Читать книгу Quantum Physics is NOT Weird - Paul J. van Leeuwen - Страница 35

“"Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."

Erwin Schrödinger, quantum physicist 1871-1961

At around 1920 quantum physics was still a haphazard collection of intelligent ad hoc hypotheses without a solid mathematically constructed framework. Compared to the elegancy and robustness of Newtonian physics this was – and is still – highly unsatisfactory and even unpalatable for a lot of physicists. The exact predictability of nature proved to be a mirage; uncertainty of measurement turned out to be a fundamental aspect of nature.

Young’s double-slit experiment, that had convincingly demonstrated light’s wave character, and Planck’s quantum of EM-energy, would become the unquestionable testimony of the seemingly incompatible dual nature of the fundamental elements of physical reality as we thought we knew them. Solid looking matter was found to exhibit wave behavior.

The quantum wave that was at first thought to be a spatially spread-out physical particle, was soon acknowledged as a non-material possibility wave. The why and how of the abrupt change of the quantum wave into the measured physical particle, turned out to become the hottest debated subject between quantum physicists. A plethora of interpretations – some even connecting the consciousness of the observer with the observed quantum phenomena – proliferated.