Quantum Physics For Poets Quotes

Which of the two possibilities corresponds to reality is simply unknown until a definite measurement is made, at which point the quantum state instantaneously changes to reflect the result of that measurement.

NATURE IS LUMPY

He saw that, ultimately, only possibilities for events and their probabilities of occurring, with intrinsic uncertainties, exist. This was the emerging new reality of quantum physics.

Newton's equations of absolute exactitude and certainty ("classical determinism") were replaced by Schrodinger's new equations and Heisenberg's mathematics of fuzziness, indeterminacy, and probability.

Bohr is really doing what the Stoic allegorists did to close the gap between their world and Homer's, or what St. Augustine did when he explained, against the evidence, the concord of the canonical scriptures. The dissonances as well as the harmonies have to be made concordant by means of some ultimate complementarity. Later biblical scholarship has sought different explanations, and more sophisticated concords; but the motive is the same, however the methods may differ. An epoch, as Einstein remarked, is the instruments of its research. Stoic physics, biblical typology, Copenhagen quantum theory, are all different, but all use concord-fictions and assert complementarities. Such fictions meet a need. They seem to do what Bacon said poetry could: 'give some show of satisfaction to the mind, wherein the nature of things doth seem to deny it.' Literary fictions ( Bacon's 'poetry') do likewise. One consequence is that they change, for the same reason that patristic allegory is not the same thing, though it may be essentially the same kind of thing, as the physicists' Principle of Complementarity. The show of satisfaction will only serve when there seems to be a degree of real compliance with reality as we, from time to time, imagine it. Thus we might imagine a constant value for the irreconcileable observations of the reason and the imagination, the one immersed in chronos, the other in kairos; but the proportions vary indeterminably. Or, when we find 'what will suffice,' the element of what I have called the paradigmatic will vary. We measure and order time with our fictions; but time seems, in reality, to be ever more diverse and less and less subject to any uniform system of measurement. Thus we think of the past in very different timescales, according to what we are doing; the time of the art-historian is different from that of the geologist, that of the football coach from the anthropologist's. There is a time of clocks, a time of radioactive carbon, a time even of linguistic change, as in lexicostatics. None of these is the same as the 'structural' or 'family' time of sociology. George Kubler in his book The Shape of Time distinguished between 'absolute' and 'systematic' age, a hierarchy of durations from that of the coral reef to that of the solar year. Our ways of filling the interval between the tick and tock must grow more difficult and more selfcritical, as well as more various; the need we continue to feel is a need of concord, and we supply it by increasingly varied concord-fictions. They change as the reality from which we, in the middest, seek a show of satisfaction, changes; because 'times change.' The fictions by which we seek to find 'what will suffice' change also. They change because we no longer live in a world with an historical tick which will certainly be consummated by a definitive tock. And among all the other changing fictions, literary fictions take their place. They find out about the changing world on our behalf; they arrange our complementarities. They do this, for some of us, perhaps better than history, perhaps better than theology, largely because they are consciously false; but the way to understand their development is to see how they are related to those other fictional systems. It is not that we are connoisseurs of chaos, but that we are surrounded by it, and equipped for coexistence with it only by our fictive powers. This may, in the absence of a supreme fiction-or the possibility of it, be a hard fate; which is why the poet of that fiction is compelled to say From this the poem springs: that we live in a place That is not our own, and much more, nor ourselves And hard it is, in spite of blazoned days.

Wolfgang Pauli, to seriously consider quitting in 1925. "For me," he wrote in exasperation to a colleague, "physics is too difficult and I wish that I were a film comedian or something similar and had never heard of physics.

While Heisenberg had described the tusks and Schrodinger the trunk, the total elephant is so much more than its parts.

Schrodinger, for one, rejected it vehemently, regretting having devised the equation that gave rise to it.

Einstein cherished the belief that quantum theory was merely a stopgap, which would eventually be replaced by a theory that was deterministic and causal. Over the years, he made many clever attempts to show that uncertainty relations could be circumvented, but they were foiled, one by one, with relish, by Bohr.

A single photon seems to "know" if there are two slits open or only one slit open and it behaves differently accordingly!

Rumi (Persian poet of the 13th Century) in a poem translated by Coleman Barks states: "Don't you realize how close to God you are?"   We could interpret Rumi's  "God" as being the Christian God, the Islamic, God (Allah), or the Jewish God, (Jehovah) or whatever else we choose to call our speculation of who "God" is.   The meaning of Rumi is clear, don't we see that we are part of this all or "God."   In another poem called "I AM the One!"  Rumi writes, "God himself lives inside this (Rumi's) patched cloak."  Here Rumi is saying that all that is created exists within him.  Therefore if “God” exists in Rumi, then “God” exists in all of us.

One can see the probabilistic behavior of photons in ordinary everyday occurrences. Suppose you look at a window display at your favorite Victoria's Secret lingerie store. Superimposed over the shoes of the sexy mannequins you observe a faint image of yourself in the window. What is happening? Light is a stream of particles-photons-that produce a bizarre quantumlike result. Most of the photons-say, coming from a source like the Sun-reflect off your face and pass right through the store window, providing a clear image of you (handsome devil!) to anyone who happens to be on the other side of the window (the window mannequin dresser?). But some small fraction of the photons are reflected back from the glass to provide that dim image of you overlaying the skimpy undergarments in the window display. All photons are identical, so why are

The electrons seem eerily to take both paths at once if nothing is watching, but a definite path if someone or something is watching! These are not particles and not waves-they are both and neither-they are something new: They are quantum states.6

Copenhagen

I don't know if the young Einstein had encountered the Paradiso during his intellectual wanderings in Italy, and whether or not the vivid imagination of the Italian poet may have had a direct influence on his intuition that the universe might be both finite and without boundary. Whether or not such influence occurred, I believe that this example demonstrates how great science and great poetry are both visionary, and may even arrive at the same intuitions. Our culture is foolish to keep science and poetry separated: they are two tools to open our eyes to the complexity and beauty of the world.

There is a whisper in the waterfall, in a place no one knows about, no one has been to, somewhere where the open range stretches for miles and the horses run wild, and free and the air is crisp and fresh, and the line trees touch the sky and the wolf sleeps in the shade of the moon, my time is spent writing all my visions, all that I see and hear, sitting in my room, in the distant lands a lady sits in front of the mirror in a log cabin, across the ocean, combing her hair wondering where all her younger days have gone, and the dreams she dreamed why they never came through, her graceful eyes smile with contented embrace of the moment, as the open fire crackles in the darkness of the cabin throwing shadows onto the wall, and there’s me sitting in my room I can see her but I cannot reach her, the cat is out in the forest hunting in the light of the moon, and the dog is curled up by the fire fast asleep in solitude in silence and calm, there is nothing to explain, there is nothing to challenge the time as it ticks away at our life, in the silence of the night I am searching for answers, but none is coming forth, I guess this is how life has been for centuries, no one survives this journey, oh this desire and the passion was so strong, now it flickers in the wilderness of life, as the old age sets in, somehow beauty survives, there is always beauty before my eyes, from the past and now, and the future, it shines and embraces all the other eyes that see me with blessings of love, that is like a reservoir of love in my heart and soul, this love is in every breath I take, and every breath I exhale, nothing was lost end of the day, my heart and soul was calm and love flowed out like invisible aura into the world blessing people and animals alike and the great quantum physics of nature that has blessed me for so many years in my solitude, in my love, in my life, in my harmony, we can only find strength in our own being, yes, and as the poets write the words onto paper that only their inner self understands, I reflect on life, and give my flake of meaning, I am alone, but not lonely, as Leonard Cohen sings in the back ground, and my life feels complete, and there is dept to beauty that I experience and feel, and so life goes on my friend, just enjoy each day for each day there is nothing else there never was, stop chasing the future or regret the past, for life passes so fast, stay grounded and in the now