Mnyb wrote: > There is an objective reality outside of us self and our senses .
Sorry to be a little late commenting on this. I hope you don't feel that I'm "cherry-picking" your much earlier post, but you did give this sentence its own paragraph which implies that you believe it stands on its own merits as a general statement about the physical nature of the universe we somewhat surprisingly find ourselves thrust into. Do you have any suggestion about how this statement might be tested experimentally? If not, I suggest you examine the famous double-slit experiment which actually illustrates the wave/particle duality of nature. There is an adequate write-up in Wikipaedia if you need a reference. This experiment enables the wave/particle duality implied by Quantum Mechanics to be detected at a real-world scale. The original double slit experiments were conducted in 1819 by a physicist called Young, & for a long time the arrangement was named after him, as "Young's slits" & was interpreted as an experimental demonstration that light was a wave, because a visible interference pattern of alternating light and dark vertical bands could be observed on a screen placed on the other side of the slits from a single light source. This phenomenon could be predicted by the hypothesis that light is a wave since on the far side of the slits a light wave would propagate as if it originated from 2 distinct point sources (i.e. the slits themselves) both of which would then radiate outwards from those slits & the alternate peaks & troughs of each separate wave thus transmitted would interfere with each other, reinforcing at some points (the light bands) & cancelling each other out at others (the dark bands). If you drop 1 pebble into a pond you will observe a circular pattern of ripples radiating outwards. If you drop 2 pebbles simultaneously into a pond but a little distance away from each other, you will observe 2 circular patterns of ripples that exhibit a similar interference effect where the circles overlap - this will occur in a region bisected by straight line drawn perpendicular to the straight line drawn between the points of entry of the pebbles & passing through the mid-point of that 2nd line. This is not a precise analogy to the double slits because there will be 2 interference regions in the pond directly opposite to each other, but I offer it as an easy way to appreciate how 2 separate waveforms can create an interference region with reinforcement & cancellation occurring. You can physically observe that this is the case, the experiment is entirely repeatable. With the slits, the waves are only propagated as half-circles since the slits themselves are supplied with light from a point wave source on one side & then cause the continuing waveform to behave as if it were 2 distinct waves on the other - thus only 1 interference region occurs on the opposite side of the slits to the point source & the classic interference pattern can be observed on a screen placed parallel to the plane of the slits in this region. All this seems very comfortable so far. No-one had considered the existence of quanta (i.e. discrete elements) of radiation back in those days & when the "Black Body Radiation" experiments which implied their existence were performed to confirm the absence of the "ultraviolet catastrophe" effect which was implied by the continuous wave nature of light hypothesis, theoretical physicists struggled a bit to come up with a credible alternative hypothesis. The problem was not really properly addressed until Quantum Mechanics was painfully birthed in the 1920's & many of the older "classical" theoreticians (notably including Einstein whose instinctive approach which had arguably achieved its zenith in 1905, a year in which he published not 1 but 3 ground breaking papers whilst simultaneously working as a patent clerk - apparently the workload associated with this job was quite variable, which gave him a bit of time to reflect on other matters... ) struggled or refused to accept it. Let's get back to the double slits. We now have the technology to detect the passage of individual quanta. Let's replace Young's light source with a coherent emitter of a regular succession of photons (in the way that a machine gun dispenses bullets, rapid-fire but one at a time). We might refer to this as a laser. Unobserved prior to the screen these protons behave as an uncollapsed quantum waveform, each photon passes through *-both-* slits & the still uncollapsed twin waveforms emerging from the slits interfere with each other *-for a single photon-*, & produce the previously observed interference pattern at the screen. This requires sensitive equipment to observe when one is looking at a single photon in isolation, but the stream of photons from the laser source creates the effect visibly. So far so good, although the ability of a single photon to interfere with itself may surprise some. Now the crunch: we now place equipment capable of detecting the passage of a single photon at each of the two slits. Until we switch these detectors on, all proceeds as above. But as soon as they are switched on the quantum waveform of each photon collapses at the location of the slits (i.e. where the observation has been made) & each individual photon will be found to have travelled through one slit or the other, but not both, *-& continues its journey on to the screen as if it were a particle-* (travelling in a straight line) & consequently only capable of hitting the screen in one of 2 locations, those 2 points that are in a straight line from the laser through 1 slit or the other. There is no longer any possibility of an interference pattern arising. The moment the detection is made at the slits, when observing the behaviour the stream of photons from the laser at a real world level, *-the interference pattern on the screen disappears & is replaced by 2 vertical bright lines-*. This is observable, repeatable and deeply shocking at a common sense level. This experiment demonstrates both wave/particle duality & *-the fact that when an observation is made, reality itself changes-*. This is in accordance with the theory of Quantum Mechanics. I respectfully submit that the foregoing explanation rebuts your hypothesis that reality is strictly objective, using the Scientific Method that we all cling to. Dave (straight face) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Golden Earring's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=66646 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=106519 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
