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Joined: 08-14-2006


Message 1 of 2 (340056)
08-14-2006 6:16 PM


As a newcomer physicist to this forum I was rather disappointed to find the thread entitled "What does quantum theory really say?" closed. Apparently the OP was a bit too narrow, restricting the topic to a particular disagreement between two combatants. I thought to moderate a little between them only to find the topic closed. DARN!
In any case, the fundamental ways that quantum physics has changed our understanding of the world is too important of an issue to leave participants nowhere to go with questions, opinions, and discussion. I think there are important implications in this topic in regard to the main question of creationism versus evolution.
In regards to the previous discussion of Percy vs. cavediver. Percy is absolutely correct, but cavediver is a representative of a respectable minority beginning with Einstein that stubbornly refuses to accept the death of determinism in physics, and who continue to hope that futher advances in physics will overturn this conclusion.
The death of determinism in physics does not however resolve the philosophical question. The postulates of Bell's inequality are clear. The failure of Bell's inequality means that either determinism or the completeness of physics world view of an objectively observable local reality must be abandoned. Everett's Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics preserves mathematical determinism (a description of reality by mathematical equations) by accepting a multiplicy of non-observable realities. Mathematical descriptions are inherently deterministic but if this description includes a superpostion of states on a macroscopic level then the it cannot be the same as ordinary determinism. David Bohm sought to preserve determinism by accepting a non-observable aspect of physical reality which is non-local. But I think that the consensus of the physics community is that physics cannot abandon the presumption of an objectively observable local reality and remain physics. I agree with this, but along with Eddington I also think that it is absurd to presume that the physical description of reality in terms of mathematics is a complete description of all that is real.
And so it is a matter of philosophy when I abandon both determinism and the completeness of the physical world view, acknowledging that other people have the freedom to make a different choice of postulates that lead them to different conclusions.
I believe there is an aspect of reality which lacks the definite-ness that is required to make it amenable to mathematical description. Furthermore, I think that the uncertainty principle defines the limits of the mathematically definite aspect of reality which I call the physical universe. The law of conservation of energy is an example of the kind of definiteness that describes the physical universe, for it means that the universe has a definite fixed quantity of energy that never changes. However, the uncertainty principle states that this conservation of energy fails during small intervals of time according to: delta-E times delta-t is approximately Planck's constant, where delta-t is the interval of time and delta-E is the quantity energy which is not accounted for in the conservation of energy. This can be considered a point of interaction between the mathematically definite physical reality and this other non-definite aspect of reality which I have suggested.
Now this above suggestion could be modified somewhat to preserve determinism even though I think the non-definiteness of this other aspect of reality precludes this, for certainly this idea is meant to suggest that some of the uncaused events in the physical description of reality (of which Percy gives a list of examples), has a cause in this other aspect of reality. However I believe that the fundamental experience of being human suggests that a determinsim based on the scientific idea of causality cannot be supported.
Aristotle suggested a much broader idea of causality in four different types: effective causality, material causality, formal causality, and final causality. I do not advocate all of these but rather look to this example of how causality might not be restricted to the material efficient causality which has been adopted by physics. Relating scientific causality to Aristotle's material and efficient causes may require explanation. Certainly science presumes that cause precedes effect as in Aristotles efficient causality, but the reductionist approch of physics to explain by composition and the ultimate adherence to locality also suggests to me a great similarity to Aristotle's material cause. One of the things which suggested reaching beyond the scientific ideas of causality to me was the suggestion by David Bohm and others of this nonlocal aspect of reality, which seemed to me to have some parallel's with Aristotle's idea of formal causality.
What I am suggesting comes from the idea that when people make choices, considering various reasons for all the different choices they could make, they ultimately choose the reasons for their choice when they make their choice. If the reasons for a choice can be called the cause then here is a case where the cause rather than preceding the effect, originates in the same event. Since the reasons for the choice are in fact part of the choice that is made, it suggests to me that the cause is a part of the effect. This is why I suggest an idea of causality which I call "self-causality". Another reason for this term is the simultaneous human experience that we have a self that is the cause of our actions and that our actions define this self.
Something else which suggests that in going beyond the physical universe in search for causality, we must abandon the usual scientific idea of causality is the trend of modern physics to see time, as part of the structure of the physical universe and the idea that the Big Bang was the origin of both time and space as well as all the matter in it. Time is a part of the mathematical relationships which tie all parts of the physical universe together into a definite whole. This suggests that in looking outside this structure in a non-definite aspect of reality, we may be looking outside of the time and space, which is a part of this structure, as well. But if this is the case then the scientific idea of cause always preceding effects loses some of its clarity.
Comments and questions about my ideas are welcome but I would prefer, if it is ok, to keep this discussion open to anyone's ideas about the implications of quantum physics.

See my relativistic physics of space flight simimulator at Astahost.com

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Message 2 of 2 (340171)
08-15-2006 9:03 AM


Thread copied to the The implications of quantum physics. thread in the Miscellaneous Topics in Creation/Evolution forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.

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