The development of atomic physics questioned the idea of the real that modernity built on classical mechanics.
He established that deterministic explanatory models, which worked with perfect precision in the macro world, became inconsistent when one went deeper in understanding the micro world.
Thus, when establishing his famous principle of indeterminacy or uncertainty, Werner Heisenberg discussed the possibility of a mechanical and closed causality in the realm of physics.
This dramatically broke with any closed explanation, in terms of one-way causes and effects, of the world.
how bad is the uncertainty
The principle, formulated in 1925, indicates that the more accurate the knowledge of a particle’s position, the more imprecise the measurement of its mass and velocity, and vice versa.
Thus, the accuracy with which it can be measured is limited.
This does not depend on the device used, which could be hypothetically perfect, but on the act of measuring itself, as the measurement of something depends on the way you measure it and not on the measured object.
The distance, for example, does not matter whether it is measured in kilometers or miles, because this does not change it, but the result varies depending on whether one method or another is used and, with it, its value.
This does not nullify the validity of classical physics, but it tones down its precision: classical mechanics proposes to work with perfectly measurable quantities, because it assumes that it is possible to know the exact measure of anything and in any of its aspects. Therefore, it can postulate a deterministic and invariable view of the real.
The idea that the uncertainty principle actually nullifies determinism is questioned, but this implies the acceptance of a rather strange idea: that in reality there are no positions, masses or speeds of particles – and, yes, only waves that are perfectly quantifiable through functions complex.
In this way, the indeterminacy of any system would only be apparent.
The idea, however, does not change the intuitive problem of altering a system by measuring it.
Furthermore, the shift from particles to waves does not resolve the issue of the epistemological closure of physics, raised by Erwin Schrödinger, who devised the well-known thought experiment of the cat in 1935.
here is a locked cat
Imagine the animal placed inside an opaque box equipped with a device consisting of a glass vial containing a volatile poison and a hammer suspended over the vial, so that if you fall on it, it will break it, releasing the poison.
To ensure the system’s self-sufficiency, the hammer, in turn, was connected to an alpha particle detection mechanism, so that if the presence of at least one is detected, it will trigger and fall.
Next to the detector, we placed a radioactive atom with a 50% chance of emitting an alpha particle within an hour. Close the box and wait.
At the end of an hour, there are two possible events to have occurred: either the atom emitted an alpha particle and activated the poison trap, or it did not.
Consequently, the cat is either alive or dead. Interestingly, you can’t know what happened without opening the box.
A meticulous scientist committed to ensuring the predictive quality of what he does will want to develop a model that allows him to anticipate what happened to the cat before seeing it with his own eyes. He will then resort to a formulation of the problem in the key of quantum mechanics.
Thus, the cat will be described by a complicated wavefunction that will be the result of the superposition of the two possible states combined at 50%:
A) Live cat.
B) Dead cat.
Applying the quantum formalism, something happens that baffles us: the cat would be alive and dead at the same time.
What you do then is resort to the only positive way to find out what happened: the box is opened. But when carrying out this verification –measurement– the system is changed, as the superposition of states described in the function is broken.
It is at this moment that the happy determinism that imposes common sense appears to indicate that, as the cat could not be alive and dead at the same time, it should have been alive or dead before.
However, quantum mechanics is informing us of something more perverse: as long as no one opens the box, the cat will find itself in an undefined state, formed by the superposition of two possible states: A and B.
This simply means that it is the form of control that applies to a system that alters and determines it, because it modifies it.
There are several interpretations of this mental model.
The most basic is that the quantum interpretation shows that it is not as “obvious” as common sense suggests that ultimate certainty about something can be reached, since there is an ungovernable probabilistic component.
Anticipate, not predict
We have been trying to overcome this paradox, in order to advance towards the idea of a predictive model that allows us to know what will happen to the cat.
The most recent was presented by Zlatko Minev, a member of the team led by Michel Devoret at Yale University (USA): the “quantum leap”, that is, the moment when it is decided whether the cat lives or dies, is not as abrupt as one thought.
Although it was not observed experimentally until the 1980s, the idea of the quantum leap is due to the Danish physicist Niels Bohr, and what happens when measuring the quantum information of an atom or molecule – the so-called bit or qubit.
By making this measurement, the atom “jumps” from one energy state to another, and in the long run these jumps are known to be unpredictable.
What the Yale team established is that while it’s not possible to make accurate predictions about changes in a system, it would be acceptable to have a monitoring device that gives an early signal that a quantum leap will occur.
This would give physical coherence to any system under study and, ideally, could anticipate the cat’s death and even reverse it before it happens (which, by the way, is quite paradoxical in itself).
In reality, this discovery does not invalidate the usefulness of Schrödinger’s paradox, since it does not break the quantum dogma that the future is random, nor does it alter the foundation of the principle of indeterminacy.
It only indicates –and this is not little– that it is possible to have a means to warn that a change will occur in the system under study.
Something similar to what happened to fish days before the volcano eruption on the island of La Palma: Fishermen reported that fish catches had drastically reduced before the eruption because fish had simply disappeared from the usual fishing zones.
It’s not that the animals knew there would be a volcanic eruption.
They simply anticipated a danger by noticing the first signs, such as low-intensity tremors or subtle changes in water temperature and composition, that elude human perception.
Philosopher’s Touch
All of this, and here comes philosophy, opens up new interpretive paths regarding the mind-body problem, which invalidate the presumption that dualism is necessarily a false, anomalous, or dispensable approach.
In fact, given what advocates of reductionism postulate, it is neither absurd to be dualist nor, in fact, it can be said that being dualist lacks scientific meaning.
Schrödinger himself presented some ideas in 1944.
Attracted by the enormous complexity observable in living matter, he proposed that, in relation to the behavior of this living matter, it was necessary to seek a different answer, since it had to be accepted that, perhaps, it functioned irreducibly to the ordinary laws of physics.
This does not imply that new laws of physics must be discovered to explain the functioning of the living, but that the different superimposed systemic levels from which any organic activity is constituted modify, alter and alternate the deterministic and probabilistic processes that regularly function in inert matter.
How to explain consciousness then?
One can start by accepting the existence of an immaterial soul as a symbolic-rational response to the fact of the plurality of manifestations of the conscious.
Historically successful solution, but with serious theoretical difficulties. And if not, ask René Descartes.
An alternative would be to understand that consciousness is in intimate connection with the physical state of a limited region of matter, the body, on which it depends, and that, since there is a great plurality of bodies, there would be a plurality of consciousnesses or minds, as many as people.
But that would bring us to the problem of subjectivism and relativism.
In other words, how is it possible that people could agree on something with others, if we live trapped in our own conscience?
Unless, of course, an alternative compromise proposal was presented, such as the so-called systemic emergentism (which we will leave for another day).
Schrödinger opted, third option, for a monist-materialist posture when approaching the case, understanding that the mental was a mere epiphenomenon.
But this kind of explanation is not entirely functional either, insofar as it requires a psychophysical determinism that its own paradox questions, for it prevents one from being able to explain the anomaly inherent in psychophysical laws.
Apparently his cat was not only alive and dead at the same time, he was also a philosopher.
* Francisco Pérez Fernández he is a professor of criminal psychology, delinquency psychology, anthropology and criminal sociology and a researcher at the University Camilo José Cela, in Spain.
* Francisco López-Muñoz he is a professor of pharmacology and vice-dean of research and science at Universidade Camilo José Cela.
This article was originally published on the academic news site The Conversation and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Read the original version here (in Spanish).
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