On Physics and Philosophy

[Anville Azote]

On 10/11/06, Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/8329.html
>

To be frank, the sales pitch lost me at "mathematics-free".  If
physicists can't **do** quantum mechanics without mathematics, then
any attempt to really get at the subject without teaching the math
will inevitably be either cursory or imprecise.

What continually gets me about QM is not that it is strange and
counterintuitive.  No, it's how a pile of subatomic particles obeying
these strange rules --- not behaving like billiard balls, not behaving
like water waves or clouds in the sky --- build up a familiar,
"intuitive" world.  Putting together classical pebbles gives you a
classical rock; putting together quantum atoms gives you a grain of
classical sand.  Newton's laws, and Einstein's too, reproduce
themselves at larger scales, while the quantum rules do not.  It's
like finding out your ordinary, red-brick world is upheld by fairy
land.

(But Fairie is not completely alien.  It has a King, courtesans and
cobblers.  Ideas like energy, momentum and conservation laws extend
from the quantum realm to the classical.  Fairie is a strange country,
but the plots of the adventures one has within its borders are not
wholly unfamiliar.)

-A. A.