Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Has physics ever been deterministic? + Why the laws of nature are not inevitable

#1
C C Offline
Has physics ever been deterministic? (philosophy of science)
https://medienportal.univie.ac.at/presse...inistisch/

RELEASE: Researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the University of Vienna and the University of Geneva, have proposed a new interpretation of classical physics without real numbers. This new study challenges the traditional view of classical physics as deterministic.

In classical physics it is usually assumed that if we know where an object is and its velocity, we can exactly predict where it will go. An alleged superior intelligence having the knowledge of all existing objects at present, would be able to know with certainty the future as well as the past of the universe with infinite precision. Pierre-Simon Laplace illustrated this argument, later called Laplace's demon, in the early 1800s to illustrate the concept of determinism in classical physics. It is generally believed that it was only with the advent of quantum physics that determinism was challenged. Scientists found out that not everything can be said with certainty and we can only calculate the probability that something could behave in a certain way.

But is really classical physics completely deterministic? Flavio Del Santo, researcher at Vienna Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna, and Nicolas Gisin from the University of Geneva, address this question in their new article "Physics without Determinism: Alternative Interpretations of Classical Physics", published in the journal Physical Review A. Building on previous works of the latter author, they show that the usual interpretation of classical physics is based on tacit additional assumptions. When we measure something, say the length of a table with a ruler, we find a value with a finite precision, meaning with a finite number of digits. Even if we use a more accurate measurement instrument, we will just find more digits, but still a finite number of them. However, classical physics assumes that even if we may not be able to measure them, there exist an infinite number of predetermined digits. This means that the length of the table is always perfectly determined.

Imagine now to play a variant of the Bagatelle or pin-board game (as in figure), where a board is symmetrically filled with pins. When a little ball rolls down the board, it will hit the pins and move either to the right or to the left of each of them. In a deterministic world, the perfect knowledge of the initial conditions under which the ball enters the board (its velocity and position) determines unambiguously the path that the ball will follow between the pins. Classical physics assumes that if we cannot obtain the same path in different runs, it is only because in practice we were not able to set precisely the same initial conditions. For instance, because we do not have an infinitely precise measurement instrument to set the initial position of the ball when entering the board.

The authors of this new study propose an alternative view: after a certain number of pins, the future of the ball is genuinely random, even in principle, and not due to the limitations of our measurement instruments. At each hit, the ball has a certain propensity or tendency to bounce on the right or on the left, and this choice is not determined a priori. For the first few hits, the path can be determined with certainty, that is the propensity is 100% for the one side and 0% for the other. After a certain number of pins, however, the choice is not pre-determined and the propensity gradually reaches 50% for the right and 50% for the left for the distant pins. In this way, one can think of each digit of the length of our table as becoming determined by a process similar to the choice of going left or right at each hit of the little ball. Therefore, after a certain number of digits, the length is not determined anymore.

The new model introduced by the researchers hence refuses the usual attribution of a physical meaning to mathematical real numbers (numbers with infinite predetermined digits). It states instead that after a certain number of digits their values become truly random, and only the propensity of taking a specific value is well defined. This leads to new insights on the relationship between classical and quantum physics. In fact, when, how and under what circumstances an indeterminate quantity takes a definite value is a notorious question in the foundations of quantum physics, known as the quantum measurement problem. This is related to the fact that in the quantum world it is impossible to observe reality without changing it. In fact, the value of a measurement on a quantum object is not yet established until an observer actually measures it. This new study, on the other hand, points out that the same issue could have always been hidden also behind the reassuring rules of classical physics.



Why the laws of nature are not inevitable, never have been, and never will be. (philosophy of science)
https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/1...table.html

EXCERPT (Sabine Hossenfelder): . . . Of course a theory can also be wrong if it makes predictions that simply disagree with observations, but that is not what I am talking about today. Today, I am writing about the nonsense idea that the laws of nature are somehow “inevitable” just because you can derive consequences from postulated axioms.

It is easy to see that this idea is wrong even if you have never heard the word epistemology. Consequences which you can derive from axioms are exactly as “inevitable” as postulating the axioms, which means the consequences are not inevitable. But that this idea is wrong isn’t the interesting part. The interesting part is that it remains popular among physicists and science writers who seem to believe that physics is somehow magically able to explain itself.

But where do we get the axioms for our theories from? We use the ones that, according to present knowledge, do the best job to describe our observations. Sure, once you have written down some axioms, then anything you can derive from these axioms can be said to be an inevitable consequence. This is just the requirement of internal consistency.

But the axioms themselves can never be proved to be the right ones and hence will never be inevitable themselves. You can say they are “right” only to the extent that they give rise to predictions that agree with observations.

This means not only that we may find tomorrow that a different set of axioms describes our observations better. It means more importantly that any statement about the inevitability of the laws of nature is really a statement about our inability to find a better explanation for our observations.... (MORE)
Reply
#2
Yazata Offline
(Dec 15, 2019 04:53 PM)C C Wrote: Why the laws of nature are not inevitable, never have been, and never will be. (philosophy of science)
https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/1...table.html

EXCERPT (Sabine Hossenfelder): . . . Of course a theory can also be wrong if it makes predictions that simply disagree with observations, but that is not what I am talking about today. Today, I am writing about the nonsense idea that the laws of nature are somehow “inevitable” just because you can derive consequences from postulated axioms.

It is easy to see that this idea is wrong even if you have never heard the word epistemology. Consequences which you can derive from axioms are exactly as “inevitable” as postulating the axioms, which means the consequences are not inevitable. But that this idea is wrong isn’t the interesting part. The interesting part is that it remains popular among physicists and science writers who seem to believe that physics is somehow magically able to explain itself.

But where do we get the axioms for our theories from? We use the ones that, according to present knowledge, do the best job to describe our observations. Sure, once you have written down some axioms, then anything you can derive from these axioms can be said to be an inevitable consequence. This is just the requirement of internal consistency.

But the axioms themselves can never be proved to be the right ones and hence will never be inevitable themselves. You can say they are “right” only to the extent that they give rise to predictions that agree with observations.

This means not only that we may find tomorrow that a different set of axioms describes our observations better. It means more importantly that any statement about the inevitability of the laws of nature is really a statement about our inability to find a better explanation for our observations.... (MORE)

I agree with Sabine, as I often do.

One variant of the argument that she's criticizing is the assertion that there is only one set of axioms all of whose consequences are mutually consistent. If we choose any other axioms, then we could derive a contradiction from them.

I don't know how anyone could possibly know that. But the claim has been made.
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Article We need new physics, not new particles (philosophy of physics) C C 1 99 Oct 3, 2023 07:13 PM
Last Post: Magical Realist
  Article We've been misreading a major law of physics for the past 300 years? C C 0 73 Sep 15, 2023 06:55 PM
Last Post: C C
  Article The laws of nature explain very little (philosophy of science) C C 1 84 Jun 18, 2023 10:01 PM
Last Post: Magical Realist
  Physics alone can't answer the big questions (philosophy of physics) C C 0 88 Sep 13, 2022 03:40 PM
Last Post: C C
  Ethics of eco-sabotage + Moritz Schlick: What if he had not been murdered? C C 0 81 Dec 19, 2021 04:49 AM
Last Post: C C
  Laws of robotics: The ethical problems of artificial intelligence C C 5 218 Aug 22, 2021 06:22 AM
Last Post: Leigha
Question Problems may be inevitable, why not solutions? Leigha 2 203 Dec 1, 2020 12:56 AM
Last Post: C C
  New study offers clues to origin of laws + Bees may create mental imagery C C 0 128 Feb 24, 2020 06:49 PM
Last Post: C C
  (Philosophy of science videos) Laws of nature + After the end of evidence C C 8 1,194 Jan 8, 2019 08:55 PM
Last Post: Syne
  New book argues life is inevitable via laws of nature (philosophy of science) C C 2 691 Nov 22, 2018 05:41 AM
Last Post: Zinjanthropos



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)