Quantum interpretations and Buddhism Part 2: Understanding Quantum Physics

 

Quantum physics, popularly known as quantum mechanics is widely reputed to be not understood by anyone. For one thing, the term mechanics is a misnomer, which is why I am using the term quantum physics in this book. Mechanics, as in the classical sense implies that we know the underlying structure and how things link to cause from one thing to another in a very nice matter which we can explain, picture in our heads and use intuition to predict what happens next. Not so in quantum physics.

 

Before you get confused and think since no one understands quantum physics, “I will not even get the popular version of its explanation, so I also don’t understand quantum physics”, let me clarify by what physicist meant by “understanding”.

Understanding here I split into three levels.

 

I.   Ontology (Reality): The underlying reality of things, the mechanics of which you can form a mental picture and then use intuition and basic principles to predict what happens next. This part is the one which is referred to as no one understands quantum physics.

II. Epistemology (Knowledge): The mathematical structure of quantum physics which allows us to predict many experimental values, probabilities of results, and is the reason we have electronics, nuclear physics, particle physics and so forth. The bread and butter of physicists which can be worked with as long as they follow the rules of calculations and has no clear mapping onto the ontology. This part is understood by any good physicists worth their degree.

III.             Interpretation (Belief): This is the exciting field of interpreting what does the mathematics of quantum physics means. Some link it to the underlying structure, of which some commonly held assumption about the world has to be abandoned, some think the epistemology is the ontology, there is no deeper reality, some thinks a lot more weird stuff. Most of these differences either has no different prediction from the usual epistemology of quantum physics, or the prediction is still too hard to test. Which lead to some physicists to think that this is all philosophical, not worth pursuing. Yet, the mistake had been done before of not noticing non-locality sooner, thus the age of quantum entanglement came relatively late after the discovery of quantum physics more than half a century ago. So, most physicists nowadays have at least one favourite interpretation of quantum physics, which you can think of as their religion. This is because no one can prove that they have the right interpretation, at least not yet. So based on which interpretation you believe, you can say a myriad of things about quantum physics, including whether you have understood it fully or not.

 

So you can now confidently say physicists understand the knowledge of quantum physics but disagree on what is the reality of it, if any, based on their belief. Now, I shall attempt to make clear what is the epistemology of quantum physics or the mathematical structure of it without using equations. The following chapter follows up on the various interpretations which are out there in the market, oops, I mean the speculative field of cutting edge research realm of physics literature.