Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Overestimating The Importance Of Quantum Physics (Part 2)

The philosophical significance and epistemological verifiability of modern claims about quantum physics are both enormously overestimated to the point where the study of quantum physics is held up as the utter height of philosophical and scientific accomplishment.  The bizarre nature of many claims about quantum physics has awed many people into a wild and gratuitous excitement over subatomic physics, even when they do not understand the information being directed at them.  After all, all that it takes to impress the average person is the mention of the word "quantum" before another random word!

Even if the popular claims about quantum physics could be verified--other than the claim that quantum particle behavior deviates from the laws of logic, which is false by default due to the necessary nature of logical truths--it is far from true that "everything" about our awareness of reality changes.  The immutability of logical facts aside, even our ability to understand scientific events at the macroscopic level isn't changed by quantum physics; at most, quantum physics would simply add to modern scientific ideas, not require the complete revising of them.

The fairly relentless references to quantum physics in everything from entertainment to online news articles has led many people to act like the opposite is true. Quantum physics is treated like it is the pinnacle of philosophy, science, and human knowledge, when none of these things are the case.  Indeed, no one can even prove that a quantum world even exists!  It is possible for a quantum world to exist, and anything that is logically possible could be true about a hypothetical quantum scale, but there is no way to verify the presence of the quantum world by looking at the macroscopic world.

Of course, the macroscopic world is all that humans have natural access to.  It is nevertheless popular for people--including scientists--to speculate about unverified ideas that they are not even remotely rational enough to personally understand on a philosophical level.  Only rationalism grants consistent knowledge, and hardly anyone seems to be approaching rumored (aka, unverifiable) notions about quantum energy and particle behavior from a truly rationalistic standpoint.  If more people did so, they would realize that quantum physics is far from the height of philosophy.

Indeed, the entirety of quantum physics, even if true, pales in significance compared to the most basic facts about logic.  The fundamental epistemological infallibility of logical axioms, recognition of which is literally the first step in making a sound worldview, is more important than the whole of quantum physics could ever be simply on its own!  The simplest fact about logic is on one level certainly far less complicated than many of the ideas about quantum particles that have been thrown around, yet it is inherently more important to the pursuit of knowledge.

No comments:

Post a Comment