There is a sense of the 'world out there' into which scientific
theories can be exported for consideration, demonstration,
falsification and so on. Popper's World 3 is still clearly a
construction. At bottom it seems to me that evidence is what the what
the fuck of now meeting someone's network of experience, theory is
always under-determined by evidence and we take some epistemological
risks in evidential basing, but less than we would in believing in
'theory' - assuming we are not arse over tit in regarding history as
having some meaning (if not in the historicist sense). Particular
species of the teleological argument abound in neo-Darwinism, and
biology may have a few descriptions of the nature Georges never meets
whilst acting in positivist pedantry in the very 'thing' he ain't
meeting - usually to some good effect as I stare upwards at the stars
from the gutter and catch a glimpse of this group's blather mirrored
in the window of some seedy brothel containing an overnight bag
monogrammed G.M. and I assure myself this cannot be the nature he has
evaded so well with a swift draught from my hip-flask. I wander off
to my home in non-nature to ponder the space-time conditions in which
light was faster and may now be faster than "the speed of light" as
defined in vacuums we do not understand in a theory still under-
determined by evidence. As I begin to bar the door against what
passes for night in non-nature, I notice an old friend chased by
village idiots and offer him sanctuary from the nature he never meets
but frequents in some condescension. He tosses an overnight bag on
the floor and all one can be sure of is that my best Malt will occupy
a lower volume by what passes for morning in non-nature, for
Schrodinger's Cat is mournful that he will no longer be a thought
experiment in nature as lasers can now hold living being ('flu virus
and water-bear) in super-imposition states. The cat is not sure of my
friend's denial of nature, but sure enough to share my whisky with him
while I dream of naturalising epistemology. The authors below are, of
course, blithely unaware that Georges has had a superpositioned nature
for much longer than most of us care or could remember.
Towards Quantum Superposition of Living Organisms
Oriol Romero-Isart, Mathieu L. Juan, Romain Quidant, J. Ignacio Cirac
(Submitted on 8 Sep 2009)
The most striking feature of quantum mechanics is the existence of
superposition states, where an object appears to be in different
situations at the same time. Up to now, the existence of such states
has been tested with small objects, like atoms, ions, electrons and
photons, and even with molecules. Recently, it has been even possible
to create superpositions of collections of photons, atoms, or Cooper
pairs. Current progress in optomechanical systems may soon allow us
to
create superpositions of even larger objects, like micro-sized
mirrors
or cantilevers, and thus to test quantum mechanical phenomena at
larger scales. Here we propose a method to cool down and create
quantum superpositions of the motion of sub-wavelength, arbitrarily
shaped dielectric objects trapped inside a high--finesse cavity at a
very low pressure. Our method is ideally suited for the smallest
living organisms, such as viruses, which survive under low vacuum
pressures, and optically behave as dielectric objects. This opens up
the possibility of testing the quantum nature of living organisms by
creating quantum superposition states in very much the same spirit as
the original Schr\"odinger's cat "gedanken" paradigm. We anticipate
our essay to be a starting point to experimentally address
fundamental
questions, such as the role of life in quantum mechanics, and
differences between many-world and Copenhagen interpretations.
Comments: 8 pages, 4 figures
Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Mesoscale and Nanoscale
Physics
(cond-mat.mes-hall)
Cite as: arXiv:0909.1469v1 [quant-ph]
Apparently, this is about actually putting a flue virus or possibly a
water-bear (tiny - less than 1 mm) in the Schrodinger's Cat super-
position using lasers. Water-bears can actually survive vacuum for a
few days. The old thought experiments get ever closer to being made
into real experiments. This one might answer the question of whether
large objects aren't quantum because of interference from the general
world or whether there is a size or mass for quantum behaviour as
Penrose (Danger Mouse's best pal) suggests. I can't wait for the day
I can approach some old mate blathering on about Schrodinger's Cat
and
accuse him of being a mindless philosopher before setting up my
lasers
and water-bears on the bar!
On 14 Sep, 15:07, Georges Metanomski <[email protected]> wrote:
> Richard:
> Are there differences between *scientific truths* and
> PITS *truths?* I agree, generally, with Georges take on
> the matter, except I would not call *absolute statements*
> meaningless. *Nothing can exceed the speed of light,*
> though it is an unprovable working conjecture, does have
> a great deal of meaning.
> ================
> G:
> To keep it straight, the statement *Nothing can exceed
> the speed of light* does not exist in physics. What you
> doubtless mean is *information cannot exceed C*, which
> is the well known theorem of SR, derived from the axiom
> of invariance of C. Now this theorem is in no way
> absolute. It's relative to the axiom, to the SR model,
> out of which it's meaningless and to thousands of
> experiments trying to falsify it, of which some, like
> Aspect's pretend (IMO falsely) to have succeeded.
> The axiom itself, like all axioms is relative to some
> context which suggested it - here the MM experiment -,
> and otherwise arbitrary, thus relative to the knowledge
> and intuition of the propounder and to the model which
> it is destined to found.
> The widespread error consists in believing that scientific
> statements describe, explain, etc. the transcendental
> "World Out There", "Nature", "Reality" and what not.
> They are strictly confined to respective abstract models
> and beyond them have no meaning. Thus, they are all
> relative.
> Their export to the "World Out There" is known as
> "reification". Once reified, they may play absolute
> universality, flamenco, or anything.
> ================
> Richard:
> Hi Realist - nice to hear from you again. Yes, for me
> in the sense that objects don't need human observers
> to guarantee their actuality as characterised by the
> *thing-in-itself* concept is sound common sense
>
> Jud, I have never assumed that Kant’s thing-in-itself
> was referring to the differences between naïve and
> representative realism. I thought that Kant was
> talking about some kind of meta-quality, or separate
> ontological reality of entities, as opposed simply
> what can be observed. Perhaps a Kantian scholar out
> there can set me straight on this??
> ================
> G:
> Without being Kantian or any scholar, I have studied
> Kant's system because it represents a rigorous synthesis
> of the first enlightenment - the prerequisite to my
> study of the second. I have written my conclusions in
> the chapter "KANT AND
> EINSTEIN"http://findgeorges.com/ROOT/SECOND_ENLIGHTENMENT/0f_kant_and_einstein...
>
> My present post can be understood only in the light of
> this chapter.
>
> The Realist above seems to imagine Kant creating his
> Noumenon (Ding an Sich) in order to refute the shamanic
> claims of the Copenhagen Interpretation assesing that
> "real objects" are called to "existence" by conscious
> observations and upon the end of observation return to
> "nothingness". Now, even shelving the chronological
> discrepancy, that is obviously wrong, because Kant
> considered intelligent thinkers whom he respected,
> like Descartes, Hume, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and,
> had he lived today, he could have discussed Einsteins
> Physical Reality, but would not even notice the fatuous
> CI. So, whatever the DaS may mean, it has nothing to
> do with the cat existing before opening the box.
>
> Then, what does it mean?
>
> Wrong, what DID it mean? It does not mean anything for us,
> because the whole Kant's system reposed on subsequently
> falsified axioms and does not keep for us any meaning
> else than historical and methodological.
>
> Well, what's DaS's definition? Kant gives only rather
> vague descriptions, which seem to boil down to the
> following:
> -The abstract label "table" points to a structure of
> memorized qualities, form, size, color, hardness,
> function, position in space and time, material,
> constructing procedures, etc. If I scrap them all,
> what stays? The empty abstract label "table" as
> meaningless as "hrrmpf" and having the same null
> existential status. We call it "noumenon" and ban
> it from the human universe of discourse.
>
> So did also Kant and very strongly, but not consistently.
> He was slave of his theorem of Synthetic Statements
> Apriori and to justify it had to base it on Categories
> of "Pure Reason", which is an euphemism for DaS' or
> Noumena.
>
> To resume: For us noumena are empty abstract labels,
> without any existential pretensions. Bestowing on them
> "existential" or "real" status is a still stupider
> reification than exporting to the "World Out There"
> abstract constructs of scientific models.
> Kant's system is paradoxical, as on the one hand it bans
> noumena, but, on the other hand, is founded in noumena
> called Categories of "Pure Reason". It got falsified and
> thus is entirely meaningless for us, but remains a lesson
> of deriving, for the first time in history, sincerely and
> rigorously from the concurrent state of science, arts
> and know-how, a scientific, axiomatic, falsifiable
> ontology.
> ================
> Richard:
> As bad as reification is, inferring that cancer cells,
> or any cells for that matter have *intelligence* and
> purposeful actions, is teleological thinking and just as
> bad. Richard Dawkins did not help any with the title of
> his book: The Selfish Gene. Imparting intelligence to
> living tissue is not only absurd, it is dangerous, since,
> for those who innocently take these things as truth, it
> enforces the idea that nature has guided purposefulness.
> ================
> G:
> We are back to the above:
>
> *The widespread error consists in believing that scientific
> statements describe, explain, etc. the transcendental
> "World Out There", "Nature", "Reality" and what not.
> They are strictly confined to respective abstract models
> and beyond them have no meaning.
> Their export to the "World Out There" is known as
> "reification". Once reified, they may play absolute
> universality, flamenco, or anything.*
>
> Causality, whether effective or final is an abstract
> construct strictly confined to its respective abstract
> models and beyond them having no meaning at all. Once
> you reify it by exporting to "nature", you may say
> whatever you wish, all being equally meaningless.
> I cannot follow you there for having never met "nature".
> I may be slightly surprised by your banning of teleology
> from "nature". Indeed, human behavior can only be modeled
> teleologically and I suppose that you consider humans
> as "natural", which would mean that teleology "exists"
> in your "nature". And "natural" humans made doubtless of
> "natural" living tissue, I don't see how you can avoid
> imparting teleology to living tissues.
>
> But that's neither here nor there, as I ignore all about
> the WOT and can try to talk turkey only about models.
> What IMO is dangerous, it's not to prattle about "nature",
> but to choke scientific models by virtue of reified
> theist, atheist or whatever beliefs.
>
> If some model uses the abstraction of teleology, anti-
> gravity or teleportation, it should be free to do so,
> subject to factual falsification, but not to refutal
> with transcendental (anti)religious beliefs.
>
> Regards.
> Georges
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Epistemology" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/epistemology?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
