The Accessibility Of Quantum Physics

There is not even the slightest hint of evidence for a quantum world of extremely miniscule, invisible particles in any of our everyday, ordinary sensory experiences.  Since most sensory experiences cannot be proven to be or not be illusions in the first place, it is not as if seeing something proves it is there as it is, so the inability to see quantum particules like electrons, protons, and quarks only makes them even further removed from perceptions of the external world, leaving us with no direct evidence that they exist.  It seems that not being able to see subatomic (quantum) particles is a primary reason why many people assume ideas and claims about quantum physics are beyond anyone's ability to easily understand--absolutely no one can know if a quantum level of the external world exists, and certainly not on the hearsay of scientists, but some of the concepts popularly associated with quantum physics are actually familiar to many children in school, just not by the name quantum physics.

Yes, literally any child who hears of electrons, protons, and neutrons is already being told about quantum physics, for quantum physics is about subatomic particles and their behaviors, whether, hypothetical or supposedly confirmed, and particles like electrons contribute to atoms as their individual components.  Moreover, basic explanations of what seems to be the causal basis of electrical current and power, since the movement of electrons is the proposed underlying event that allows for the flow of electric charge, are also really delving somewhat into quantum physics even if almost no one realizes that the unseen phenomena behind observed electricity, according to atomic theory, would be subatomic, or quantum.  This is an example of how so many people fail to look past words used in different contexts and thus fail to realize that the concepts they refer to are all subsets of broader quantum particle activity.

For whatever reason, the phrase quantum physics is commonly perceived to be affiliated more strictly with things like hypothetical superposition or the idea that conscious perception sustaining physical matter (a genuine logical possibility unverifiable through sensory perception), when anything at all having to do with particles and scientific events at a scale smaller than atoms falls under quantum physics.  So many people appear to go through life thinking of quantum physics as this frightening, inaccessible scientific and philosophical issue, when they in all likelihood have already heard about it without recognizing it as such.  In truth, not only is there no scientific concept or experience that is beyond the human capacity to understand (as science must be consistent with reason and everyone already inescapably relies on the laws of logic), but some aspects of the mainstream paradigm of quantum physics are discussed and taught in many places.

To be clear, the epistemological gap between perceiving macroscopic objects and knowing they exist means their existence is unprovable to humans, and if visible sensory objects cannot be proven to exist by seeing them, then of course subatomic particles that do not exist by pure logical necessity cannot be known to exist.  When people think or talk about quantum physics, unless they are knowingly addressing how they can only know possibilities (anything that does not contradict logical truths is possible), what would logically follow from these possibilities, and the fact that other people will often assume/claim that specific scientific phenomena is there at the quantum level, they are not dealing with actual knowledge, scientists included.  Again, because the external world as it is visibly perceived is not an epistemologically self-evident, metaphysically necessary thing like logical axioms are, it is less clear if there is a subatomic world, but even so, anytime that people think and talk about the flow of electrons or the nucleus of an atom, they are ultimately addressing quantum physics even if they have not reasoned this out.  The accessibility of quantum physics is greater than many appear to think.