`As one who learned quantum mechanics as a chemist, I have to say that the lack of reality that bothers the physicists never really bothers me. I don't really care how an electron spreads itself in space to create a wave function. I get electron densities from the wave function magnitudes, which serve to glue together nuclei of different elements into molecules, and changes of electron densities, which allow reactions to happen.`
Roger, I tend to harbor similar feelings regarding the 'unreality' of the wave / particle duality. Further, I tend to regard mysticism with respect to the apparent paradox with suspicion. Much of mechanics (classical or not) is counterintuitive to the initiate. Generalized coordinates, deriving equations of motion from the Hamiltonian and interpreting energy levels on a phase space all require significant preparations, which border on autosuggestion. Is Quantum Mechanics really that much more counterintuitive? In modern mathematics, one encounters categories whose `points` have an internal structure which can be more complicated than one's initial intuition would provide. There is a sense that what the interested physicist is doing by exploring the duality is attempting to understand the nature of 'physical points'. How is a physical point like a point in Euclidean geometry? To what extent can there be a consistent formal description which matches our knowledge of these points? Perhaps from some phenomenological perspective, we should understand these physical points as founding all experience regarding points and waves. After all, assuming the present quantum mechanical presentation, all of the classical experiences of wave-like nature and particle-like nature are derived from interactions of these underlying primitive objects. Cheers, Jonathan Zingale
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
