Einstein vs Bohr
Posted by Sane Spirit on Sunday, September 16, 2012
Under: Articles of Interest
How much can we know of the world? Some believe we can go all the way and find the answers to the most penetrating questions, at least those concerned with the natural world. Others think there is only so much we can know, that there are some very concrete limits to how much information we can gather about reality. These limits are not just a consequence of our brains or the tools we use to extract knowledge. They are Nature’s trademarks.
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The new quantum mechanics imposed two fundamental restrictions on knowledge: 1. we can only know the probability of finding a particle in a given place; 2. the observer interacts with what is being observed. As a consequence, the determinism of classical physics is an approximation to a reality where the notion of complete knowledge seems to be an impossibility.
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To Einstein, the probabilistic description of the natural world couldn’t be the final word. There had to be an objective reality out there, independent of the observer. Quantum mechanics, useful as it was, had to be an incomplete theory. He believed in a deeper layer of physical reality where the normalcy of classical physics—determinism and the separation of observer and observed—would prevail.
Niels Bohr, on the other hand, saw quantum mechanics as an expression of the world of the very small. To him, there was no reason why the rules that apply to the world around us, that is, the rules of classical physics, should also apply in such a different realm. What physicists were finding was the way things were. At some point, Bohr apparently said to Einstein: “Stop telling God what to do!”
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Einstein couldn’t accept what to him was akin to intellectual defeat, an acknowledgment that there is only so much we can know about the world and, at a deeper level, that Nature doesn’t follow determinism all the way down to its core. To Bohr, the success of quantum mechanics spoke for itself. The theory described the data extremely well, and that was enough. Furthermore, Bohr saw the relationship between observer and observed as an expression of our connection with the world.
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At this juncture, things remain uncertain. Experiments to uncover an einsteinian deeper structure of reality have so far failed. On the other hand, quantum mechanics does display certain properties that are quite bizarre, whereby two separate systems, if initially prepared in a certain way, may affect each other’s behavior instantaneously even if separated by huge distances, a seeming violation of causality.
Einstein, Bohr, And Ultimate Reality
[,,,]
The new quantum mechanics imposed two fundamental restrictions on knowledge: 1. we can only know the probability of finding a particle in a given place; 2. the observer interacts with what is being observed. As a consequence, the determinism of classical physics is an approximation to a reality where the notion of complete knowledge seems to be an impossibility.
[,,,]
To Einstein, the probabilistic description of the natural world couldn’t be the final word. There had to be an objective reality out there, independent of the observer. Quantum mechanics, useful as it was, had to be an incomplete theory. He believed in a deeper layer of physical reality where the normalcy of classical physics—determinism and the separation of observer and observed—would prevail.
Niels Bohr, on the other hand, saw quantum mechanics as an expression of the world of the very small. To him, there was no reason why the rules that apply to the world around us, that is, the rules of classical physics, should also apply in such a different realm. What physicists were finding was the way things were. At some point, Bohr apparently said to Einstein: “Stop telling God what to do!”
[,,,]
Einstein couldn’t accept what to him was akin to intellectual defeat, an acknowledgment that there is only so much we can know about the world and, at a deeper level, that Nature doesn’t follow determinism all the way down to its core. To Bohr, the success of quantum mechanics spoke for itself. The theory described the data extremely well, and that was enough. Furthermore, Bohr saw the relationship between observer and observed as an expression of our connection with the world.
[,,,]
At this juncture, things remain uncertain. Experiments to uncover an einsteinian deeper structure of reality have so far failed. On the other hand, quantum mechanics does display certain properties that are quite bizarre, whereby two separate systems, if initially prepared in a certain way, may affect each other’s behavior instantaneously even if separated by huge distances, a seeming violation of causality.
Einstein, Bohr, And Ultimate Reality
In : Articles of Interest