Roger G. Newton, *What Is Scientific Truth?—Is the Moon There When No One Looks?*, translated by Wu Jike, Shanghai Science and Technology Education Press, May 2001
I had read this book already in my first year of high school. At the time I found it hard to understand, but reading it again now, I realize that it is in fact a book about the philosophy of science. Its author is a quantum physicist, yet his familiarity with the philosophy of science, including scientific epistemology, history of science, sociology of science, and so on, is quite broad. The author criticizes sociologists of science who hold relativistic social constructivist views, and he also expresses reservations about and questions Kuhn’s doctrines and those of Kuhn’s disciples. However, when the author states his views, his attitude is quite fair-minded, entirely unlike that of some people in China who fly into abuse and attack at the slightest provocation whenever they encounter different views of science. This is a book of profound insights, rigorous argumentation, impartial attitude, and wide-ranging learning. As part of the “Contemporary Currents in Scientific Thought” series in the Philosopher’s Stone collection, it is obviously more professional and more speculative than the books in the “Contemporary Classics of Popular Science” series, yet it still retains the quality of popular science writing that presents deep ideas in accessible terms. Of course, I still have reservations about many of the author’s specific views.
Page 2 ……it is precisely the success of science that has sown the seeds of hostility toward it.
This hostility, aimed mainly at the physical and biological sciences, comes from two opposite directions. Those who are disappointed by the widespread moral and cultural decay, having lost from their spiritual supports the comforting sense of certainty and security, blame scientific skepticism and permanent uncertainty. These critics imagine a return to a simpler age, in which people of faith, through understanding the world by means of science, would become more earnest, and might, on the basis of reverence for religious authority, be led to morally and ethically appropriate behavior. From the opposite direction, certain working practitioners of underfunded social sciences and political science begin to doubt whether science can really know the world. They insist that all of us, including the scientists once exaggeratedly depicted as detached from worldly concerns, are products of our environment.…………Some influential sociologists have solemnly declared that the scientific achievements painstakingly obtained over the past 400 years through observation, experiment, and reflection have nothing to do with nature or the external world under study, and are instead nothing more than narratives akin to myths and fairy tales, or the result of social contract. They believe that scientific “truth” expresses the particular viewpoint of the group that invents those truths, and is designed for that group’s political interests. ////——I obviously by no means “hate” science.
Page 3
Of course, most physicists and biologists carry on their work undisturbed. But in an age of pseudo-science run rampant, astrology is advertising pop quiz games and the scheduling of U.S. presidents as science; some schools are being forced to teach “creation science” in place of evolution; and the relativist trend now fashionable among academics and intellectuals will exert a powerful influence on future legislators and an educated public. These ideas, which can hardly be said to be harmless to some misled ignoramuses, are bound to damage our society and corrode civilization as a whole. ////——Compared with the overexpansion of scientism, the loss of a genuine scientific spirit is also a similarly serious problem.
Pages 12–13
On several occasions, Einstein displayed something that looked like a conventionalist mood. He wrote: “Science is…a creation of the human mind with its freely invented ideas and concepts,” and in his 1933 Spencer Lectures he said that theories are “free inventions of the human intellect.” However, one should note that the context presupposes the validity of these statements: “[The physical theory system’s] structure is a work of reason; the content of experience and their mutual relations must necessarily find expression in the conclusions of theory. The unique value that sustains it, and the complete systematic verification, especially the verification of its concepts and fundamental principles, lie in this possibility of expression. The latter distinguishes it from those free fabrications of the human intellect that can neither be verified by the nature of intellect nor by other forms of a priori verification.” Moreover, conventionalism would seem to be Leibniz’s philosophical way of expressing reality: “Anyone who has thought deeply about this subject will not deny that sensory understanding of the world in fact determines theoretical systems alone, although there is no logical path from understanding to the fundamental laws of theory; this is what Leibniz elegantly called ‘pre-established harmony’ (editor’s note: pre-established harmony).” Thus, it is a mistake to take Einstein’s view of science as conventionalism.
On the other hand, the great French mathematical physicist Poincaré really was a conventionalist, and his position can only be quoted a little at length: “…………” ////——Einstein’s view of science is a rather interesting topic. I had previously noticed that between conventionalism and Kant’s transcendentalism, Einstein disliked the latter yet leaned toward the former; however, Einstein’s view of science did not wholly accept Poincaré’s conventionalist doctrine.
Page 17
After all, adopting the attitude that physical laws are merely conventions makes it easy to evade conflicts between theory and experiment through theoretical “patching.” Popper regarded this as the principal danger of conventionalism. He took this point to be unassailable. Yet such patching gets us nowhere. His suggestion was simply to reject it. “The only way to avoid conventionalism is to take a decision: do not use its methods. In situations that threaten our system, we decide not to adopt any conventionalist strategy to save it.”
On page 17, the failure of the parity law discovered 40 years ago by Li Zhengdao and Yang Zhenning is an excellent example of avoiding conventionalist strategy.
Page 30
Heisenberg…: “I have always wondered why a great philosopher like Plato had the idea that one can recognize order in natural phenomena, whereas we ourselves cannot.” Defeat would “mean that all the old structures must be abandoned? Wouldn’t it be better to build a new and more solid order on the old foundations?” Plato’s well-ordered cosmos and his own sudden reaction to a chaotic environment influenced Heisenberg throughout his life. This made him the founder of truly quantum mechanics, which endorsed indeterminism,……
Page 36
The “strong program” replaces the “causal model” with a “teleological model” (according to which what is merely obtained is directly toward truth). He (Bloor) argues that saying a belief is socially determined does not mean it is false. He rejects the empirical model, which holds that there is empirical confirmation of true belief: all beliefs, including the most rational ones, require sociological explanation.
Pages 36–37
As for his (Bloor’s) view: all scientific outcomes, and not just some defective one, require sociological explanation. This is the pointed objection raised by Chalmers. Chalmers gives an analogy: a football player sees the ball directly in front of the goal; if he kicks it in, no external explanation is needed (he is simply following the rules), but if he intends to eat it, then some external explanation is needed, perhaps involving his mental health. For Bloor, every action requires sociological explanation; then he had better argue that understanding why athletes follow the rules and where those rules come from is sociologically significant. However, for athletes and spectators, such questions are irrelevant. ////——This metaphor is very interesting; however, as Chalmers says, such questions are irrelevant to athletes and spectators. Yet many questions may have no direct significance in practical operation, and still be worth discussing for philosophers.
Pages 44–45
One can only be astonished that sociologists are ready to judge and attack the major achievements of science, achievements obtained by working scientists over the course of the twentieth century, amid experiments and the establishment of these multifaceted and influential structures, despite strong, even passionate, dissent and reevaluation. One of the main mistakes of relativist social constructivists is that when collecting their evidence they assume that because scientists argue heatedly rather than calmly in the process of establishing facts or theories, the result, like similarly heated disputes among politicians, is no different from being determined by some external reality. No wonder they assert that Newton’s universal gravitation was replaced by Einstein’s gravitation, or that the introduction of quantum mechanics has the same cognitive significance as a Republican candidate being defeated by a Democratic candidate in an election or as a ban being enacted. A large part of the epistemological relativism that now pervades sociology of science owes to the influence of the late Kuhn, who later was especially willing to distance himself from his disciples, whose extreme positions were beyond his expectations. (Note: In the 1992 Rothchild Lectures (pp. 8–9), Kuhn declared: “I am one of those who found the claims of the strong program absurd: an example of mad deconstruction.” ////——Kuhn’s theory is often extended in excessively extreme ways, which is worth noting.
Page 45 In the same way, the outcome of fierce disagreements among scientists may or may not be valid knowledge of nature; but in the final analysis, it is nature itself that makes the decision, not social prejudice or the occupational choices of the participants.
Page 49
Modern science does not provide explanations in the name of purpose: teleological explanations that reduce natural phenomena to final causes are not part of scientific methodology, because objective answers to such questions cannot be obtained or confirmed by observation and experiment. However, there is no doubt that many questions arising in science begin with “why” rather than “how,” and some people—especially philosophers who incline toward Aristotle—are dissatisfied with science’s answers to these “why” questions. If we explain planetary motion by Newton’s laws of motion and law of universal gravitation, there are many more questions left to answer, such as why gravity decreases with the square of the distance? Why are the laws of motion in that form? These are the questions Einstein was trying to sort out when he asked whether “God had any choice in creating the world,” and they are the questions contemporary physicists hope to answer with a “theory of everything.” Whether or not these ambitions can finally be realized, scientists must at the same time be content with humbler goals.
Page 57
Large-scale systems that obey well-established general laws and principles often produce structures governed by complex new local laws: these cases are sometimes attributed to emergence. All laws in chemistry and biology are considered to have this characteristic. In physics, the arrow of time in thermodynamics emerges from statistical mechanics.…
Page 66
It is indeed the case that science is essentially reductionist, and cannot be otherwise. The simplest way to understand a complex phenomenon is to reduce its explanation to some simpler, already understood thing. Fundamentally, without continually introducing many specific new concepts and explanatory tools, this method is unavoidable. Should biologists be content with empirical laws of genetics, without seeking explanations of their molecular mechanism in terms of DNA? Of course there are special biological laws, but that does not mean they are all brand-new creations from scratch. Reduction directly reveals the close relationship among all parts of nature, a relationship that many opponents of reductionism also emphasize while blindly denying it. Yet the important fact that must be acknowledged is that reductionism does not mean that emergence does not exist in nature.…………If we deny these hierarchical relations, then we also deny that nature is an internally connected whole. ////——Although the author of this book seems to take an aversion to systems science such as chaos and fractals, I want to point out that even these newly emerging so-called “holistic” sciences have not negated reductionism as a basic feature of science. The reductionist, analytical method remains the most fundamental scientific method. We are only saying that merely emphasizing reduction is not enough; reductionism cannot allow us to grasp the world completely. While using reductionist, analytical methods, holistic, synthetic methods are also indispensable. And the positions of a few extreme anti-reductionists who try to abolish reductionism are quite one-sided.
Page 91 The pseudo-discovery of polymerized water is another widely publicized example. About 35 years ago, the Russian chemist Boris Derjaguin announced that he had discovered a new, anomalous water obtained by condensing steam in narrow glass capillary tubes. This water had a special spectrum, abnormally high viscosity, weighed 40 percent more than ordinary water, and did not freeze at minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit but instead became a glassy state. He seemed to have discovered a form of water hitherto unknown, obtainable only in very small amounts. His announcement triggered a great deal of research around the world, lasting nearly 10 years, with hundreds of papers published, and even a molecular model carefully constructed for this so-called new polymerized water. In the end it turned out that this revolutionary substance was nothing more than water contaminated by various impurities, including the sweat of the hard-working scientists and the grease on their arms, and the cause of its anomalous properties was precisely these impurities. This episode shows the importance of universal facts requiring others to verify them scientifically. When something cannot be repeated, the allegedly “fact” disappears. ////——An interesting case…
Page 99
Based on the above examples, one might think that the boundary between fact and theory is not always clear. Furthermore, aside from the blurry line between theory and “data,” experiments are also subject to the influence of theories that may be unreasonable. After all, their interpretation must necessarily be guided by ideas grounded in prior thought and knowledge. Poincaré pointed out that it is “impossible” to conduct and evaluate experiments without prior ideas. “This would not only render all experiments fruitless, but if one tried to do so, one would accomplish nothing at all. Everyone has in his mind his own way of understanding the world, from which he is not easily freed.” Therefore, in many senses, the origins of what we regard as facts are mixed. ////——This point cannot be ignored, nor should it be exaggerated.
Pages 100–101
The claim that theories and laws are ultimately based on independently verifiable facts is oversimplified, but it is still basically true, and it must be emphasized that in physics and most other fields of science, although some facts may be theory-laden, the combination of laws and facts is extremely stable. Just as the stability of a building depends not only on the strength of the pillars at the corners, but also on the broad cross-bracing of walls and floors, the structure of science is likewise secured by its dense web of interdependent parts. When necessary, pointing out that the evidence for certain specific parts of the scientific structure may be weak is an important duty of scientists and learned commentators, but it has little to do with the overall safety of the edifice. ////——I basically agree: the stability of science is not built solely on some particular facts, but rather on an ամբողջ whole made up of theory, facts, experiments, explanations, and so on, all grounded in scientific “method”; among these, the scientific method of seeking objectivity and excluding bias ensures the overall stability of science.
Pages 111–112 ……what determines whether old theories and new theories are acceptable or should be discarded.
First, it should be mentioned that, just as many irrational factors play a role in the psychological origins of theory, they may be immediately rejected or accepted by different scientists; initial judgments, even those of the smartest people, are sometimes found to be quite wrong. Copernicus’s new astronomy occupied an important place in Galileo’s thinking, and for this Galileo also suffered persecution from the Church, while Kepler’s laws of planetary motion provided powerful support for Copernican theory; from this perspective, Galileo’s refusal to combine Kepler’s laws seems inexplicable. This mysterious behavior may have had its roots in Galileo’s strong liking for circles and his aversion to “eccentricities” in painting and sculpture, the fashionable artistic trend of stretching figures so as to turn circles into ellipses. Holton believed that Kepler was an eccentric thinker, so Galileo did not take him seriously.
Page 112
In fundamental terms, for any proposed scientific law to be accepted, it must yield verifiable results. As a general philosophy, positivists insist that propositions that cannot be verified by observation are meaningless. However, this requirement is too strict, especially since the word meaning contains many different senses. Science, especially the abstract discipline of physics, is full of concepts that have nothing to do with experiments and meaningful statements that produce no observational result. But there is no doubt that if the content cannot be tested by experiment, then the law cannot be accepted. As noted above, a very general law can sometimes generate local laws, most of which can produce directly verifiable propositions; the prediction of their results comes from future observation or from properly analyzing past experiments in ways never previously carried out (these can be called “a posteriori” in the sense that they conform with known facts.
In general, scientists value prediction far more highly than a posteriori verification. The reason is mostly psychological. There is a feeling that, with sufficient variation in adjustable parameters, a clever theorist can always devise a sketch that fits the known data; in the case of prediction, even the most astute theorist must run the risk of making a mistake; that is why the more meaningful new predictions a theory makes, the greater its value. Prediction can also inspire experiments that would otherwise not have been arranged;……
The seemingly plausible temptation on pages 114–115 may be the simple and stringent criterion of falsifiability, which has been powerfully criticized by philosophers of science such as Lakatos. For a given thing, one can usually construct a special theoretical deformation to explain discrepancies in observation. “In the history of science, some of the most important research programs were grafted onto older programs that were evidently incompatible with them. For example, Copernican astronomy was grafted onto Aristotelian physics, and Bohr’s program was implanted into Maxwell’s program.” Moreover, the verification of any theory must always depend on the boundary within which observations are measured; everything else is the same. In most cases, scientists must determine what to attribute a particular deviation to. The shift in Mercury’s perihelion predicted by Newton’s theory had been known to astronomers for 85 years, and it had never been regarded as a falsification of universal gravitation. For everyone knew that it was caused by the perturbation of some undiscovered planet or by some unknown reason. Only after Einstein, on the basis of general relativity, predicted this deviation was the phenomenon regarded as a genuine anomaly in Newton’s theory, and because its observed value matched the predicted value, Einstein prevailed over Newton.
“‘Falsification’ in the sense of naive falsificationism (genuine refutation) is not a sufficient condition for eliminating a particular theory: until we have a better theory, even if we know hundreds of anomalous cases, we still cannot regard it as falsified.” “There is no falsification before the presentation of a better theory.” Lakatos concluded, and he further suggested replacing “naive falsificationism” with “methodological falsificationism” (“distinguishing theories by verification against an unquestioned background of knowledge, … it takes our most successful theories as the extension of our senses.”).
In other words, whether a discrepancy in observation can be regarded as a falsification of a theory depends on the context of experiment and theory. In many cases, a mismatch between experimental results and theory is treated as error. As noted above, when in 1929 some experimental observations strongly suggested that β decay violated the law of parity conservation, physicists’ confidence in this principle was so firm that those experimental data were ignored and buried, ………… Thus, the falsification criterion has its inherent limits, and further, we must acknowledge that “confirmation” also plays an important role, even if such a role is not guaranteed, and can never be confused with “proof.”
What should be kept in mind on page 117 is that, although falsifiability rather than confirmability is the most important criterion in deciding whether a theory has scientific significance, its role in the larger task of establishing trust in a theory is limited. A theory is accepted not merely because it can withstand many trials of falsification, though such experience is necessary; rather, it is because it leads to experimentally confirmed predictions. After all, the purpose of theory is to produce many things through it, not merely to avoid error. “Only in the philosopher’s ideal kingdom,” the philosopher Laudan remarks, “is it reasonable to defend a dogma merely because that dogma has not been conclusively refuted.”
When deciding whether to discard an old, falsified theory and replace it with a theory of greater explanatory power, scientists face another problem. Sometimes a new theory makes no predictions, a posteriori or otherwise, about phenomena that the old theory can explain. A relevant example is the planetary orbit theory based on Newton’s laws of motion and law of universal gravitation, which replaced an earlier Cartesian theory. The latter aimed to explain that, among all things, all planets revolve around the sun in the same direction, whereas Newton’s theory is silent on this point. For the common direction of such motion, and also to explain the coplanarity of orbits, the specific sizes of the planets, and their distances from the sun, we now explain them as historical contingencies and reduce them to the accidental manner in which the solar system formed. A new theory not only brings new predictions that are contrary to the previous theory, and thus serves as the tool by which the old theory can be falsified, but also transforms the set of questions worth asking. This shift in emphasis is the essence of a paradigm shift.
Page 131
For example, in quantum electrodynamics (QED), we face an unresolved difficulty: on the one hand, this theory has produced an unprecedented agreement between experimental data and computed structures; these results were obtained by solving, through clearly defined approximation schemes, the complex relativistic field equations of QED governing electrons and electromagnetic interactions; on the other hand, for 40 years, all attempts to actually prove that these equations have solutions have failed. If the equations of QED were to receive a proof of “no solution” (there are signs that this may be the case), then the task of mathematical physics would be to tell us: if what has been computed is not a solution of the equations, then what is it, and why does it correspond so miraculously to nature? The very concept of solution to these equations would have to be redefined appropriately.
Page 146
When Aristotle’s concept of efficient cause is connected to science, it was forcefully overturned by Hume, who convincingly pointed out that even observing the relation between cause and effect cannot necessarily yield the conclusion that there exists a driving force, or that there is a necessary connection between cause and effect; all one can observe is a constant conjunction between the two. Within the scope of pure experience, to say that A causes B means nothing more than that B occurs as soon as A occurs. But for Kant, the emergence of this radical proposition was corrosive to science; he believed that it was essential for causal order to be governed by a universal law. In order to save science from Hume’s skepticism, his epistemology made causality a category of rational thought, not necessarily an inherent property of nature, but an indispensable method for knowing nature. A century and a half after Kant, Popper wrote: “To deny causality would undoubtedly be to advise physicists to abandon the pursuit.” The concept of causality, in a certain form, is required by scientific insight, and this survived Hume’s destruction of Aristotle’s efficient cause. ////—Kant clearly understood that causality is indispensable to science, and that the fact that causality is secured in human rational thought does not mean that causality is subjective; rather, it is precisely to ensure that the objectivity of causality survives the attacks of skeptics. In quantum mechanics, the subjective factor in causality is emphasized in another form, but this likewise does not mean that causality has lost its objectivity. It is only because subject and object are inseparable that causality cannot be imagined in a purely object concept abstracted from the subject; causality objectively exists in the relation between subject and object.
Page 161
Summary: regarding the crucial scientific concept of causality, the difference between classical physics and quantum physics cannot be made clear by saying that in the former, the state of a particle system at a certain moment determines its state at any future moment, whereas in the latter it does not. In fact, in both cases, the state of a particle system at a certain moment determines the system’s state at any future moment. The significant difference is that in classical physics, if we know the state of the system, then in principle we can state with certainty every detail of the properties of a particular particle system; whereas in quantum physics, once we know the state, “every detail of the properties” cannot be given in the same way: in the classical case they are completely determined by parameters, while in the quantum-mechanical case they are determined only probabilistically. ////—Indeed, it is quite important here to clear up some misunderstandings: the fundamental difference between quantum physics and mechanical determinism does not lie in whether, once the initial state is known, one can deterministically predict its development. In fact, the key lies in the fact that there is already a fundamental difference in the definition of the word “state”: the “state” described by quantum physics refers to a quantum state described by an ensemble.
Pages 179–180
If quarks are not real, then why are neutrons real? And if neutrons are not real, why are atoms real? Recent devices have made it possible to display “photographs” of individual atoms, but even as these devices become more and more sensitive and reveal finer and finer detail, I still doubt that one can “photograph” the quarks inside the protons inside the nucleus at the center of an atom. In that case, does its reality diminish compared with that of an atom?
Bohr’s response to such ontological questions was ambiguous. He always expressed disinterest in reality and placed his emphasis on language. “What is it that we human beings fundamentally depend on?” he asked.
“We depend on our words. … Our task is to communicate experiences and viewpoints to others. We must constantly strive to extend the scope of our descriptions, but in doing so our information does not thereby lose its objectivity or its unambiguous character. … We remain in language in a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. ‘Reality’ is also a word, a word we must learn to use correctly.”
Thus he concluded:
“There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum mechanical description. The idea that the task of physics is to investigate how nature is is mistaken. Physics is concerned with what we can say about nature.”
Heisenberg held similar views, though from a somewhat different angle. He, too, placed strong emphasis on language: “Every description of an experimental phenomenon and its result depends on language as the sole means of communication. The words in this language represent the concepts of classical physics … Therefore, any description of ‘what actually happened’ is a statement in the sense of classical concepts.” But he went further, writing that some people enthusiastically hoped to
“return to the concept of reality in classical physics, … or return to a materialist ontology. … However, this is impossible. … The wish to formulate how atomic phenomena ought to be cannot be our task; our task is merely to recognize them.”
Later he wrote again:
“In experiments concerning atomic events, we must deal with things and facts, that is, with phenomena as real as any in everyday life. But atoms or elementary particles are not regarded as real; they form a world of potentiality and possibility rather than a world of things or facts.”
In his view, “materialist ontology is based on illusions such as being, and the direct ‘reality’ surrounding our world can be extrapolated into the atomic domain. However, such an extrapolation is impossible.”
For Bohr and Heisenberg, within the range with which I agree, the essential point to emphasize is that realism is scale-dependent. It is one thing to be a realist on the scale of everyday life and experience, and quite another to try to bring realism into the microscopic world, where there is neither experience nor an appropriate language for us. We insist on formulating what happens at the microscopic level in terms of “particles” or “quantum,” and if we want to know it as something more than just mathematically, we seem to have no other choice. When the results of observation and experiment can and must be described in “classical” everyday language, microscopic phenomena do not fit that vocabulary.
The necessity of describing observations in the language of classical physics explains why the Copenhagen interpretation insists on placing quantum theory within a classical framework and using it as the scale by which anything is measured. Logically speaking, Bohr believed that “in the proper sense of the word ‘experiment,’ we mean a situation in which we can tell others what we did and what we already know.” Heisenberg, after citing Weizsäcker’s remark that “nature came before human beings, but human beings came before natural science,” commented: “The first part of this sentence affirms classical physics with its ideal of complete objectivity. The second part tells us why we cannot escape the paradoxes of quantum theory, namely, the necessity of using classical concepts.”
////—When discussing quantum mechanics, one indeed cannot ignore the limitations of classical vocabulary. Of course, one should not overstate the incapacity of language. Forms of expression, including mathematical language, can still appropriately depict a picture of the quantum world; it is just that many words in the traditional sense, such as reality, actuality, and certainty, require a new understanding. When we try to say that the quantum world is “real” or “unreal,” we should first make clear what it is we mean to say.
Page 190 Is the quantum theory really saying that the Moon isn’t there when no one is looking at it? (Is the quantum theory really saying that the Moon isn’t there when no one is looking at it?)
////—This question may already have been raised in traditional philosophy by Berkeley, but in quantum theory it acquires a different meaning—this challenge was first posed by Einstein to mock the absurdity of quantum theory; yet at the same time, the question can also be used by supporters of quantum theory to display its astonishing character! That such a question could become one debated by scientists is in itself enough to show the uniqueness of quantum theory.
Regarding this question, including Schrödinger’s cat paradox and the “Wigner’s friend” problem, my personal understanding is as follows. First, one can refer to philosophical explanations similar to “intentionality” and “phenomenology” (though this is not enough)—that is to say, “the real” does not exist in a pure object severed from the subject, but can only exist in the relation between subject and object. In other words, “there is a tree over there” is unreliable; what we can unambiguously determine as real can only be “‘I’ ‘see’ ‘there is a tree over there’.” Likewise, when describing a scientific observation, the “I see” part is often omitted at the end—this is required by the scientific method, namely, through repeatable experiments and control of environmental variables, to generalize the subjective factor as much as possible and make the conclusion universal. However, for any observed fact, its reality is expressed by the whole composed of these three parts: “I—know—the object.” Every phenomenon, if it is to be described as “real,” must be expressed by tracing it back to the observer.
And what kind of thing is qualified to serve as the ultimate observer? An instrument, such as a Geiger counter? A non-sapient creature, such as Schrödinger’s cat? Or a sapient person, such as Wigner’s friend? —I think the final observer that plays the decisive role is only “I,” that is, the person who ultimately describes the entire process of this real observation. For example, in the whole constituted by a vial of poison controlled by the quantum probability of whether a particle decays, Schrödinger’s cat, Wigner’s friend, and the “I” who finally reports the experimental result, “this particle has decayed” is in fact an omission of the following fact: “I heard Wigner’s friend declare that he saw the cat dead, and according to the design’s inference the cat will die if and only if the vial of poison is broken, and the vial of poison is broken if and only if the particle has decayed.” And until Wigner’s friend finally tells me the experimental result, he, the cat, the vial of poison, and the particle are, as a whole, in a quantum superposition state; as a whole, they are indeterminate to me. Likewise, when I say “the moon is in the sky,” that is actually an omission of “I see the moon in the sky”; and when I have not looked up at the moon, I can still claim indirectly that “the moon is in the sky,” for example by filming the moon with a camera; when I watch the recording at that moment or the next day, I can then say the moon was in the sky at that time—but this is an omission of “I observed through a camera that at a certain time the moon was in the sky.” Or again, even if I do not look at the moon, other people will look at it; they will know the moon is in the sky, so the complete formulation is “others told me that they saw the moon in the sky and I was convinced that what they said was true.” When there is no direct or indirect perception at all concerning the moon, then I cannot say that the moon being in the sky is real, because the mere sentence “the moon is in the sky” does not contain the subject, my existence; only the entire sentence “I … through … know … the moon is in the sky” is eligible to be judged true or false.
However, the philosophical explanation based on classical thinking above is still not enough for quantum theory, because quantum theory seems to tell us that how one observes affects the result of observation! For example, if I decide to observe which slit a single quantum passes through in the double-slit experiment, then I cannot obtain an interference pattern; and if I want to see an interference pattern, the motion of the quantum becomes indeterminate. And because the speed of light is finite, my decision about how to observe may come after the fact has already occurred, just as how I observe a videotape the next day may determine how the moon behaved the previous day! (Though that is a bit exaggerated.) However, the explanation of this paradox is still based on the issue of how to understand the word “fact”: what is “determined” by the observation intention of the “I” is not some “event” that occurred in the past, but the whole fact of “I … through … know … a certain phenomenon.” This issue becomes even more mysterious after the intervention of the EPR paradox. Personally, I lean toward an explanation using the many-worlds theory, though the many-worlds theory faces the danger of being cut away by Occam’s razor; nevertheless, it has striking convenience in guaranteeing the objectivity of the world.
Page 196
In fact, many experimental tests using Bell’s inequality have been carried out in different laboratories, with thought experiments transformed into real experiments. Although the results are always favorable to quantum mechanics, they are still somewhat controversial. But satisfying our desire to replace quantum theory with a realist description of the microscopic world in everyday language and thereby avoid “spooky action at a distance” now seems hopeless. ////—Now, although other interpretations that reject the Copenhagen interpretation, such as Bohm’s hidden-variable interpretation, still stubbornly survive, Einstein’s original ideal now seems shattered—the reality he demanded (determinism, that is, “God does not play dice”) and locality have basically been shown by the experimental results of EPR to be incompatible; Bohm’s hidden-variable interpretation can save determinism only by sacrificing locality.
Page 202
Thus, insofar as we can determine, reality at the submicroscopic level is entirely composed of quantum fields, and all the wave-particle paradoxes arise because we need to describe a reality in everyday language, while that language is ill-suited to the task. Of course, the “strangeness of the quantum world” has not disappeared; its root should be sought in the mismatch between fundamental reality and the equipment of our language, rather than in reality itself.…………
There is here no suggestion that quantum fields are “ultimate reality” in any philosophical sense: Kant’s thing-in-itself is forever inaccessible, and therefore scientifically meaningless. The reality of quantum fields is non-intuitive, and so too is any other mathematical description that may someday replace them. But submicroscopic reality is not forever closed to us; it is only that the tools of our intuitive concepts are inapplicable. Mathematical language and tools are powerful because they enable us to investigate concepts beyond the everyday scale. ////——The author’s attitude is clearly different from that of the Copenhagen interpretation; he believes that “there is no reason why our mathematical description in the non-intuitive language of quantum fields should not reach reality.” But here there are still some problems, for example, are mathematical descriptions really “counterintuitive”? Why have confidence that the language of mathematics can reach the quantum world? And so on. As for Kant’s concept of the thing-in-itself, it is indeed meaningless for concrete scientific research, but as the metaphysical foundation of science it is meaningful: it affirms that human cognition cannot break through the limits of the subject, while also ensuring the reality of nature. On philosophical questions, the concept of the thing-in-itself is far from obsolete.
Page 203
The conventionist school maintains that at least some workable scientific theories are conventions. I have already explained that in some situations this is indeed the case. But this scientific view does not stop there; a particularly current variant of conventionism claims that scientific theories and discoveries are specific results of social and political influences and pressures. Some of its adherents go so far as to declare that all scientific statements (and even facts themselves) are social constructions, the totality of which is what we call “nature,” and that these constructions have nothing whatsoever to do with external reality. To this, I am unhelpfully resolutely opposed. ////——I likewise oppose the overly extreme claims of certain sociologists of science and even of some individual feminists.
Page 210 Scientific philosopher Abner Shimony, (returning to Descartes), used the analogy of discovering the laws of nature and translating a secret code to answer Kuhn’s claims. “Suppose we have such a text that, after a great deal of conjecture, attempts at interpretation have become increasingly consistent. This success may merely be a series of coincidences, so that the attempt at interpretation is on a completely wrong track; but compared with a final successful coincidence, it looks more like having found a good approximation to the correct coding rules. Kuhn’s proposition that truth plays little role in scientific progress is similar to saying that the steadily continued interpretation may produce things that are not even present in the original information and coding rules.” ////—Leaving aside whether or not I support Shimony’s view, this metaphor is indeed worth pondering. However, it can also be understood this way: the book of nature is a fixed, unchanging thing standing there before us, and yet we must translate this heavenly book into our own language. The code originally written in the book of nature is the basis for scientific translation, but whether the translation conforms to the original can only be judged by whether the interpreted language meets certain requirements; an approximate correct translation depends on whether the language it deciphers is coherent, and when the result we decipher seems pleasant and fluent, we tend to believe that our decipherment is more effective and more faithful to the original. That is to say, the effectiveness of decipherment depends both on its fit with nature’s “language” and on its harmony with human language. Of course, the former is the most fundamental, but the latter must not be neglected.
Page 224
No one can be completely objective; that is to say, to some extent we are all inevitably biased, and our thoughts and ideas are all polluted by our upbringing and social environment. This claim has a certain basis, but one cannot therefore say that such an effort is unreasonable. ////——Just as we say: in any case, absolute vacuum cannot be attained, and anything called a “vacuum” inevitably contains contamination by impurities; but we cannot say that the effort to seek vacuum, to approach vacuum, is unreasonable. The more impurities are removed, the more reliably it can be called “vacuum” and put to use. Science is the same: it is always when we have more thoroughly eliminated interference from subjective opinions and social factors that we become more entitled to call it science and then act in its name; we cannot simply abandon the effort toward objectivity because absolute purity is impossible to attain.
Page 226
This scientific attitude, which exerts a broad influence on society through the pervasive reach of modern technology, has been criticized by some critics as one of the many modern maladies of our culture. Excessive reliance on reason has been said to have destroyed the religious faith needed to sustain ethical and moral standards. To be fair, for this assessment of Western civilized countries, it is hard to deny that there is some truth in it. We see around us both the decline of religious influence and the deterioration of moral values, and there is no doubt that the rise of science over the past nearly 400 years has to a large extent brought about the decline of religious belief in the West. Although scientists have contributed to dispelling the mysteries of the cosmos, they are still not able to effectively convey to the public the sense of awe that many of them feel as they come to know nature. We can only hope that the cynicism and anarchic condition of present culture is a temporary state, and that in the future it will be replaced by a more positive prospect in which scientific values occupy the center. ////——In fact, many of the maladies of modern culture are manifestations both of excessive technology and of impoverished science. Strictly speaking, the excess is not the spirit of reason, but “instrumental reason,” that is, a superstition of “technology”; while on the other hand, the true scientific spirit, that is, the rational spirit inherited from ancient Greece that pursued the unity of truth, goodness, and beauty, is lacking in modern culture.
Page 227
Despite the popular attacks of today, the concept of scientific truth has served our civilization extraordinarily well. It is not a comfortable truth, but a well-known note made by Weinberg, representing an awakening that seems to me inappropriate: one in which the point—that is, in Weinberg’s sense, purpose—has no bearing on our truth. Later, Weinberg admitted that his statement expressed a nostalgia for “a world in which heaven declares the glory of God.” This longing for the fusion of emotional truth, religious truth, and scientific truth also lies behind the present attacks on the enterprise of exploration, but the fusion of these categories has irretrievably been lost. Yet science can of course slowly bring people great emotional satisfaction: indeed, many physicists behold the grandeur and structural beauty revealed by nature through its theories and discoveries. Listen to Poincaré: “The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he likes it, and he likes it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing; if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.” We must rest content in the joy of understanding how nature works. The various truths that have been torn apart—scientific truth and religious truth, rational truth and emotional truth—can no longer be reunited. ////——Most great scientists possess a noble spirit, and their nobility and delight often spring from that religious-like attachment to the beauty of nature; in pursuing truth and supreme beauty, they find fulfillment. But for more people, is this explanation really enough to provide reassurance? Scientists pursue truth, but what, in the end, are ordinary people’s lives pursuing? How can the lives of ordinary people feel that they too have something to pursue, something to be fulfilled by? How can harsh truth be harmonized with everyday ethics and morality? —The outlook on life in which one finds fulfillment in the pursuit of truth is possible for great scientists, but how can ordinary people all be enabled to pursue happiness? How can one persuade ordinary people to adopt an ethical way of life? Clearly, science and reason are not enough for human civilization as a whole. Philosophy, art, and religion, though they cannot be fused with science, always have reason to exist independently of science; they do not ask to stand above science, nor do they accept science standing above them. They only ask to complement science, so as to help satisfy humanity’s longing for “meaning,” just as in a great scientist the coexistence of a rigorous, rational scientific spirit and a religious attachment to and belief in the beauty of nature complement one another.
February 3, 2006
Unless otherwise noted, all are original articles by 古雴, please indicate when reprinting: Reprinted from 随轩. Or refer to the copyright statement
Article link: https://yilinhut.net/2006/02/03/2753.html
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply