This experiment requires a movable frame. To measure velocity, by contrast, we need an apparatus that allows for some recoil, and hence moveable parts. This plate defines a fixed frame of reference. To measure position, we need a stationary measuring object, like a fixed photographic plate. Make reality, possibly with some kind of mental energy.īohr, for his part, explained uncertainty by pointing out that answering certain questions necessitates not answering others. Here we find the seeds of the claims madeīy some social theorists and found in “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” If reality depends on interaction with us, it’s natural to suppose that objectivity is undermined and that we, from the outside, The act of observation brings into existence the properties of the world. It’s that before measurement those values don’t simultaneously exist. It’s not simply that we can’t simultaneously measure definite values of position and momentum, Measurement always disturbs, yet that didn’t stop classical physicists from in principle knowing position and velocity simultaneously.įor this reason Heisenberg supplemented this picture with a theory in which measurement figures prominently. Leaves the reason for uncertainty mysterious. While this “disturbance” picture of measurement is intuitive – and no doubt what inspires the common understanding exemplified in “Numbers” – it To know velocity with certainty would then require another But bouncing light off an electron imparts energy to it, causing it to move, thereby making uncertain its velocity. To photograph an electron’s position – its location in space – one Heisenberg vividly explained uncertainty with the example of taking a picture of an electron. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is not quite as strange as we think. ![]() The central place they both give to the concept of measurement. Though neither physicist would have sanctioned the above nonsense, it’s easy to imagine how such misapprehensions arise, given the things they do say about the principle, and especially But much of the blame should be reserved for the founders of quantum physics themselves, Why exactly is the uncertainty principle so misused? No doubt our sensationalist and mystery-mongering culture is partly responsible. More fetishized, abused and misunderstood - by the vulgar and the learned alike - than Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.” As Jim Holt has written, “No scientific idea from the last century is Fundamentally inaccurate uses of the principle are also common in theĪcademy, especially among social theorists, who often argue that it undermines science’s claims to objectivity and completeness. The film reasons that since we are 90 percent water, physics therefore tells us that we can fundamentally change our nature via mental energy. Asserting that observing water molecules changes their molecular structure, The film “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” uses it to justify many articles of faith in New Age philosophy. ![]() That this insight follows from quantum physics, in particular, Werner Heisenberg’s infamous “uncertainty principle.” Not all mischaracterizations of Heisenberg’s principle are as innocentĪs Eppes’s. That will change their actions,” says Charlie Eppes, the math savant who helps detectives on television’s “Numbers.” Eppes claims The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.
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