46
R. Barrett and P. P. Delsanto
3.4 Faith in Physics
In a letter to Max Born, dated 29th April, 1924, Einstein wrote: “I find
the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should choose
of its own free will, not only its moment to jump off, but also its direction. In
that case, I would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house,
than a physicist ” [4]. Einstein was expressing his opposition to the random,
or probabilistic, nature of Quantum Mechanics. We shall discuss Quantum
Mechanics in Chap. 5. However, what is relevant here is that Einstein was
essentially expressing an article of faith, rather than a scientific argument.
Today few physicists share Einstein’s point of view. As we shall see, the experimental evidence in favour of Quantum Mechanic’s weird predictions is just
too all-encompassing to ignore.
If someone of the stature of Einstein could adopt such an “unscientific”
attitude, which other articles of faith have become embedded in the science
of physics without attracting overmuch critical comment? In the remainder
of this Chapter we shall try to unearth a few, with the aim of encouraging
our readers to seek out more for themselves.
Before beginning, let us recall for a moment a story from the field of
mathematics. British mathematician, G. H. Hardy, was a child prodigy who
could write numbers up to millions at the age of two years. As an adult, he
spent most of his research life at Cambridge University, where he introduced
an increased rigour into British mathematics, which at that time, just prior
to World War 1, differed from European mathematics in the extent that it
regarded rigour as relevant. By rigour we mean a strict adherence to formal
logic, where literally nothing is taken for granted.
An example of rigour carried to the extreme is Principia Mathematica (PM)
by Russell and Whitehead [5]. Their objective was to set mathematics on a
sound formal basis. Their monumental work is hardly bedside reading, and
we suspect is more often cited than read. However, one person who did read
it, and was inspired by it, was Kurt Gödel, whose work we will discuss in
Chap. 4. Another mathematician who realised its importance was G. H.
Hardy.
As an example of the lengths to which Russell and Whitehead were
prepared to go, we have included a small excerpt from PM in Appendix 3.4.
After 362 pages of close mathematical reasoning, the authors have almost
reached the stage where they can prove that 1 + 1 = 2. As Whitehead
himself remarked: “It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis
of the obvious.”
R. Barrett and P. P. Delsanto
3.4 Faith in Physics
In a letter to Max Born, dated 29th April, 1924, Einstein wrote: “I find
the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should choose
of its own free will, not only its moment to jump off, but also its direction. In
that case, I would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house,
than a physicist ” [4]. Einstein was expressing his opposition to the random,
or probabilistic, nature of Quantum Mechanics. We shall discuss Quantum
Mechanics in Chap. 5. However, what is relevant here is that Einstein was
essentially expressing an article of faith, rather than a scientific argument.
Today few physicists share Einstein’s point of view. As we shall see, the experimental evidence in favour of Quantum Mechanic’s weird predictions is just
too all-encompassing to ignore.
If someone of the stature of Einstein could adopt such an “unscientific”
attitude, which other articles of faith have become embedded in the science
of physics without attracting overmuch critical comment? In the remainder
of this Chapter we shall try to unearth a few, with the aim of encouraging
our readers to seek out more for themselves.
Before beginning, let us recall for a moment a story from the field of
mathematics. British mathematician, G. H. Hardy, was a child prodigy who
could write numbers up to millions at the age of two years. As an adult, he
spent most of his research life at Cambridge University, where he introduced
an increased rigour into British mathematics, which at that time, just prior
to World War 1, differed from European mathematics in the extent that it
regarded rigour as relevant. By rigour we mean a strict adherence to formal
logic, where literally nothing is taken for granted.
An example of rigour carried to the extreme is Principia Mathematica (PM)
by Russell and Whitehead [5]. Their objective was to set mathematics on a
sound formal basis. Their monumental work is hardly bedside reading, and
we suspect is more often cited than read. However, one person who did read
it, and was inspired by it, was Kurt Gödel, whose work we will discuss in
Chap. 4. Another mathematician who realised its importance was G. H.
Hardy.
As an example of the lengths to which Russell and Whitehead were
prepared to go, we have included a small excerpt from PM in Appendix 3.4.
After 362 pages of close mathematical reasoning, the authors have almost
reached the stage where they can prove that 1 + 1 = 2. As Whitehead
himself remarked: “It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis
of the obvious.”