Reality Check
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For Albert Einstein, arguably the greatest physicist of the twentieth century, everything in the physical world had to have an independent reality. That is, it had to subsist independently of any observation or measurement of it. This employed to huge objects as well as to particles, like the electron. This conception of an independent reality of the physical world originated with Galileo in the seventeenth century. He did two things which affected all subsequent science. First, he got rid of the entire divine world of Greek and medieval doctrine from science. Up to then, this had been a real world, though one which was rather independent of humane participation. Its reality, therefore, had been objective, while the reality of the physical world, which did depend on humane sensing through the senses, was of subjective reality. After Galileo, the upper, divine world became one of faith only. That left only the physical world for investigation. Galileo accorded with the Greek philosophers that the subjective nature of sense impressions made them so dependent on strictly personal elements that they were unsuitable for any scientific investigation. This led to his second rudimentary change: he separated all natural phenomena into two classes, or sets of “qualities”. His “secondary qualities” included the majority of what we understand in nature, namely all that is known through the senses of smell, touch, taste and hearing. He felt that all these perceptions needed the presense of sense organs in humane beings, so that they were hopelessly subjective and accordingly had to be excluded from science. That left only his “primary qualities” as subjects fit for science. These crucial calibers were very few in number and Rene Descartes later scaled down them to just two, matter and motion. For Galileo, the matter and motion of objects persisted even without a humane presence. He hence felt that their reality was objective, even though they belonged to the physical world. Although Galileo focalized his new science of physics on just matter and motion, he thought that these two calibers alone could unlock all the mysteries of nature and explain wholly the behavious of all objects. Later thinkers accorded with him. Descartes famously said, “give me matter and motion and I will create the universe”. All Newton’s laws involved only matter and motion. As time went on, physicists started out to impute this independent, goal to be attained reality to everything physical, not just the matter and motion distinct features of objects. By the end of the nineteenth century, for anything to be considered “real” it had to be physical and the only reality was the physical world. This precisely explains Einstein’s sensations and assumptions. He, the observer, was rather independent of the object observed, and his observations or measurements of the object did not influence or interfere with the independent existence of that object. Most of us feel the same way as Einstein, in fact this whole argument up to now might seem to be belaboring the obvious. So here comes the point: innovative quantum physics has shown that Einstein was wrong! There is no goal to be attained world of independently existent objects. All natural phenomena are sensed through our senses and therefore have no more than a subjective reality. They are appearances, not realities. Galileo had made a rudimentary philosophical error in assigning an goal to be attained reality to his “primary qualities”: he ignored the fact that you still necessitated the sense of sight to understand matter and motion, so that these were just as subjective in nature as anything else sensed through any of the other senses. He was led to make this error by his authenti sentiment that he, the observer, no longer had the kind of connections that the medieval man felt with observed nature. There was no more unseen but felt participation with the processes in the natural world. Galileo, the original innovative man, saw nature analytically, as a specimen on a slab, to be examined with a view to finding a mathematical comprehensible statement for what was going on. As he put it: “The language of nature is mathematics”. Later thinkers, like Descartes and Francis Bacon, consorted with him. Newton’s laws were mathematical expressions of processes involving matter and motion which, to him, were sufficient to lay bare all the mysteries of nature. Later developments in physics in the early part of the twentieth century, when relativity and quantum mechanics showed the limitations of Newtonian physics, never addressed Galileo’s errors specifically, so that even a luminary like Albert Einstein (together with most frequent people) still felt that the world had to be independently real. What in the long run broke the spell was the increasing dominance of quantum mechanics, a branch of progressed physics that Einstein himself, ironically, helped to found. Its most vocal proponent, Niels Bohr, was engaged in a decades long argument with Einstein and the final proofs, giving Bohr the victory, did not emerge until the 1970s, after the death of both of these friendly rivals. The significations of quantum mechanics are so outrageous and counterintuitive that physicists for the most percentage have ignored them and concentrated rather on the highly successful mathematical explanations of events and their experimental proofs. Quantum mechanics is the most successful system in physics today. None of it is forecastings has ever been proved wrong. It has become the bedrock of the modern science. Yet it states flatly that observation not only marks the behaviour of the object observed, it also brings it into existence. As one eminent quantum cosmologist put it: “No microscopic property is a property until it is an observed property”. Before the observation, there was no object, but after the observation the object existed for every one else also. Furthermore, quantum theory states that events in one emplacement may without any delay “influence” events in another, even one far away, say in another galaxy. This runs counter to the accepted truism that not one thing in the universe may be transmitted more quickly than the speed of light. It is clear that these developments in quantum mechanics have a desolating affect on our sense of reality. Werner Heisenberg (the author of thePrinciple of Indeterminacy) put it this way: ” In the experiments with regards to atomic events we have to do with things and facts that are just as real as any phenomena in each and everyday life. But the atoms or elementary atoms themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or future prospects or potentials rather than one of things or facts.” But the “things” or facts of each and everyday life that Heisenberg refers to are plainly accumulations of enormous quantities of elementary particles. If these corpuscles are not real, how may the “things” of which they are composed be real? It is clear that the “reality” which Heisenberg refers to is the same as Einstein’s “reality”, that is the independent reality of physical objects. If our observations are as indispensable as quantum theory states, it is clear that any comprehensible statement of events in the physical world comes up versus our consciousness, if we are attempting to explain what is going on, that is to find the meaning of events. No mere interpretation of quantum theory may keep away from the encounter with consciousness. As another thinker put it: “Useful as it is beneath each and everyday circumstances to say that the world exists “out there” independent of us, that view may no longer be upheld. There is a strange sense in which this is a ‘participatory universe’.” All these determinations and all this language of the latest quantum mechanical musings is beginning to sound eerily familiar. To begin with, Galileo’s worldview (still reflected by Einstein), has now been decisively overturned by quantum mechanics. Before Galileo, the Greek worldview prevailed, right through the Middle Ages. This worldview was highly “participatory”, with man and nature connected in galore ways. The latest physics is now returning to this view. Modern physics has likewise overturned other Galilean axioms, like the one saying that mathematics is the language of nature. The Platonic view of mathematics was that is was rigorously a give rise to of the humane mind, without any outside reality. This is once more the view of innovative physics, which maintains that a hypothesis, no matter how a lot of times it is proved right, will always stay not one thing more than a hypothesis, which might be overturned the next day by new facts or arguments. What we are seeing is that modern physics is showing a very finish agreement not with Galileo, the founder of the science, but with the very Greek traditions which Galileo was at such pains to overthrow in the seventeenth century. For the Greeks, all physical phenomena, perceivable through our senses, were not independent (that is objective) realities but merely subjective appearances. Using dissimilar language, innovative physics agrees with this position. Greek thinking with regards to these “appearances” likewise included the conception that they were the “actual forms”, on earth, representing the “potential forms”, existent in the immaterial, goal to be attained world of the divine. The subjective, physical world had it is origin in this objective, immaterial world. Heisenberg’s use of the word “potentialities” to describe the microscopic world, which is not “real”, is telling. Physics has tried to find the origin of matter within our world of nature. For hundreds of years it has looked for the ultimate, irreducible matter particle, this origin of matter, by dividing matter into ever littler particles. Classically, the atom was thought to be this uttermost particle. It was not. The proton was not. Finally, it was realized that the size of a particle actually depended on the amount of energy that could be directed at it, to smash it into even littler particles. The end of this routine was not within this world of nature because, at a sure energy level, all matter and strength molecules would merge into an undifferentiated stream of energy. This realization led to the conception of the string particle, as the uttermost matter particle, by definition. The string particle is a one-dimensional particle which, as such, cannot subsist in our extraordinary world of nature. If it is to be the origin of matter, however, it ought to be “real” in numerous fashion, which proposes a further convergence with Greek thought. If the string particle were to be the with objectivity real origin of matter, in an immaterial world, it would fit well into a long-established philosophical framework, with which innovative physics agrees in each other way. The other outrageous results of quantum theory likewise become manageable if the conception of both a subjective reality is used for the physical world of appearances and also one of goal to be attained reality for the immaterial world of origins and “potential forms”. This goal to be attained world could then be thought of as preserving the physical world of appearances in our absence, without having to worry when it comes to what role our consciousness has to play in the originative process. Within such an expanded frame of reference, physics could carry out it is functions of dealing with the world in a practical manner without perpetually bumping up versus contradictory absurdities.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Cody Laredo is finishing his sophomore year of high school on top of the world. He has passed all his classes, which means he’ll be able to QB the varsity football team in the fall. And he’s looking forward to a long, lazy summer, working at his dad’s landscaping business and spending all his spare time with his girlfriend, Clea Weston, the smartest, most beautiful girl in school. When Clea’s wealthy father abruptly whisks her away to the other side of the world for the summer, however, Cody starts to rethink his luck. Things go from bad to worse when Clea unwillingly transfers to an elite private school in Vermont for her junior year — worlds away from Cody’s working-class background. And when Cody suffers a torn ACL following a hard hit in a fall football game, he feels like the whole world has been yanked out from under his feet. Cody had been counting on his football talent — it was his ticket to a Division I football scholarship, to a future away from his small Colorado town, to a life with Clea. But when he’s no longer Cody the quarterback, who is Cody, exactly? All his life he’s been told he has football smarts, not book smarts, a comment that seems to become a self-fulfilling prophecy when the combination of popping pain pills, missing Clea and generally giving up on himself prompts Cody to drop out of school and take a dead-end job. Cody has just about given up on life when he suddenly finds a new mission. Clea has abruptly disappeared from her Vermont boarding school. The police seem to be flummoxed, and Cody holds a key clue — a letter she wrote to him the day she disappeared. Cody sets off on a road trip to a world of privilege, wealth and secrets, a world he doesn’t understand but soon finds himself investigating. He doesn’t know who, if anyone, he can trust — but he has to learn to trust himself again if he’s going to have any chance of finding Clea. REALITY CHECK is a tight, smart mystery, one with plenty of twists and unexpected turns that will keep readers turning the pages. Just as compelling as the mystery plot, however, is the story of Cody’s journey to find himself, to discover his talents, to believe that he has worth somewhere other than on the football field. Abrahams also cleverly ties in plot points that could have been ripped from recent headlines, giving the mystery added currency and urgency. If the novel has a fault, it’s that the story’s conclusion feels slightly rushed, a little abrupt, so readers will probably be clamoring for more stories starring Cody and featuring the seemingly star-crossed lovers from different sides of the tracks. — Reviewed by Norah Piehl 5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. So there’s Cody on the top of the world and then suddenly, he’s not. Angry because she received her first `B’ on a report card ever, Clea’s father sends her to Hong Kong for the summer and then off to boarding school in the fall, leaving Cody alone and feeling as if he’s been gut-punched. Then, at the very beginning of the football season, Cody takes a late hit and suffers a torn ACL. End of season, maybe end of football career, definitely end of chances for a good scholarship. Now Cody’s life seems fairly pointless. All of the things that used to matter most are gone. Just when he’s feeling his lowest, Cody sees a newspaper headline that jolts him out of his lethargy. Clea, his ex-girlfriend, has gone missing from her boarding school in Vermont. Driven by an impulse he can’t explain, Cody gets in his car and drives from Colorado to Vermont. He’s determined to find Clea, or at the very least, get to the bottom of her disappearance. 4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. When he think things can’t get worse, his girlfriend turns up missing from her school; it’s all over the news, and the authorities aren’t finding any leads. Cody decides to go look for her himself, and discovers that things are not always as they appear. If you are looking for a well-written page turner, Peter Abrahams delivers with ‘Reality Check’ – it’s a twisty, exciting read! |
A Tight, Smart Mystery, One With Plenty of Twists and Unexpected Turns