The Subtle Energy Body: The Complete Guide by Lockhart Maureen Ph.D

Author:Lockhart, Maureen, Ph.D. [Lockhart, Maureen, Ph.D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inner Traditions Bear & Company
Published: 2010-09-22T21:00:00+00:00

Fig. 15.2. Using a photon to measure the position of an electron: the “shallow” Heisenberg uncertainty.

In any measuring system such as the one depicted here, the reflected photon that bounces away after its collision with the electron has (in all but very special experimental situations far outside the scope of this book) a lower energy and, ipso facto, a longer wavelength, than the incident photon. This is because the photon’s disturbance of the electron is the transfer of a quantum of the photon’s energy to the electron. After any collision the reflected photon is less energetic than it was before the collision, and its wavelength is therefore longer. This is acknowledged in the diagram by showing each reflected photon-wave with a longer wavelength than the incident photon-wave.

Whatever the explanatory schema, whether classical or quantum, deep or shallow, verbalizable or only picturable, the margins of uncertainty of any two measurements of conjugate variables are in a kind of inverse relation to each other, inaccuracy in all post-disturbance measurements being unavoidable, but, beyond this fundamental fact, thoughtful readers may also have realized that, as explanations, not only our “classical style” account, but even our very carefully worded “early quantum” account, and our equally considered diagram, are inherently, and unavoidably, flawed. The diagram is highly schematic and uses conventional signs to represent electrons and photon waves. While their use is unavoidable, these signs can be as seriously misleading as imprecise verbal language. Perhaps the most serious inadequacy of the representation is the inconsistency of showing the photons as transverse Maxwellian propagating waves, but the electrons as classical solids. This perpetuates the totally false distinction we, as sensing biological organisms, make between “matter” and “radiation,” based on the different sensitivities of our bodies, at least in everyday situations, to impacts of electromagnetic waves such as light or heat as contrasted with impacts of matter, such as “solid objects” like stones. All these confessed anomalies of description are clues to the nature of the “deep” Heisenberg uncertainty, which requires of us a radically different conception of reality itself, not merely an awareness of the technology of measurement or of the even more banal problems of devising explanations and illustrations of scientific ideas. To remove the flaws of “shallow” explanations is, in effect, to retrace the thinking that gave rise to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

Heisenberg was well aware of the problem of mismatch between our concepts and reality, and his contemplations over many years suggested to him that all explanations resembling those given here are too “shallow.” He believed that, even if the measurements could be made simultaneously, some kind of reciprocal uncertainty relationship would still be present between them. He suspected that the reason was a far “deeper” indeterminacy, subsisting not in measurement or measurement techniques, but in physical reality itself, which required “deeper” explanation than any merely technological, albeit insuperable, problem of simultaneous measurement with zero disturbance. These merely technological problems were, inconveniently, masking from view a future evolution of reality, which was fundamentally uncertain, undetermined.

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