Author: Jonathan

There are over a dozen different interpretations of quantum mechanics, not including the view that we shouldn’t be trying to interpret the theory at all, the “shut up and calculate” school. We could put that more elegantly perhaps as where we cannot speak, there we should be silent. In his recent book Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution, Lee Smolin frames the issue as primarily one between scientific realism and what he calls anti-realism, though non-realism might be better. He argues that generations of scientists have been taught that quantum theory is, from a philosophical perspective, anti-realist. The established view, the Copenhagen interpretation,…

In his essay Form, Substance & Difference, the ecologist and anthropologist Gregory Bateson wrote: It all starts with the Pythagoreans. The argument took the shape “Do you ask what it is made of - earth, fire, water, etc?” Or do you ask, “What is its pattern?” We can reasonably say that this argument has now been resolved decisively in favour of pattern. The basic ontology of nature that we have is an ontology of events rather than entities. The models of physics are mathematical models that describe transformations in space and time of measurable quantities: momentum, energy, charge and so…