Principles of Classical Physics - Locality, Continuity, and Determinism

Now to examine the last three principles of Classical Physics.

Locality is the idea that particles or objects may only be moved or influenced by direct contact, or some local event.  Not something at a distance.  When Quantum Physics came up with the idea of entanglement Einstein protested loudly.  Entanglement is where particles are 'connected', and can be at a large distance, and what happens to one is registered on the other.  Einstein called it 'Spooky Action at a Distance'.  But since then many experiments have been performed and despite Einstein's brilliance, he was wrong on this one.  Locality does not apply in this situation of entangled particles and thus can't be considered a general principle of physics.

Continuity is the idea that there are no sudden jumps in the values of nature, like energy and space, and that everything flows smoothly  For example if you turn up the voltage going into a light bulb you might expect that amount of light produced would increase gradually; if graphed a smooth curve.  However, one of the earliest discoveries leading up to Quantum Physics showed that the value do not increase as in a smooth curve upward, but goes in jumps like stairs.  Since then virtually every measurable quantity in physics, including space, has been shown to increase in this non-continuous, step like fashion, if broken down to its smallest units of measurement.  Apparently, the real world is jumpy not continuous.

Determinism is the last principle of Classical Physics.  This is the assumption that all the events in nature proceed in an orderly fashion, in that one event follows as a consequence of another, and there is a predictable chain of happenings which can be calculated and viewed.  Einstein again felt very strongly about this principle and when presented quantum physical evidence to the contrary said "God does not play dice with the universe."  However, as more and more quantum theory developed and evidence gathered, this randomness is very close to what the picture painted.  It turns out that instead of A --> B (A causes or leads to B) with a certainty, that all such events are actually just probabilities.  A may have a very strong probability of leading to B, but there are also small chances it may lead to C, D, or E.  This is used, as one small example, in electronics when a electron hits an insulated wall, it will stop or bounce off normally, but maybe a 1 in a trillion chance will occur where it appears on the other side of the wall.  In everyday life we don't usually encounter this kind of probability because most the events we see occur are the very high probability events,  and we just assume a cause and effect relationship.  But, again, on an atomic scale this is a known situation and only probabilistic models work.  Determinism is a principle which only has workability in a limited everyday sense.

So, all five on the principles of Classical Physics are shown to not be true in light of modern physics.  This is not to say they don't have value.  The principles of Classical Physics can be used and applied to much advantage because it is a good approximation which applies well to the world we live in, and our perception range.  But as far the Universe at large goes, it lies far from the truth.

Principles of Classical Physics - Causality

Causality is another principle of classical physics.  The idea is that every event, every action and motion is the result of a previous event.  And thus if enough data is known, like location and momentum of a particle at a particular time, it can be infallibly predicted where the particle will be in the future.  Inherent in this view is the irreversible flow of time from past -> present -> future.

Again, this works out well for most practical everyday events and allowed science to progress quite well for a couple of centuries.  But, also again, this principle as a universal law of how things work, went down the drain with the discoveries of quantum physics.  First, it was found that events don't definitely happen in an A then B fashion, but in a probabilistic fashion.  Given A there is a chance that B will happen (perhaps large), but also other probabilities that say C and D will happen.  There is nothing definite about it.  As a corollary if there is any possibility at all of a particular outcome, even if minute, it will occur sometime.  Another discovered behavior is that Event A can be both the cause and effect of Event B, simultaneously.  And, of course, particles can be in more than one location at the same time, the quantum principle of superposition.  So, the real world is not neat and tidy like if A then always B, there are always sets of probabilities of various outcomes, all of which exist until the outcome is fixated by an observation.

If that is not enough to upset the Causality apple cart, also events from the future can affect outcomes now, and events now can change outcomes in the past.  This is very non-intuitive because of the way our minds are conditioned to think, but it has been shown to be true with experimental data. 

There are many other facts and observations that make the point, but I think this is enough to get the idea that Causality as a concept maybe useful in many areas of life but is not real as a foundation of reality.

Principles of Classical Physics - Reality

Let's examine the first principle (from previous post) of Classical Physics, Reality.  What is meant by reality?  It refers to the concept that the physical world is real, and exists independently of the observer.  The old philosophical question about whether the tree falling in a forest makes a sound if no-one is present to hear it, is answered as definite 'yes' in Classical Physics.  The moon is still there whether we look at it or not.  The laws of gravity affect the apple falling from the tree in the same way whether or not we see it falling.  It all makes sense to us in our everyday world, and the calculations based on these assumptions are practical and very useful.

However, this all changed when quantum physics came along.  The first glaring outness with this assumption came with the famous double slit experiment.  It was determined  (Double Slit Experiment) that one got different results in the experiment if the particle is observed and when it is not. This phenomena can be seen easily at an atomic level, with electrons, photons, and other small particles.  This just opened the door.  Since then it has been confirmed in a multitude of experiments and conditions.  The upshot is the observer is intimately involved with what we observe as reality and is not separate at all.  Quantum Theory is able to show that Classical Physics, and the assumption of a separate physical world reality, is just a special case of a much broader view of the universe, and it works only as an approximation of the real world.

This is called the Measurement Problem, and there are many interpretations of why it exists (which shows there are no definite answers), but none can avoid the fact that the observer influences what is being observed.
  

Principles of Classical Physics

Per Dean Radin's analysis, classical physics rests upon five principles, or beliefs about the nature of the 'real' world.  These principles held up quite well for several centuries, backed up by observations and mathematical predictions.  However, in the light of discoveries about the nature of reality in relativity theory and quantum mechanics, every one of these principles has been proven to be false.  I will go into more detail in later posts about these principles, but to name them now, they are: reality, locality, causality, continuity, and determinism.  Before relativity theory and quantum mechanics came along, imminent scientists were making arrogant statements about how scientists had wrapped up pretty much everything there was to know about the world, and from then on it would be just working out a few details.

Albert Michelson, the first American to win a Nobel Prize, delivered this message in 1894 in a dedication speech at University of Chicago's Ryerson Physics Laboratory: "The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote."

William Thompson, later given the title of Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal Society (the premier scientific organization of Britain), said in 1900:
"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."

Little did these and other imminent scientists know about what was just around the corner.  All that certainty was washed away in a few short years.
 

Kid Song Lyrics

I was going over some kid songs and came across these familiar lyrics:

"Sing polly wolly doodle all the day"

Upon doing some research the song first appeared in the 1880's.  While there is wide speculation about what it means, and no certainty on who authored it, many believe that the author was Daniel Decatur "Dan" Emmett, who was the founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel performers.  The song seems to be definitely southern and written from the viewpoint of a slave.  But exactly what it means is still a big polly doodle.

And then there is "With a Knick Knack Paddy Wack" from the This Old Man song.  Well this one popped up in the states in the 1870's (or before?) derived from an old Welsh tune.  A 'paddywack' is a strong elastic ligament in the midline of the neck of sheep or cattle which relieves the animal of the weight of its head.  The reference of 'playing' it appears to be talking about 'playing the bones', an old folk custom of making an instrument out of a pair of bones, or similar rigid materials.  The 'old man' in the song is adept at playing the bones in several positions including on his knee and shoe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bones_%28instrument%29

What do we really know?

I could have sworn I wrote about this topic in this blog before, but for the life of me could not find it with the search tool, so here it is (again?):
How much do scientists really know about the universe? Virtually, everything we do know has to do with visible matter. We can measure, weigh, compute motion, etc. for this bit that we can observe, but what about dark matter? All we know, pretty much, is that it acts in a similar way as visible matter in relation to gravity, but none of the other features of matter we are familiar with apply to it. Not the least of which is that light doesn't bounce off it. Yet 85% of all matter is dark, and only 15% is our visible familiar kind. But that's not all. Both kinds of matter only make up 32% of the universe's mass. 68% of the mass of the universe is dark energy. And we know even less about it. So we can observe a little bit about 5% of the mass of the universe and the other 95% is a huge (literally) unknown.
http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/

Human Radio Station

We perceive and sense in very small ranges the wholeness of the universe.  There is a narrow range of light, certain frequencies of sound vibrations that happen to be nearby, and only certain ranges of all the senses.  We are tolerant of a narrow band of conditions to be alive.  A certain temperature range (I recently saw there are bacteria that can live at near boiling temperature, and others than can be frozen and live).  The body temperature has to very close to 98.6 or we humans die.  Gravity needs to be just right, and water and air abundant.  We humans are fragile creatures, and our perceptions are very narrow.
Its amazing that 1) we have survived as long as we have, and 2) that we have such limits on our existence and we have still found out as much about the physical universe as we have.  But honest scientists we tell you there is much more that we don’t know than what we have discovered.  Our perceptions are indirect at best.  For example, light comes from photons (scientists submit that light is both a wave phenomena and a particle, simultaneously in some unknown, unintuitive way), it bounces off or reflects from surfaces, comes to our eye as an upside down image, translates into nerve impulses which the brain, along with about a dozen various types of visual signals, processes and produces a 3D holographic images for us of ‘the world’.  Remember the alien in the corpse in Men in Black, who was sitting in a human’s head pulling levers and operating the body?  Well, the actual scene isn’t far off.  Our conscious perception of reality isn’t much different.
In addition to all the physical sensory filters we automatically apply, studies show that people’s perception of reality it strongly influenced by beliefs, emotions, expectations, etc.
But where it gets even weirder is when you consider that this whole 3D holographic image we create from our small sampling of the energies of the universe, will be very much, or perhaps totally different, if say we were a cockroach.  After going through all the sensory filtering devices, how does reality look to it.  How does a virus view the world at a microscopic level.  Let alone our familiar cat sitting on the mantelpiece
So in the end, one’s perception of the universe and what one calls reality may be like tuning to a station on a radio dial.  Humans have their frequency, but there is the whole rest of the dial.  And that’s not counting AM or ham radio.