Dear Rafael & Dear colleagues,
Allow me to try to advocate reductionism.
I know how unpopular it might be.
Reductionism is an ideal of a physicist (and yes please, notice the
important distinction made by Steven Weinberg between petty
reductionism and grand reductionism!)
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=1785 The
ideal of grand reductionism is to find the most general underlying
physical principles for the physical reality.
What else would we expect of a physicist?
I also believe that no reasonable physicist today believes that atoms
can account directly for all the diversity of this complex
world, not even of the physical phenomena alone. But they make an
enormous amount of sense at certain levels of abstraction.
Lets consider "panatomism" -
the claim that mater is made of atoms.
Of course theory of atomic structure of matter can not help us to solve
ethical problems of humanity. But it is very good to know that matter
consists of atoms. There is a range of phenomena that atomic theory can
account for and its very generality is an enormously powerful feature.
I agree that in questions metaphysical, such as in the choice of the
general framework of realism or anti-realism (Ontological?
Epistemological? Is anti-realism synonymous with Platonism or with
constructivism? - It is not always clear.)
In any event the choice of metaphysical framework is nothing that you
have scientific proof for, but some research communities (for good
reasons I would say) prefer ontological realism (physical sciences are
typical example), some communities tend towards Platonism
(mathematicians are sometimes inclined towards this) - and I guess that
what makes certain framework attractive is its intuitive appeal to the
research community.
Are scientist more qualified to impose their own frameworks (based on
their own intuitions) within their research fields? I think they are.
The same way we trust medical doctors when they make judgments of our
complicated health state, the same way we may trust physicist's
ontological realism. If they don't have the right intuition, who has?
Of course, it is a question of intuition, not of knowledge, and it is
worth to make that distinction - I agree.
All the best,
Gordana
http://www.idt.mdh.se/personal/gdc/
Rafael Capurro wrote:
Dear
all,
declarations of faith are declaration of faith.
Nothing more, nothing less. They are self-contradictory in case they
are
supposed to be the truth about reality. In that case they are no
recongnized
as declarations of faith. The faith of a scientist that acknowledges to
be a
(materialist) realist is no less a faith than the one that believes
reality
is "just" numbers (or bits or...). The poverty of reductionisms is that
they
give the impression that in the long run we just need to make, as in
this
case, good physics and everything will be explained. This is not very
realistic, in fact.
kind regards
Rafael
Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro
Hochschule der Medien (HdM) - Stuttgart Media University, Wolframstr.
32, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany
Private: Redtenbacherstr. 9, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Voice Stuttgart: + 49 - 711 - 25706 - 182
Voice private: + 49 - 721 - 98 22 9 - 22 (Fax: -21)
Homepage: www.capurro.de
Homepage ICIE: http://icie.zkm.de
Homepage IRIE: http://www.i-r-i-e.net
----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Devereux"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "FIS Mailing List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2006 8:58 PM
Subject: [Fis] Realism
Dear Arne and colleagues,
There is an essential reason, I believe, why nearly all physical
scientists are realists. There would be no physical science without
realism. Perhaps the most fundamental assumption upon which physical
science depends is the conviction that all of us are imbedded in the
same, objective physical reality.
I understand that one cannot prove this deductively, but the inductive
evidence seems, to most of us, to be overwhelming. From the very
beginning of physical science, through to the present, all of our
scientific accomplishments rely on a description of nature that is
observer independent. We’ve incorporated Gallilean relativity into the
fundament of classical physics. All the classical equations of motion
are observer independent. Would there be anything at all left of the
physical sciences if we discarded classical mechanics?
It is exactly the consistency and usefulness of the physical sciences
that argues, irrefutably, I believe, for the validity of the axioms
upon which physical science depends. Statistical mechanics,
hydrodynamics, electrodynamics, and others cannot stand without
classical mechanics. So, we physical scientists must adamantly refuse
to concede that because realism is not deductively derivable, it might
not be correct.
I note that Einstein built both his theories of relativity, special and
general, on the postulate of observer independence. Should we throw out
those extraordinarily valuable and consistent theories because we wish
to debate the lack of a deductive argument for realism? I’m sure that
quantum mechanics (which also employs classical mechanics via the
Hamiltonian formalism, Poisson Brackets, etc.) does not imply observer
dependence, though some eminent physicists, like Wigner and von
Neumann, have read it that way.
The accepted understanding of the wavefunction, Psi, was given in the
early 1920s by Max Born. As you know, If we wish to calculate the
probability for each possible measured value of the system we take the
projection of the eigenfunction for that value on the wave function,
then calculate the inner product with Psi*. That we are predicting a
probability for a measured outcome does not, at all, imply that human
consciousness plays any part in the measurement. In fact, as Hawking,
Penrose, and so many other physicists have so carefully calculated,
there is every reason to believe that quantum mechanics described the
cosmos billions of years before any humans and their conscious minds
existed.
In general, measurement is information exchange between two separate
physical objects. Neither object need be human, of course. The
canonical model for a measurement that transfers one bit of information
is the bi-level atom located along one arm of the Stern-Gerlach
apparatus described in 1978 (Physics Reports) by Scully, Shea, and
McCullen. When a spinning molecule collides with the bi-level atom, a
single quantum of energy is transferred to the atom. This is a real,
physical, energetic signal that carries information about the change in
energy of the molecule to the atom. Since energy is always conserved,
the energy jump in the detector atom always records the exact
information about the change in energy of the molecule.
One may, of course, still ask how human beings are able to observe
properties of our shared physical reality. I’m convinced that at the
most basic level of human percepta, more fundamental than learned, or
perhaps innate, shapes and objects, we all look at the same pattern of
minute color specks and see (and describe) the same specks. The key
here is to look only for each speck of color, as one might do to a
pointillist painting by Signac, say, ignoring any impression of
physical objects that the artist may have portrayed. If necessary,
scientists could employ such a basic technique to insure that the
pattern which carries information about results of a measurement (like
the face of an ammeter, for instance) really is observer independent.
I’m convinced that there are no cultually-inculcated tendencies at this
most basic level.
Cordially,
Michael Devereux
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