The 1935 thought experiment of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen is one of the most important episodes in the history of the dispute about the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics. The present paper deals with the origin of the EPR paper and discusses some other thought experiments that preceded the formulation of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument. Special attention is paid to the evolution of a simply photon-box experiment, which was devised by Einstein in 1930 and then modified by him several times before 1935. It is argued that the scheme of the original EPR argument is in fact contained in these few seminal experiments.
A growing number of economic phenomena are nowadays described with methods known in physics. The most frequently applied physical theories by economists are: (1) the universal gravitation law and (2) the first and second law of thermodynamics. Physical principles can also be applied to the theory of financial markets. Financial markets are composed of individual participants who may be seen to interact as particles in a physical system. This approach proposes a financial market model known as a minority game model in which securities and money are allocated on the basis of price fluctuations, and where selling is best option when the vast majority of investors tend to purchase goods or services, and vice versa. The players who end up being on the minority side win.The above applications of physical methods in economics are deeply rooted in classical physics. However, this paper aims to introduce the basic concepts of quantum mechanics to the process of economic phenomena modelling. Quantum mechanics is a theory describing the behaviour of microscopic objects and is grounded on the principle of wave-particle duality. It is assumed that quantum-scale objects at the same time exhibit both wave-like and particle-like properties. The key role in quantum mechanics is played by: (1) the Schrödinger equation describing the probability amplitude for the particle to be found in a given position and at a given time, and as (2) the Heisenberg uncertainty principle stating that certain pairs of physical properties cannot be economic applications of the Schrödinger equation as well as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. We also try to describe the English auction by means the quantum mechanics methods.
It is a self-evident truth that nowadays a growing number of economic phenomena is described by means of physics methods. The most frequent theories derived from physics and applied to economy are: (1) the universal gravitation law and (2) the first as well as the second law of thermodynamics. The methods of static physics are applicable also to the theory of financial markets. In this case it is assumed that the financial market is composed of single participants interacting as a system of particles. Such approach is associated with a model of financial market otherwise known as a minority game. It is postulated that the process of securities and money allocation is performed on the basis of prices fluctuation, where - if a vast majority of investors tend to purchase goods or services - the sale constitutes a more profitable option, and vice versa. The players who end up on minority side win. At the end of the XX century the economy commenced to apply the laws of quantum mechanics. These laws proved to be useful, in particular when attempting to generalize game theory, which resulted in quantum games. The aim of the paper is to compare the rules and auction mechanisms with selected laws of quantum mechanics. This paper aims also to introduce the basic concepts of quantum mechanics to the process of economic phenomena modeling. Quantum mechanics is a theory describing a behaviour of microscopic objects and is grounded on the principle of wave-particle duality. It is assumed that quantum-scale objects at the same time exhibit both wave-like and particle-like properties. The key role in quantum mechanics is played by: (1) the Schrödinger equation describing the probability amplitude for the particle to be found at a given position and at a given time, as well as (2) the Heisenberg uncertainty principle stating that a certain pair of physical properties may not be simultaneously measured to arbitrarily high precision.
Even though the description of the universe in cosmology is known to be given by a smooth 4-dimensional Lorentz manifold for energies below Planck scale, one still can ask about the origins of this phenomenon. In this paper we show that mathematics used for description of quantum systems at micro scale determines smoothness of spacetime at large cosmological scales and indicates the dimension 4 as the only possible dimension for spacetime.
The current 50th issue of Philosophical Problems in Science (Zagadnienia Filozoficzne w Nauce) summarizes the efforts of both philosophers and scientists to understand how a broader philosophical context sets the stage for the development of scientific research, with physics playing a leading role. In particular, the paper reviews the content of the last twenty-five issues of the journal with an emphasis on the philosophical problems that arise in the practice of physics. The overview reveals that these problems reflect the main conceptual division in physics between the treatment of the micro-world described by quantum mechanics and the macro-world governed by the general theory of relativity. Both of these theories, taken separately, generate a host of philosophical concerns such as their proper interpretation (Bell’s Theorem and its consequences) or the meaning and the eventual validity of the notions of space and time. Other philosophical problems in physics, such as chaos and determinism, are also considered. The authors are well aware that the formulation of the future theory of quantum gravity will be a demanding task requiring profound philosophical reflection.
The history of quantum mechanics is divided into two periods which are labeled as the first and the second quantum revolutions. During the first of these periods mathematical formalism of quantum theory was formulated and interpreted, during the second – new quantum technologies were developed. It turns out that conceptual revolution of the first period enabled technological revolution of the second. In this article it is argued, that Irish physicist, John S. Bell, played an important role in the process of triggering the second quantum revolution. His work on quantum entanglement of the EPR particles made possible elaborating some new methods and theoretical approaches clarifying the quantum description of single objects. These methods and approaches became the core of new scientific domains which are hybrids of quantum mechanics and some classical sciences. The quantum cryptography and the quantum computation are examples of such domains and in the paper special attention is paid to them. It is showed that theoretical analyses of John S. Bell provide a conceptual background for these disciplines and this is why it’s not improper to call this physicist – as Alain Aspect did – a prophet of the second quantum revolution.
Tomasz Bigaj’s new book is an authoritative and comprehensive discussion of recent issues concerning the means and metaphysical implications of individuating identical quantum particles. This review briefly summarises the book’s contributions and considers some of its implications for the debate over indiscernibility in quantum mechanics.
In this paper I address the problem of justifying Steven French’s eliminative ontic structural realism by the metaphysical underdetermination argument. My main goal is to show that there are underlying strategies in the argument and that they are questionable. I provide arguments for this claim and conclude that while the metaphysical thesis of eliminative ontic structural realism is dismissible, French’s views can be characterized without it – at a very high price, however. ---------------------------------------- Received: 23/04/2024. Reviewed: 7/10/2024. Accepted: 15/11/2024.
It is well known from the history of science, that almost all crucial concepts are subject to change during the evolution of scientific theories. There is, however, another (often forgotten or omitted) aspect of this process, i.e. a role of some approximations, necessarily applied to any system of interest, in practically every single calculation carried out within quantum mechanical formalism, which can also result in change of the meaning of some of these concepts. In this paper, the two concepts of great importance in chemistry and physics, namely the concept of an atom, and the concept of a chemical bond are analyzed, both from the point of view of classical chemistry and quantum mechanics. The evolution of their meaning, due to the approximations, resulting in some important differences is highlighted.
The article presents the possible role of consciousness in quantum-mechanical description of physical reality. The widely spread interpretations of quantum phenomena are considered as indicating the apparent connection between conscious processes (such as observation) and the properties of the microcosm. The reasons for discrepancies between the results of observations of the microcosm and macrocosm and the potential association of consciousness with these reasons are closely investigated. The mentioned connection is meant to be interpreted in the sense that the probable requirement for a complete understanding of quantum theory is the adequate description of consciousness within it and that the correct theory of consciousness should include quantum-mechanical theoretical apparatus. In this context, the question about the methods of scientific cognition is discussed, in particular, the problem of the place and the importance of intellectual intuition in science and philosophy of science. The author draws the conclusions about the current state of the “measuring” consciousness. problem in its relationship with
Andrzej Dragan’s book Quantechism or a cage for people is a great popular science book to start a fascinating adventure with the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. It is written in an easy language, does not require from the reader a deep knowledge of contemporary physical issues, while describing, illustrating and explaining them very well. Instead, it requires broader historical knowledge and at least basic philosophical knowledge for verification, helping to bring out what is most valuable in the book. Unfortunately, the book, while popularizing science, also makes a terrible mess and does a lot of damage to the deeper understanding of physics, its history, and the meaning and function of philosophy and religion. And so it can become an attractive and appealing, but nevertheless a trap-cage for thinking people.
One of the most important interpretative problems of quantum mechanics concerns the so called hidden variables. Sometimes it is said that the Bell's theorem falsifies theories of such variables, but in fact, it falsifies only local ones. This paper deals with David Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is a kind of nonlocal hidden variable theory. This theory delivers a full deterministic and realistic description of quantum phenomena and predicts the same results as standard quantum mechanics. It is argued that this interpretation is still worth being investigated, because it remains in the full agreement with the mathematical formalism of this theory and it surpasses the standard interpretation as far as simplicity and lack of arbitrary assumptions are concerned.
The Schrödinger's Cat paradox was proposed in 1935 by Edwin Schrodinger, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, as an attempt to visualize the macroscopic realization of a quantum superposition state. A cat is placed in a sealed box together with a vial of poison. A two-state particle (e.g. an electron) is sent into a detector in the box resulting either in a broken or an intact vial and a dead or live cat, respectively. The main problem consists in whether the superposition state of a microscopic particle can be transferred upon the macroscopic cat, that is, whether the cat can exist in a superposition state, being simultaneously dead and alive. Since the standard Copenhagen interpretation is unable to assign any reality to the quantum superposition state, the paradox finds no resolution within the regime of this interpretation. Von Neumann's insistence on the uniform treatment of both microscopic (quantum) and macroscopic (classical) objects according to the laws of quantum mechanics provides a more consistent framework for the resolution of the paradox. In particular, the discovery of the phenomenon of decoherence, whereby the disappearance of the quantum interferences at the macro level is accounted for, suggests the onset of an extremely efficient interference relaxation process (10-23 s) upon the interaction of the two state particle with the detector. As a result, Schrodinger's cat can exist macroscopically either as dead or alive and never as a combination of both. Decoherence not only aids the resolution of the Schrodinger's Cat paradox but also sheds light upon the mechanisms by which the macro-world emerges from the microscopic quantum realm.
In his book Struktura rewolucji relatywistycznej i kwantowej w fizyce (The Structure of the Relativistic and Quantum Revolution in Physics, 2020), Wojciech Sady presents his vision of the two greatest scientific revolutions in the 20th century. The book provides an illuminating account of the way these revolutions proceeded and strongly supports the thesis that, contrary to Thomas Kuhn’s famous suggestions, the revolutions involved no breaches in the continuity in scientific development but progressed in an evolutionary (although swift) step-by-step way, and were products of collective interactive processes in the scientific community rather than individual achievements of geniuses. On the other hand, it makes a number of controversial claims. In this article, I contest Sady’s claims that new scientific theories (including the most revolutionary ones) logically follow from the theoretical and experimental knowledge already available (the Entailment thesis) or, at least, their emergence is necessary, inevitable, given the available knowledge, the thought style of the scientific community, and some minimally necessary conditions for the development of science (the Necessitation thesis), and that the role of extra-logical and extra-empirical factors, that can be designated as “creative imagination,” in the development of science is either negative or neglectable.
This essay aims to show that the recent development of quantum theory may provide us with an answer to one of the most compelling metaphysical problems, namely the problem of determinism. First, I sketch the conceptual background and draw the distinction between metaphysical and epistemological determinisms. Then, on the ground of the analysis of the problem of determinism in quantum mechanics, I argue that (1) metaphysical determinism is independent of quantum-mechanical formalism, and (2) that quantum nonlocality makes epistemological determinism impossible. I also try to show that metaphysical determinism should be regarded as a Kantian regulative idea which sets the horizon for scientific inquiry but which at the same time lacks what Kant calls “objective validity.” The main conclusion is that metaphysical determinism should be regarded as an idealization – a formal, cognitive principle that we a priori assume and not something that we discover through scientific inquiry.
The article entitled “The strange world of quanta” tries to explain, in a very general and selective way, the physics theory known as the quantum mechanics. In opposition to the classical modern theories – the classical mechanics and the mechanism – the quantum mechanics has been characterized as the new revolutionary theory which changed the scientific method and the way the reality was perceived in the XXth century. The title of this article is inspired by the apparent divergence between the everyday world and the world described by the quantum mechanics. The quantum physics is a theory which has been confirmed empirically multiple times and which greatly influenced the technological development in the XXth century. It is also hoped that it will help the humanity in the future. However, as the theory which describes the micro-scale world it stands in opposition to another influential theory of the XXth century – the general theory of relativity – which describes the macro-scale world. The problem is that these two theories can not be both fundamental and true at the same time, as they describe the two aspects of the same world. This incoherence of the laws of the universe is especially disturbing when we take into account the fact that according to the Big Bang theory the universe emerged from the micro-world. Therefore, the science community awaits the emergence of the so-called “theory of everything” which could unify both theories and explain the processes taking place in the micro- and macro-scale equally well.
Andrew Crumey’s Music, in a Foreign Language (1994) and Robert Irwin’s My Life is like a Fairy Tale (2019) foreground protagonists who undertake writing as a – fictional or fictionalised – means of representing the self against the pressures of collective histories represented by totalitarian regimes in the background. As contextualised, their practice emphasises the temporal dimension of both subjectivity and reality. While diametrically opposed, their approaches encompass a space that occasions the problematisation of such notions as history, temporality, and consciousness, at the intersection of chance and determinism, as well as the questioning of the interactions between their representations across a number of disciplines. The following study draws on theories from history, chaos theory, and quantum mechanics as discourses interwoven in the textual fabric of the two novels in order to examine the means by which fiction affords the exploration of the interplay of theoretical constructs while repositioning itself in the process.
W artykule argumentuję, że odróżnienie epistemologicznego i ontologicznego pojęcia obiektywności, oraz radykalnej obiektywności ontologicznej od obiektywności ontologicznej zrelatywizowanej do przyrządu pomiarowego pozwala na adekwatną analizę sytuacji poznawczej w mechanice kwantowej i przeciwstawienie się subiektywistycznym interpretacjom mechaniki kwantowej.
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In the article I argue that distinction between the epistemological notion and objectivity from ontological notion of objectivity, as well as radical ontological objectivity and ontological objectivity relative to the measuring instrument allows us for an adequate analysis of the cognitive situation in quantum mechanics and undermines the subjectivist interpretations of it.
The paper can be regarded as a short and informal introduction to noncommutative calculi of probability. The standard theory of probability is reformulated in the algebraic language. In this form it is readily generalized to that its version which is virtually present in quantum mechanics, and then generalized to the so-called free theory of probability. Noncommutative theory of probability is a pair (M, φ) where M is a von Neumann algebra, and φ a normal state on M which plays the role of a noncommutative probability measure. In the standard (commutative) theory of probability, there is, in principle, one mathematically interesting probability measure, namely the Lebesgue measure, whereas in the noncommutative theories there are many nonequivalent probability measures. Philosophical implications of this fact are briefly discussed.
To this novel type of statistical causality Bohr gave the name complementarity; the two mutually exclusive modes of description where said to be complementary, and they then conditioned each other in a statistical way. This relation of complementarity, expressing the limitations of the classical concepts, made it possible to give a complete and consistent account of the atomic phenomena in terms of such classical concepts of physics. According to N. Bohr, there is effort to achieving a more and more precise formulation of the complementarity idea, and to developing its wider ontological or gnoseological implications as soon as possible the phenomenological applications to others sciences, on this article, by the Quantum Mechanics.
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