THE QUANTUM REALITY PROBLEM
Physicists now possess a perfect theory of matter — quantum theory—that is correct whenever it has been tested. Quantum theory has spawned new concepts and new technology that allow us to create and measure lots of subtle phenomena that we never knew existed— “squeezed vacuum” is one of my favorites.
But in spite of quantum theory's enormous range (from quarks to quasars) and its many successful experiments, we do not yet possess a reasonable quantum reality— a simple story about how the world actually works that we can tell to our children.
Quantum mechanics represents the world as a wave (the wavefunction) before you measure it and a particle when you measure it. A measuring device is said to "collapse the wavefunction”, instantly changing big wave into tiny particle.
Two problems with this picture: physicists don’t
know how to characterize the unmeasured wavefunction: is it a
real physical wave or some less-real wave of
possibility? This roadblock to quantum reality is called "the quantum interpretation question"
Additionally physicists do not know how to characterize a measuring device: what qualities must such a this device possess that gives it the power to turn spread-out possibility into local actuality? This quantum reaity mystery is called "the quantum measurement problem"
Our ability to tell a simple story about how this solid material world comes into existence is severely hampered by the fact that a wave whose nature we do not completely understand is changed by a process which we also do not understand into the ordinary bits and pieces, lights, colors and shadows of the familiar material world that surrounds and composes us.
Quantum theory was invented by Schrődinger and Heisenberg little more than 100 years ago but, a century later, the problem of quantum reality stubbornly remains unsolved. I wrote a book about it “Quantum Reality:Beyond the New Physics”.
THE HARD PROBLEM OF MATERIALISM
Nick Herbert noticed this first, a few days after his 90th birthday.
Ironically, the immense success of quantum theory in explaining fine details of material existence has led to its embarrassing inability to explain why there should be any material existence at all!
5 comments:
Yes.
Indeed.
"Quantum Reality" remains a cult-of-one classic, my go-to source for a lay person's overview of the quantum world. Now that I'm writing "The Stanford Manual of Medical Tai Chi" I'm struggling to express, in my chapter "Tai Ji and Quantum Cosmology" my felt sense of how the energetic of tai ji practice are modeled by quantum theory, leading to altered states of consciousness and phenomena such as synchronicities, telepathy, and precognition.
A few days ago there was an article on phys.org entitled "What kills Schrödinger's cat? Underground experiment rules out gravity model for quantum decoherence" https://phys.org/news/2026-09-schrdinger-cat-underground-gravity-quantum.html Quote
"“Somewhere between the microscopic realm of elementary particles and the macroscopic world of human beings, something strange happens: The rules of quantum physics, which work so exquisitely for tiny atoms, seem to lose their grip as objects grow larger. Pondering where and how this shift fromsmall-scale quantum fuzziness to everyday sharp certainty happens gives rise to thought-experiment oddities like Schrödinger's famous dead-and-alive cat. The process by which quantum phenomena like superposition—the paradoxical affliction of Schrödinger's cat—fade into the classical reality we experience is known as [quantum] decoherence.”"
As an aside, Ruben, who understands QR at its mathematical finest, and with whom I was discussing Carlo Rovelli's new book (new book, old theory) posited, "This [experiment in the underground cave]may be the death knell for Rovelli’s Quantum Loop work. On the positive side, this gives him a chance to look for a more promising path."
I feel more comfortable when I think that everything is Hilbert space, an underlying infinite-dimensional space that includes our minds, our thoughts, the physical world, all the alternative versions of these, all together. And there's no need to wake up because we're living in the big dream, and the big dream is in us. Why is there something instead of nothing? Why is there nothing instead of something? We're here forever. We were never here. Coasting by with Zen aphorisms. I'll never know, it doesn't matter. I'm glad I saw Nick on his birthday. My favorite old coot, always ten years older than me. My advisor over the many years. I usually come and consult Nick when I'm starting a novel, and I explain whatever new bit of fanciful technology I'm using for it. And he always has something to say.
From the song Vulture Peak by Peter Rowan: “All rise and fall to fade away, the nature of phenomena.”
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