Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Quantum Mechanics Boondoggles, AI's Total Failure...The Notable Carver Mead Speaks

re: Quantum Mechanics Boondoggles, AI's Total Failure...The Notable Carver Mead Speaks
JEKing — (archived)

"He starts by attacking Neils Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, claiming that Einstein was right to be a skeptic."

It always seemed to me that Bohr is the skeptic, and Einstein is the Platonic Realist.

The above painting is by Raphael (from “The School of Athens”). The figures are Plato and Aristotle. Plato points up to the Logos, the Eternal Forms designed by a divine demiurge. Aristotle indicates the Mean of Reason, the ethic of modern scientific inquiry, by which posited theories are bent to the results of experiment and discovery.

The photo below, of Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, seems to be some kind of harmonic of the painting. Einstein’s Plato is in dialogue with Bohr’s Aristotle.

Einstein is making it completely clear that what really disturbs him about the quantum theory is the problem of the total renunciation of all minimal standards of realism, even at the microscopic level, that the acceptance of the completeness of the theory implies. “God does not play dice.”

Bohr’s view on the other hand is more epistemological. He is interested in what we can know and the conditions for the unambiguous communication of our observations of the quantum world. Bohr accepts the existence of an indivisible quantum of action and the discontinuity of quantum processes that follow from the indivisible quantum of action.

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (38 posts)