Howard, lists,
Howard, you wrote,
> In any case, if you are hoping that Peirce's type of realism will
resolve the mysteries of quantum theory, I am afraid you will be
disappointed. He could not have understood the problem. In
particular, the discovery of the irreducuble quantum discreteness
would have been a total surprise to him, as it was to everyone else.
Perhaps even more so since it is contrary to his /synechism/.
[End quote]
Peirce was not a synechist about matter (I don't know what he thought
about light):
The things of this world, that seem so transitory to philosophers,
are not continuous. They are composed of discrete atoms, no doubt
Boscovichian points. The really continuous things, Space, and Time,
and Law, are eternal.
[End quote, fromEP 2:35, likewise from page 115 in Reasoning and the
Logic of Things, Peirce's 1898 lectures]
Space, time, and law, as embodied in our Big-Bang universe, may or may
not be eternal. But, as to continuity, continuity of spacetime is the
simplest way to have quantum mechanics, relativity, and Lorentz
symmetry. A granular or pixelated spacetime would introduce big
complications for Lorentz symmetry (or so I've read). If there is a
Lorentz violation, its maximum size appears, as of a few weeks ago, to
be ten million times smaller than previous observations allowed: "Test
of Lorentz Invariance with Atmospheric Neutrinos"
http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.4267 . (I think that the previous limit was
set in 2009, see "7.3 Billion Years Later, Einstein’s Theory Prevails"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/science/space/29light.html?_r=1 , on
work that ruled out Lorentz violations larger than 8/10 of the Planck
length) . So, quantum mechanics never abolished all forms of synechism,
and Peirce is holding up pretty well.
I don't know whether Peirce can help resolve the mysteries of quantum
theory, but his view that that which in principle cannot be discovered
is not real is quite in line with QM or the "Copenhagen" version anyway,
likewise as you point out he would have agreed with Bohr. Some aspects
of quantum discreteness might have surprised him, but I see no reason
why he could not have come to understand it. In addition to being a
mathematician and a physicist, Peirce was pretty systematic about trying
to assemble partial or 'complementary' perspectives into comprehensive
wholes (e.g., "The Seven Systems of Metaphysics" from the 1903 Harvard
Lectures in EP 2).
You wrote,
HP: Well, I've never heard that interpretation of QM before. I have
to agree with Bohr that if you don't think QM is a problem, then I'm
afraid you don't understand QM.
I said that it seems more solution than problem in a certain light, not
that there's no problem for a person's understanding it. I don't claim
to flat-out understand QM, I'm not a physicist and, in particular, I
don't know the math. But the hardest thing for the average person seems
to be that it defies classical realism in physics, the idea that there
is no vagueness or indeterminateness in nature itself.
What I'm pointing out is that such classical realism also is not
particularly hospitable to the ancient notion (as in Aristotle) that the
future really, even in principle, is more or less indeterminate.
If, for whatever reasons, one thinks that the future is intrinsically
indeterminate, one naturally wonders, how do things become determinate,
is something determinate simply by being located in one's past light
cone? That seems a bit mysterious too and, for QM, even it has a bit too
much classical realism. What's required is not merely being in the past,
so that information could have spread by now, even if it didn't, but
instead information's actual spreading or having spread. It's reaction,
resistance, interaction, that do this, so light's choice of paths
through two slits, without interacting with the environment at that
stage, remains indeterminate even as the event recedes into the past,
leaving a wave pattern of "futurish" feasible and extremal probabilities
recorded on a photographic screen.
Best, Ben
On 11/8/2014 4:56 PM, Howard Pattee wrote:
At 11:40 AM 11/8/2014, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Howard, you wrote:
there is general agreement that QM cannot be interpreted by
Peircean Realism. In fact, most teachers of QMÂ struggle with
the intuitively realist perspectives of introductory students. In
teaching QM, Realism blocks the path of inquiry.
[End quote]
It's hard to see how there can be general agreement, at least among
physicists, about QM's being uninterpretable by Peircean Realism when
most physicists are not well acquainted with Peircean Realism.
HP: You are right. I should not have modified Realism with Peirce's
name. But many physicist were aware of Peirce. Wigner quotes Peirce
but only in the context of the mystery of how "unreasonably effective"
abstract mathematical symbols are for modeling Nature, because Peirce
also saw the symbol-matter relation as "occult and mysterious."
In any case, if you are hoping that Peirce's type of realism will
resolve the mysteries of quantum theory, I am afraid you will be
disappointed. He could not have understood the problem. In particular,
the discovery of the irreducuble quantum discreteness would have been
a total surprise to him, as it was to everyone else. Perhaps even more
so since it is contrary to his /synechism/.
BU: Peircean realism favors real, in-principle uncertainty and
vagueness in nature itself, by reason of the imperfectibility of
measurement, I.e., that which, even _in principle_, inquirers could
never find, nature itself cannot find.
HP: Here, Peirce would completely agree with Max Born's argument
<https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/235987/filename/ajp-jphysrad_1959_20_1_43_0.pdf>,
except Born was not a realist.
BU: Moreover, Peirce's realism includes the idea that there are real
individuals, real existences. (So the 'complementarity' of generalism
versus individualism is already encompassed in Peirce's brand of
realism.) In particular, Peirce regards individual existence as a
matter not merely of location or proximity in space and time, but of
reaction, resistance, interaction, like so many natural measurements.
This is congenial to the QM view of things as becoming determinate
through interaction with the environment, the 'observer', the
'measurer', etc. If one holds with basicness of reaction/resistance
for individual existence, and with the indeterminacy of the future,
and takes into account similar considerations involving a signal
speed limit (the light cone etc.), then QM starts to seem more a
solution than a problem.
HP: Well, I've never heard that interpretation of QM before. I have to
agree with Bohr that if you don't think QM is a problem, then I'm
afraid you don't understand QM.
Howard
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