[Vision2020] To Nick on quantum theory

[Phil Nisbet]

Nick

I am obviously a pretty poor teacher or you would not be making statements 
like this;

“For now let me just repeat my charge that Phil Nisbet is simply wrong to
state that Einsteain developed Quatum Mechanics.  Contrary to what Phil
claims, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is essential to quantum theory
as it has been developed and has been verified time and time again.  To say
that Einstein "developed" the theory by trying to include it in a unified
theory that did not include uncertainty is really off the wall."


I tried to dumb down and assumed you would get it, but obviously you do not.

Albert Einstein developed the initial phases of quantum theory with his 1906 
paper that recognized the existence of photons as quanta.  His work was an 
extension of Max Planck's work on black body radiation.  Recognition that 
both matter and energy are quantized is fundamental to quantum mechanics.  
His work and that of Bohr and others were recognized as the old quantum 
theory from which quantum mechanics’ more rigorous mathematics was derived.

The statement you made was that Einstein opposed quantum mechanics.  That 
statement is false.  Einstein, from the quotes I gave you, recognized that 
quantum mechanics was a workable model for the representation of what 
happens in the universe, he simply believed that there was something more 
that would make the model more deterministic, a better representation of 
'reality' and not a statistical craps game.

Heisenberg's critical contribution to the development of quantum mechanics 
was recognizing matrix mechanics, though it might be argued that Max Born 
was the person who saw that the initial work Heisenberg tossed at him had 
any significance whatsoever.  Heisenberg himself did not understand the math 
and passed his work off to Born and Jordan who actually switched his 
computations to matrix form while Heisenberg was absent on a lecture tour.

Even then, quantum mechanics was not launched.  Pauli's exclusion principle, 
electron spin and a number of other variables were required to complete the 
'new' quantum mechanics.

Further, in 1926, Erwin Schrödinger developed an alternative mathematical 
approach; his famous wave equation that was more widely supported than was 
matrix mechanics.  Both sets of mathematics performed the same functions, 
yet both were incomplete.  Dirac and Jordan melded the two ideas into what 
is termed transformation theory which is a unifying equation that is the 
current basis for quantum mechanics.

I hope this sets the stage more firmly than I did previously and I will rely 
on the Heisenberg exhibit from the American Institute of Physics to deal 
with it from there;

http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p09.htm

Heisenberg and of course Schrödinger’s Cat; require that nothing exists in 
reality until observed by an observer.  A tree falls in the forest with 
nobody there to hear it and in essence makes no sound.

So as a philosopher, Nick, tell me, was Einstein wrong?  Does objective 
reality exist?  Is Schrödinger’s cat half alive and half dead?

As for the later portion of your paragraph, what I said was that Einstein 
was seeking a method for turning the probabilistic quantum mechanics, in 
whose creation he had participated (Read up and you will find that every one 
of the players in this piece of history were writing letters back and forth 
to Albert Einstein), into something that fit with general relativity and 
other theories to form a deterministic whole which could rationally explain 
the universe’s laws.  Unified field theory came after relativity and after 
quantum mechanics and is a yet unfulfilled ideal.

I have missed any number of key players in what was one of the great dramas 
of the 20th Century in my brief here and I have no doubt oversimplified many 
elements, however, the statement stands; Heisenberg did not develop quantum 
mechanics, he was only one player and Einstein was far more crucial to the 
development of the theory than Heisenberg.  The Uncertainty Principle is not 
the critical part of quantum mechanics, heck; it was not even added until 
1927 and was derived from the mathematics that Dirac and Jordan put in 
place.

Hopefully your ex-brother in law is a better teacher than I am turning out 
to be.  I knew there was a reason I did not turn academic track. . .

Phil Nisbet

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