(November 5, 2014 at 1:07 pm)Chas Wrote:(November 5, 2014 at 12:52 pm)ManMachine Wrote: It's a little more subtle than that, Schrodinger is not telling us that we are uncertain about it's state but that uncertainty is a fundamental characteristic of the state in which Quanta exist.
MM
No, that is not at all what he was saying. He was making fun of the Copenhagen Interpretation.
The problem with invoking the 'Copenhagen Interpretation' is that it is not a neat, well defined set of principles but a loose collection of views developed by physicists and philosophers throughout the early part of the 20th Century. Your statement is very slippery and obfuscatory, while technically not wrong, it is vague enough as to be largely irrelevant to my point.
It would be impossible and meaningless to have any discussion about Quantum Physics and ignore or exclude an expression of the mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain complementary variables can be known simultaneously, in other words, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
I'd also suggest that 'making fun' is a broad interpretation, he certainly intended it as a discussion of what he saw as the problems inherent in the strange nature of quantum superpositions as discussed in the EPR article and it took shape in letters exchanged between Einstein and Schrodinger.
MM
"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions" - Leonardo da Vinci
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
