The Quantum Enigma by Wolfgang Smith

Author:Wolfgang Smith [Smith, Wolfgang]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: INscribe Digital

But even though there is nothing in Nature—no ‘thing’, in other words—that we can know, the fact remains that we can and do know Nature by way of the spatio-temporal universe. And that, after all, is what physics is about: the physicist would know ‘the structure of Nature’; it is only that we are obliged to view that ‘structure’ indirectly, which is to say, by way of its physical manifestations.

But then, it is to be noted that even the most familiar structures of a geometric kind can only be known, likewise, through indirect means. How, for example, does one describe, or axiomatize, the structure of the Euclidean plane? As every mathematician knows, this can be done in various ways: à la Euclid, for instance, in terms of the properties of certain constructed figures made up of points, lines, and circles; or à la Felix Klein, in terms of the invariants of a continuous transformation group. The very circumstance, however, that these various characterizations are strikingly dissimilar already testifies to the fact that we are approaching the structure of the Euclidean plane by means of an auxiliary construct, a secondary structure of some kind, which presumably is more concrete and accessible. The primary structure is revealed through the secondary, one could say. In the classical approach, for example, one looks at constructed figures—but not directly at the Euclidean plane. For indeed, in the plane as such there is nothing to be seen.

Now let us substitute Nature for the Euclidean plane, and physical systems for the figures of classical geometry—and we may catch a glimpse of what physics is about. For by way of the geometric analogy one is able to understand how the structure of Nature—hidden though it be—can be manifested in the fundamental laws of physics: in the laws, namely, that apply always and everywhere to the physical systems to which they refer. A splendid example would be Maxwell’s equations, which apply to every electromagnetic field—even as the theorem of Pythagoras, let us say, applies to every right triangle. The major difference, however, between Euclidean geometry and physics in its present state is that the latter does not yet dispose over a single coherent set of principles that cover the entire ground. It is as if the physicist had one set of laws for ‘triangles,’ and another for ‘circles’—but no single law that applies to both ‘circles’ and ‘triangles’, and in principle, at least, to all other constructible figures. One might say that physics, in its present state, is conversant with ‘theorems’ but has not yet discovered a single set of axioms from which all the rest can in principle be derived. And this is of course the ultimate object of the physicist’s quest: he is looking for a single basic law—in the form of a unified relativistic quantum field theory of some kind, presumably—that will correctly describe all conceivable physical systems. And it appears that he may indeed be approaching the realization of this goal. Such a breakthrough, in

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