IS QUANTUM PHYSICS AS MYSTICAL AND MAGICAL AS
MANY BELIEVE?
Paul Quincey in Skeptical Inquirer Volume 30.4, July / August 2006
[The] triumph of quantum mechanics came with an
unexpected problem-when you stepped outside of the mathematics and tried to
explain what was going on, it didn't seem to make any sense. Elementary
particles such as electrons behave like waves, apparently moving like
ripples on a pond; they also seem to be instantaneously aware of distant
objects and to be in different places at the same time. It seemed that any
weird idea could gain respectability by finding similarities with some of
the weird features of quantum mechanics. It has become almost obligatory to
declare that quantum physics, in contrast to classical physics, cannot be
understood, and that we should admire its ability to give the right answers
without thinking about it too hard.
And yet, eighty years and unprecedented numbers of
physicists later, naked quantum weirdness remains elusive. There are plenty
of quantum phenomena, from the magnetism of iron and the superconductivity
of lead to lasers and electronics, but none of them really qualifies as
truly bizarre in the way we might expect. The greatest mystery of quantum
mechanics is how its ideas have remained so weird while it explained more
and more about the world around us.
Perhaps it is time to revisit the ideas with the
benefit of hindsight, to see if either quantum mechanics is less weird than
we usually think it is or the world around us is more so.
----
So it seems that quantum physics is not weird and
incomprehensible because it describes something completely different from
everyday reality. It is weird and incomprehensible precisely because it
describes the world we see around us-past, present, and future.
Reference
Feynman, Richard P. 1985. QED: The Strange Theory of
Light and Matter. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.