[MD] 'Uncertainty

[Ian Glendinning]

Absolutely Marsha,

Einstein, Heisenberg and Bohr, not to mention Schroedinger and Born,
all I believe (and have said before) got the metaphysical implications
of the weirdness before them - the lack of intrinsic reality for any
of us.

Trouble is Copenhagen, (and "many worlds" and the like) created
mathematical recipe books, that simply ignored them - LHC continues to
ignore them.

(I shall have to take a look at that Lindley reference.)

Regards
Ian

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 9:49 AM, MarshaV<valkyr at att.net> wrote:
>
>
> >From 'Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul
> of Science' by David Lindley:
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>
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> "   . "When it comes to atoms," Bohr concluded enigmatically, "language can
> be used only as in poetry.  The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with
> describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental
> connections."
>
>   This, to Heisenberg, was strange and revelatory.  Only a generation
> earlier, Boltzmann and his allies had argued strenuously for the atom as a
> concrete .thing., not a theoretical abstraction, still less a poetical
> allusion.  Was Bohr now saying that physicists couldn't hope to describe
> atoms concretely, that they must make do with analogies and metaphors?  That
> the intrinsic reality of an atom was inaccessible to them?  That perhaps it
> was meaningless even to talk about the intrinsic reality of an atom?"
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> The other day I heard a physicist, talking about the equations to calculate
> spin, say "This isn't just mathematics, this is real".    Huh?
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>  _____________
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> "There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them."
>
>     (Werner Karl Heisenberg)
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