Overestimating The Importance Of Quantum Physics (Part 1)

All aspects of reality are metaphysically or epistemologically important in their own way, even if some are less important than others.  Proving the comparative importance of a philosophical truth or issue is far from the most difficult part of pursuing reality in many cases, as the practical, personal, and abstract natures of various logical truths can be quickly distinguished.  Some experiences or concepts may have value that does not extend beyond inciting a subjective sense of awe, and, for the most part, this is the primary significance of contemporary claims about the behaviors and natures of quantum particles.

Quantum physics seems to be commonly misperceived as the supreme manifestation of human discovery and intellectual ability, although many of the same people who pretend it has this status might also pretend like the claims scientists make about subatomic particles are utterly incomprehensible.  Nevertheless, the set of ideas associated with modern quantum physics is neither the most significant nor the most complex bundle of concepts.  If anything, much of the supposed shock scientists experience when exploring quantum physics is just a different example of something that is actually far from unusual.

Showing a smartphone to someone from the Middle Ages or showing nuclear weaponry to someone from the days of Jesus might have the same effect.  The biggest epistemological difference between smartphones or nuclear weapons and quantum particle behaviors, of course, is that devices can actually be observed at the macroscopic level.  In other words, anyone who hasn't explicitly seen the quantum world and yet believes what scientists say about it has merely assumed that the potentially sensationalistic hearsay is true--not that seeing something reveals truths about anything other than one's perceptions to begin with.

Put in this light, it would be completely unsurprising if future generations were to easily adapt to the alleged "bizarrity" of quantum physics.  That quantum physics is said to be thoroughly strange does not make it anything more than yet another scientific discovery that initially strikes the masses as unintelligible despite the fact that there is nothing unintelligible about it whatsoever (that is, if quantum physicists are even making correct observational or theoretical claims about subatomic particle behaviors in the first place).  Either way, the science of the quantum world is not the most important component of human life.

No aspect of physics could possibly be the most metaphysically, epistemologically, or existentially important part of reality--the most important aspect of reality could not be anything other than reason, without which nothing else could exist and without which nothing at all could be known.  Reason is what permits people to disprove some claims about quantum physics in the total absence of any personal observations of the subatomic world!  After all, nothing can be outside of the universal scope of reason, falsifying the idea that quantum physics somehow transcends or escapes the laws of logic.