Is there a problem? There is. It concerns the relationship of the measurer to the measured, the scientist (or her measuring tools) to whatever-is-being-measured. Philosophers tend to view it as the relationship of subject to object, noting inherent problems in discussing such a thing using a language structured around exactly that relationship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In contemporary physics, there is general agreement that the measuring apparatus used to measure sub-atomic phenomena cannot be held neatly separate from the phenomena themselves. Initially presenting two independent systems, the act of measuring produces another system that involves both, having changed both. The two become \u201centangled\u201d with one another. The \u201cproblem,\u201d generally, is that in order to know anything about a system, we have to measure it, and when we do that, we change \u201cit\u201d. At the \u201cmacro\u201d level, where we usually live, measuring sugar in cups or distance in miles, the interaction is so small, relatively, that we\u2019ve been able to completely ignore it for millennia without noticing any negative effects. But particle physicists DO notice whole complex systems \u201ccollapsing\u201d when they are measured. And just because we haven\u2019t noticed such collapses at the macro level definitely does not<\/em> mean there haven\u2019t been any. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, if we can’t pin it down any better than that, is there any \u201creality\u201d at all?\u00a0\u00a0If so, are we capable of seeing or hearing or feeling it?\u00a0\u00a0Assuming what we \u201cknow\u201d of physical matter — that is, \u201cclassical\u201d physics — is a representation of reality, a \u201cmirror\u201d or map, if you like, is it trustworthy? What if it isn\u2019t?\u00a0\u00a0Niels Bohr, the man widely credited with having established the defining principles of quantum mechanics, insisted that whatever measurements we make must be reported in the \u201clanguage\u201d of so-called \u201cclassical\u201d physics.\u00a0\u00a0That is, the description must use terms like momentum, position, speed, etc. to describe the existence and behaviour of particles. There is no consensus about the reasons for insisting, but I suspect it’s because this is\u00a0the condition of our understanding them at all<\/em>\u00a0(my emphasis). Reports that use the terms of quantum physics, he thought, rely so completely on mathematical concepts that we can no longer grasp them as referring to \u201creal\u201d objects or events.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are basic philosophical questions, and they are open. Even more remarkable, perhaps, they seem to resolve — at least in Bohr\u2019s view — around a very particular and absolutely critical act of reporting, a kind of translation from mathematical abstraction into humanly perceptible space-time, that is, what we know as reality. No such translation can be perfect, in the sense of uniquely \u201cright\u201d. As for any translation, there are multiple possibilities. Any version perceptible to us will involve decisions — conscious or not — on the reporter\u2019s part, decisions that are profoundly creative, decisions that make worlds. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is there a problem? There is. It concerns the relationship of the measurer to the measured, the scientist (or her measuring tools) to whatever-is-being-measured. Philosophers tend to view it as the relationship of subject to object, noting...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"Matter and the Problem of Measurement","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[176,259,182],"tags":[373,375,372,374,371],"class_list":["post-2045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creativity","category-language","category-translation","tag-classical-physics","tag-measurement","tag-niels-bohr","tag-quantum-physics","tag-reality"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2045"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2726,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2045\/revisions\/2726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}