Physics Without Metaphysical Assumptions

quantumphysicslady |  Quantum physics also poses major challenges to realism. In 2017, Chinese physicists experimented with two photons, that is, bits of light. The specially-created photons were separated by 700 miles. The experiment showed that the photons were able to instantaneously coordinate their behavior. This phenomenon is called “quantum entanglement.”

According to Special Relativity, no signal can travel across a distance instantaneously. How can one photon instantaneously “know” what another photon over 700 miles away is doing? What kind of reality are we living in?

When people learn about quantum physics, they find out about specific oddities like quantum entanglement. But the most fundamental oddity is its most fundamental premise: Both matter and energy are mere vibrations in an invisible, undetectable medium called “fields.” How does our very impressive, very solid physical universe arise from vibrations in a kind of nothingness?

How does our reality arise from vibrations? [Image source: David Chalmers and Kelvin McQueen, “Consciousness and the Collapse of the Wave Function” (modified to omit a label) http://consc.net/slides/collapse.pdf]

But it gets worse. The vibrations represent a cornucopia of possible physical realities, only one of which becomes the solid reality that we perceive. (If this sentence is baffling to you, you are not alone. It condenses the heart of quantum physics, which is puzzling enough, into one sentence—which is a terrible idea. See the footnote below.**)

Do the oddities of quantum physics mean we must abandon realism? No. Many physicists have come up with interpretations of quantum physics that are based in realism. It’s also true that some of these interpretations describe very odd realities. For example, the Many Worlds Interpretation, perhaps the oddest, describes us as having infinite copies of ourselves in infinite numbers of universes. The desire to salvage realism may be an important reason that the Many Worlds Interpretation is gaining popularity among physicists. But there are other realistic interpretations of Special Relativity and quantum physics that are less mind-blowing.

Quantum physics undermines the solidity of the physical universe. When people learn that quantum physics is based on the proposition that matter and energy are, at bottom, vibrations of questionable reality which shake invisible, undetectable fields, the solidity of our universe loses some of its impressiveness. Thoughts pop up like: Could our physical universe have no more solidity than a dream?

To the dreamer, the houses, the cars, and the monsters all seem completely real. So, too do to the hallucinations of the psychotic and those of someone on LSD. Our minds are quite capable of creating solid reality without any necessity of an independent external world.

Quantum physics may also create wonderings about the mysterious invisible medium for the vibrations of matter and energy: Could the vibrations of matter and energy be vibrations in a new kind of energy that makes up consciousness?

In other words, some begin to entertain the notion of idealism.