Einstein vs. Bohr

AProudLefty said:
The question is: how can both models be correct at the same time?

Hence where Godel's incompleteness theorem comes in. It is unsolvable IN THIS universe.
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Which is a problem, scientifically speaking. As that theorem is both extremely difficult to prove or falsify. Not that it isn’t correct but the honest truth is we simply don’t know.
 
Cypress said:
Right.
I need to research Godel more.

Einstein accepted QM. In a sense, he was one of the founders of QM, going back to his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect.

What Einstein hated was Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation of QM. Einstein was a scientific realist who could not abide by the Bohr's instrumentalist approach to the quantum wave function collapse. Einstein at heart believed in a deterministic universe, and he just thought Bohr's probabilistic interpretation of QM must be missing some fundamental variables or insights needed to make the theory compete.
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There’s a reason for that though. The predictions made and experimentally validated of both QM and QED are uncannily accurate and thus have provided a great deal more useful information. Particularly from an applied science stand point.

The issue I have with the article is that it can be misinterpreted to be advocating a post modernist view of science which, scientifically speaking, is about as valid as creationism.
 
Cypress said:
I think the scientific paradigm is shifting a little away from Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation of QM, back towards the scientific realism Einstein wanted. The question is if the Quantum wave function collapse really dependent on the subjective knowledge of the observer? Or is there something deterministic and objectively real there, per the MWI interpretation.
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Certainly a very interesting question but the reality is that we simply don’t know and until the quantum
Wave collapse can be observed and its causation determined, we simply don’t know and it remains largely a thought experiment.
 
BidenPresident said:
I think Heisenberg made a convincing argument. If you look closely at the history of science you see more continuity.
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That’s true. Most of the great scientific theories show a history of understanding of the concept and it’s outcome but not the mechanism by which that happens. Then a scientist using that information which has come before discovers that mechanism.

Biological evolutionary theory is a perfect example. The principle of biological evolution as the cause of speciation was well understood before Darwin and Wallace discovered the actual mechanism behind biological evolution, e.g. Natural Selection.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
That’s true. Most of the great scientific theories show a history of understanding of the concept and it’s outcome but not the mechanism by which that happens. Then a scientist using that information which has come before discovers that mechanism.

Biological evolutionary theory is a perfect example. The principle of biological evolution as the cause of speciation was well understood before Darwin and Wallace discovered the actual mechanism behind biological evolution, e.g. Natural Selection.
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Leibniz conceived physical relativity but did not have empirical proof.
 
BidenPresident said:
I think the dichotomy of the subjective and objective is misleading. I mean, it is not a real conflict.
Too often people think objective means objectively true. And subjective means only from my perspective.
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Exactly and that is the flaw I see in this article and that those who are not trained in science would grossly misinterpret the later.
 
AProudLefty said:
You are talking about philosophy.

The OP is talking about the dichotomy between Einstein and Bohr (or any other physicists who opposed him).

ALL OF THEM ARE CORRECT.

That is my point.

Unifying theories of the universe cannot be possible because ALL OF THEM are correct.
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Now there I disagree. This is only true if your thinking is categorical thinking. There are all sorts of phenomena that when energy is input or detracted in a certain manner will turn a well understood and defined system into chaos if you view it from a categorical standpoint but are pretty well understood when viewed non-categorically.

Fluid systems under pressure are extremely well understood until enough energy is imparted into the system that the system breaks down into chaos but the behavior of that chaotic system when studied non-categorically is well understood.

This is also true for phenomena like weather and climate. This is the major philosophical difference that Tom and I have on the topic of climate change. He views it categorically and I see it as noncategorical.
 
Cypress said:
I think they work exceedingly well and have excellent explanatory power. Whether they are actually correct is another matter.
The rate of expansion of the universe and the hypothesis of dark energy and dark matter suggest either there might be something wrong with classical Newtonian mechanics and relatively, or our standard model of particle physics is really missing something.

General relativity was really the last theory of classical science. The hope is that a quantum theory of gravity will replace it, resulting in a grand unification of the fundamental forces.
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Well that or so many categories of theory and experimental evidence overlap that you can’t place a specific phenomena within a specific category of theory.

Much of biology is that way. You can’t understand biology from just a mechanistic (categorical) standpoint. You need to understand a holistic (non-categorical) point of view also because so much of the understanding we have of biology are not described by competing categories but by overlapping categories (theories).

For example you cannot understand fully how a living system works unless you understand how cell theory, evolution, genetics, ecology and homeostasis overlap in when actually determining how a living system works. Which is decidedly non-categorical thinking.
 
Cypress said:
I read a book on the history of science last year -- although known to the Medievals, the atomism of Democritus was not favored nor did it have much influnce in Europe up until at least the Renaissance for several reasons:

Democritus was arguably the world's first atheist and his atomism was unpalatable to medieval Christian Europe for moral and aesthetic reasons -- they could not fathom that the only reality which existed consisted of small indivisible particles and the void.

Aristotle forcibly rejected atomism, and medieval Christian Europe put the authority of Aristotle on a pedestal.
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For some good reads on the history of science I would recommend reading “ The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800” by Herbert Butterfield and The History of Modern Science; From Antiquity to The Scientific Revolution” by Ofer Gal.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Certainly a very interesting question but the reality is that we simply don’t know and until the quantum
Wave collapse can be observed and its causation determined, we simply don’t know and it remains largely a thought experiment.
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Einstein famously said to Bohr: "Are you telling me if I am not looking at the moon then I cannot tell where where it is?"
 
Cypress said:
Speaking of the 1927 Solvay conference, I do not think this much brainpower has ever been assembled in one location in human history. Geek factor was totally off the map.

Albert Einstein
Marie Curie
Niels Bohr
Max Planck
Erwin Schrödinger
Paul Dirac
Werner Heisenberg
Wolfgang Pauli
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Sure there has. When Thomas Jefferson dined in the White House alone.
 
Cypress said:
I rank general relativity, Darwinian-Mendelian evolution, quantum mechanics, and climate change as the most thoroughly tested and verified theories in 20th century science.

I have been trying to calculate how much time I can extend my life if I move to higher elevation and reap the rewards of time dilation.
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I’ve not heard the term Darwinian-Mendelian evolution used before. That’s usually called neo-Darwinism.
 
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