who is correct
Enstien ie a deterministic universe
or
Bohr a indeterministic universe
Excluded Middle (False Dichotomy, Faulty Dilemma, Bifurcation):
assuming there are only two alternatives when in fact there are more. For example, assuming Atheism is the only alternative to Fundamentalism, or being a traitor is the only alternative to being a loud patriot.
Hooray!! Hooray!!
Ladyjane is back.
God is in His heaven, and all is right with the world. You probably think I am joking, but I am not.
With respect to Einstein and Bohr, there is plenty of evidence that causal models and non-causal models, in their appropriate domains, are each excellent.
An interesting thing is that, according to the article “Quantum Universe” in the July 2008 Scientific American, quantum spaces can be constructed to approximate our 4 dimensional world, if they assume a form of causality!!!
Traditionally models of quantum spaces in mass collapsed into a tangled multidimensional mess, but when Jan Ambjorn, Jerry Jurkiewicz and Renate Loll assumed a particular time related causality in their model of quantum space, it laid out into a nice 4.02 dimensional space.
Just some counterintuitive food for thought.
Who’s right? Both and neither. This is a false dichotomy.
I think the jury is still out.
As long as we remain in three dimensional space and time, Einstein wins,but quantum takes us into the forth dimension (and maybe a few more) From my limited understanding, each time quantum discovers order, it follows with chaos only to see order once more. As the cyclatrons get more powerful, the “messiness” (thanks Ed3) get’s even messier, until all we have are relationships, no relationships, both, neither, and either. The best mathemeticians are still scrambling to put it together, but every time they solve one puzzle, new experimentation adds to the list of things we don’t know.
Unless there is a giant breakthrough, we may wait a loooooong time for an answer, and then there will probably be only three or four people in the world who will actually understand it. I’m hoping that CERN can give us some answers in the near future, but how long that will take is a guess at the moment.
I think it probably is a false dichotomy. But simply stating that really doesn’t get us anywhere. Why is it a false dichotomy?
The facts are that our best description of the universe is indeterministic and that a locally deterministic theory(hidden variables) is impossible. This puts causality into a bit of a mess.
Hi Fin666,
The branch on physics known as mechanics using Newtonian physics is highly deterministic. Why would you say that the Universe is indeterministic? As far as I can tell it is only indeterministic in some domains (generally the quantum world or complex situations in the macro world).
Thanks Ed
How is the dichotomy false? because (if I understand correctly) indeterminism is just the negation of determinism, i.e. there are some events which are not determined completely by causes.
Hi edd,
Because classical physics is only an approximation to quantum physics which works as a good approximation when energies are much less than planks constant. So yes nature is deterministic to a very high level of accuracy but fundeemently it is still indeterministic. If you coulple quantum physics with chaos theory the small scale uncertainties can have massive effect on large scales.
edd, i think you answered your own question; the universe implies all domains, including the quantum world and complex systems
why do you think that that the OP is a false dichotomy?
I suggested that this was a false dichotomy from a gut level belief that either/ors do not exist in real world. They exist in philosophical abstractions. Thanks to those who have fleshed out my opinion with science.
Hi Finn666,
I am pretty much the same as everyone else on the answer. I just thought that it was ironic that quantum space constructions (gravity) required causality to give a reasonable model.
One thing that most people know, but has not been made explicit here, is that causality and determinism are not the same thing. This relates to your comment about Chaos Theory among other things. Ladyjane’s reference 72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:NsO … =firefox-a is pretty good on this matter.
As a final side note, and this may represent a personal bias, I look to models that limit to Newtonian Physics and not models that limit to Quantum Mechanics. Special Relativity limits to Newtonian Mechanics as v goes to 0. I assume that GR approaches Newtonian Gravity if it is not true that M>>m. From Feynman’s book on QED it appears that there is significant overlap in the field of electromagnetics. (Though Feynman claims that all chemistry is based on Quantum mechanics; and I think that is unlikely in the formation of large complex molecules). Quantum mechanics however can not build a reasonable model of gravity, except perhaps as outlined in the new program in Scientific American.
Certainly, in their particular areas, each model has done a better job than any other model in describing a physical phenomenon.
Thanks Ed
Well my current musings on such matters, inspired in part by current work on the renormalisation group for gravity, are about the importance of scale. I think that any physical theory needs to have a scale that it is valid within. But I think nature itself is not concerned with scale.
I think that in someways the uncertainties we find on small scales(i.e quantum mechanics) may be related to this. In someways it could be that to be certain about what is going on on small scales one has to know what is happening on large scales. This maybe some what counter intuative as science is really all based around the reductionilist view that implies that the small scale defined the large scales. But as I said before nature may not care about scales it is only our descriptions that demand we say what scale we are describing. So although the small defines the large scale structure so too does the large help determine exactly what is going on on the small scales.
This idea is basically inspired by the decoherence of quantum superpostions when macroscopic measurements are conducted. In a sense I’m saying that maybe these decoherences on large scales actually help to define what is going on at small scales.
This all relates to the measurement problem. I couyld go into more detail but I’m having trouble wording exactly what I mean.
Also I think that what my conclusions will be is that there is a strange kind of third way as seems to be the popular opinion out of the in/deterministic argument.