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Seeking Guidance Re: Philosophy for Theoretical Physics

Seeking Guidance Re: Philosophy for Theoretical Physics

romistrub
Initiate

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Joined: Aug 27, 2009

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Posted 08/27/09 - 04:28 PM: Subject: Seeking Guidance Re: Philosophy for Theoretical Physics	#1
I have spent much of my university life running around in circles, spinning so quickly I almost fell out of my skin. Then I discovered Quantum Mechanics (you may have read about me). I realized that this is the sense of discovery that I never want to lose. I left the profitable path of nanotechnology engineering and am embarking on a far more personally profitable path of my own making. The label, be it as it may, is "molecular modeling", but this is hardly as limiting as it sounds. I am going to be working to develop spintronic devices and possibly nanopharmaceuticals, but, reductively, my goal is to understand and discover emergent properties of quantum theoretical systems. Given the modus operandi of quantum mechanics (and all of theoretical physics), the questions I will be dealing with will likely be as philosophically difficult as they are physically (at the conceptual level there is hardly a difference). I am a renaissance man in that I am truly excellent at nothing, but I wish to arm myself with at minimum the philosophical background to recognize that a problem exists where a purely scientific background would not. Words like epistemology, philosophy of science, formal logic, and the like come to mind. I am here eliciting advice so that I may move beyond words. Pardon the prose. It's a bad habit. Note that I am free not only to take whichever course I desire at my host university, but also any course within a reasonable geographical radius. Likewise, I am permitted to create a course from scratch where no reasonable alternative exists. Keep this flexibility in mind: your suggestions need not be pigeonholed into the common philosophical domains nor "easy to digest" established units of knowledge as are the courses commonly offered. Thanks in advance to all!

bert1
Graduate

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Location: Morecambe, UK

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Posted 08/29/09 - 10:24 PM:	#2
As no one better qualified has replied, I'll just give you my singular suggestion: David Bohm's Wholeness and the Implicate Order. David Bohm is a quantum physicist, but he's also very knowledgeable about philosophy, much more so than I am. He doesn't mind doing metaphysics at all. The book covers a wide range of subjects. His overall point is that certain features of the Quantum Theory (as he calls it, he doesn't use the word 'mechnics') indicate that reality is one thing with apparent differences within it rather than a collection of fragmented bits. He says everything is related by reality's internal relations rather than external relations between separate objects, although most of the time it works OK to think of separate objects related by external relations. Bohm is critical of scientists who even now have atomistic prejudices: the idea that there is some very small level of objects which is basic, and from that extrapolate to the macro. (Something like that anyway, I may have got it a bit wrong). He also suggests an alternative language called the 'rheomode' which does away with the subject-object distinction. Which is interesting. There's a chapter with some maths and physics in it. I only vaguely followed it. The point of the chapter is to outline the possibility that the apparent randomness of quantum events is determined by a deeper level of order which is even harder to probe with test and experiment than the quantum world is. He talks about consciousness as well. I don't know if that's the sort of thing you are after. I really enjoyed it and it gave me much food for thought.
"Like a ungroomed dog in which the desired look is it’s long hair but it has been so unattended to, that combing is impractical, and it might be better if the hair was cut and attended to as it grows back." d_martin

ClaudeHooper
Student

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Posted 08/30/09 - 03:48 AM:	#3
Searching the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for "quantum" yields 193 entries: http://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=quantum including one on "Quantum Approaches to Consciousness": http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/

Noumenal1
Aspirant

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Posted 09/14/09 - 03:06 PM:	#4
Once you have become familiar with existing interpretations of quantum mechanics (Bohr's complementarity, Everett's multi-verse, and Bell inequalities/hidden variables, EPR paradox/Bohr's response etc), I would suggest Immanuel Kant's "A Critique of Pure Reason". Now, Kant new nothing of QM as he died way back in 1804. What he wrote about was epistemology,...in particular, that a-priori cognitive faculties determine the form of experience; Time, space, and causality are a-priori intuitions, or conditions in which reality must conform for a 'classical' understanding to be possible. These intuitions are not entities existent apart from their intellectual application, they are the form (conceptual framework) in which physical understanding must take, necessarily, given the nature of the mind. No one has rational understanding of quantum mechanics, because reality at this level is not conformable within the above subject-dependent intuitions. Physics at the quantum level is about making predictions, which it does well,... not about providing an understanding of the underlying reality. Abraham Pais regarded Bohr as Kant's successor. Edited by Noumenal1 on 09/15/09 - 04:11 PM

Cadrache
Tenured Poster

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Location: AB, Canada

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Posted 09/15/09 - 03:16 PM:	#5
I liked "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" As well as another one that played along the similarity of Chinese culture and physics functions.
"...There was a writer who asked why it was that when we find positive experiences we say that only the physical facts are real, but in negative experiences we believe that reality is subjective. He made an example of those who say that in birth only the pain is real, the joy a subjective point of view, but that in death it is the emotional loss that is the reality." - Tony Ballantyne, Recursion. _____________________________________________ Truth is want. - The internal state of matters. Truth is Need. - The external state of affairs.

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