[Vision2020] Einstein and Quantum Mechanics

[Phil Nisbet]

Bob

The uncertainty principle is not exactly the most important element of 
quantum mechanics, its a means of applying mathematics that allow us to 
approximate what due to measurement effects we can not actual measure 
ourselves.  The fact that we can not measure something because our efforts 
to see it make our measurement inaccurate were what Einstein was railing 
against.  The electron does not think that it is probably in a certain place 
and is not ruled by the statistical probability crap shoot that we are 
forced to use so that we can measure it.

"You believe in the G-d who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a 
world which objectively exists, and which I, in a wildly speculative way, am 
trying to capture. I hope that someone will discover a more realistic way; 
or rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to find. Even the 
great initial success of the Quantum Theory does not make me believe in the 
fundamental dice-game, although I am well aware that our younger colleagues 
interpret this as a consequence of senility. No doubt the day will come when 
we will see whose instinctive attitude was the correct one."  (Albert 
Einstein to Max Born, Sept 1944, 'The Born-Einstein Letters')

"On the basis of quantum theory there was obtained a surprisingly good 
representation of an immense variety of facts which otherwise appeared 
entirely incomprehensible. But on one point, curiously enough, there was 
failure: it proved impossible to associate with these Schrödinger waves’ 
definite motions of the mass points - and that, after all, had been the 
original purpose of the whole construction. The difficulty appeared 
insurmountable until it was overcome by Born in a way as simple as it was 
unexpected. The de Broglie-Schrodinger wave fields were not to be 
interpreted as a mathematical description of how an event actually takes 
place in time and space, though, of course, they have reference to such an 
event. Rather they are a mathematical description of what we can actually 
know about the system. They serve only to make statistical statements and 
predictions of the results of all measurements which we can carry out upon 
the system." (Quantum Mechanics, Albert Einstein, 1940)

"All attempts to represent the particle and wave features displayed in the 
phenomena of light and matter, by direct recourse to a space time model, 
have so far ended in failure. And Heisenberg has convincingly shown, from an 
empirical point of view, that any decision as to a rigorously deterministic 
structure of nature is definitely ruled out, because of the atomistic 
structure of our experimental apparatus."  (Quantum Physics, Albert 
Einstein, 1954)

So Einstein's problem was not that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle 
allowed us to approximate reality, it was that we had to resort to 
approximations at all.

Phil Nisbet










>From: "Robert Dickow" <dickow at uidaho.edu>
>Reply-To: dickow at uidaho.edu
>To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
>Subject: RE: [Vision2020] Einstein and Quantum Mechanics
>Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 16:58:36 -0800
>
>One of the central points in the quantum mechanics is precisely the
>uncertainty principle, so I'm a little confused about just how Einstein
>could agree with the rest of it, but not the most profound aspect of it.
>
>Bob Dickow
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
>On Behalf Of Phil Nisbet
>
>Einstein was not opposed to quantum mechanics, he was opposed to the
>uncertainty principle which Heisenberg proposed to solve certain problems.
>That is the origin of the Dice comment, that G-d did not play craps with 
>the
>
>universe.  Even while accepting the general rules hammered out in the 
>famous
>
>1920's conferences, Einstein sought deeper structural therom which woud
>provide a uniform framework of all matter and energy and go beyond simple
>quantum mechanics.
><snip>
>
>
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