This Saturday, October 12
Text and Talk will focus on

Quantum Indeterminacy and the Copenhagen Convention

This Saturday at Text and Talk, Dr. Ron Muller will discuss the science and the philosophy of Quantum Mechanics, the physics of the sub-atomic world of protons, neutrons, and electrons.  Researchers of the dynamics of this micro world of “nano” realities were challenged in the early decades of the last century when it became apparent that taking measurements of the speed and location of electrons “orbiting” the nucleus of the atom were influenced and effected by the measuring instruments themselves.  The presence of the measuring instruments themselves altered the results observed leading the German physicist Werner Heisenberg to articulate the “uncertainty principle.”  Heisenberg argued that knowledge of the speed of the electron or its location could be established objectively—but not both.  The attempt to gain objective knowledge of the actual state of an atom, he held, could not be determined on the sub-atomic level; hence the status of the smallest particles of matter were indeterminate or uncertain.

The Copenhagen Convention advanced by Neils Bohr contended that because of this basic indeterminacy of matter at the micro level, the physical universe on the macro level could no longer be understood to have an objective condition in itself.  Its reality, its inherent status in itself apart from any researcher or investigator, he argued, was impossible to know.  Indeed, as he and others subsequently argued, there is no objective reality only the way things appear when examined or observed.  Because of a problem of measurement, quantum theory was cast as a metaphysical theory of the totality of nature holding that being in Kant’s terms was simply phenomenal (as it appears to an observer).

Join Text and Talk at Christ the King Church or via zoom as we reflect on this basic question:

Is Quantum Indeterminacy synonymous with Metaphysical Indeterminacy?