What don’t we know?
Some scientists tell us that an electron can behave like either a wave or a particle. Oooookay. Actually, we’re pretty familiar with the properties of particles.They’re reliably solid. We can manipulate, weigh and measure them. We can interact with particles as we build roads, buildings and machines. Particles are the building blocks of our history.
On the other hand, what is hidden in our history? Could it have been a basic understanding of how waves work that built Stonehenge? What have we dismissed as impossible? What science and knowledge has gotten thrown out as superstition or witchcraft?
We don’t have much information on waves. Most of what I was taught, even in college, has been proven wrong. I was told that sound waves are nothing more than a bunch of particles bumping into each other. Thoughts are particles in the brain arranged in such a way as to stimulate a certain sequence of neurons to fire, giving us the thought that we like chocolate ice cream. This has been our contemporary understanding.
However, if electrons behave both as particles and as waves, how do we interact with them as waves? I think the recent historical answer is that we don’t. I suspect that answer is wrong. It is more probable that it is impossible not to interact with electrons as waves. We just don’t understand how that is done. We don’t recognize it when it happens. We are so immersed in Western logic and scientific thought that we cannot see something that has not been named and described for us.
We’ve long recognized the problem of not being able to see something because we don’t have a word for it, particularly in low descriptive languages. Some early languages don’t have a word for blue. It gets classed as dark along with black and green. Brown is often called orange. As an English speaker, I see a big difference between brown and orange and all the shades in between. People who don't have the words for brown or blue can't identify them as different from orange or green. We've all learned that people living in the far north have many words for snow. For those of us who don't live with snow constantly, we don't see many of the subtle differences and don't know what they mean.
In the same way that naming colors influences perception, recognizing those aspects of our lives that are influenced by wave mechanics might be easier if we named them. Perhaps we do have some names for encountering wave mechanics.
We talk about energy waves, which sounds like a bunch of electrons acting like waves. The theory, I learned for feeling warm when the sun strikes me, is that a bunch of electrons get excited by heat from the sun and bounce around hitting me causing my electrons to bounce around faster, and I experience this as heat. I think we can talk easier about the phenomenon if we forget the bouncing particles and go straight to waves. Waves of energy from the sun strike my skin, and I experience this as heat. Who knows maybe the sun waves turn some of my electrons into waves? The point is, we don’t have words to describe the phenomenon.
However, we know humans have built machines that observe electrons acting as waves. What do we do with this information. Why is it important?
I think it is important because limiting ourselves to the use of particles only limits our potential. Refusing to look at waves and consider the possibilities is willful ignorance. Will understanding Wave Mechanics help us understand our history and the ancient myths and legends? What impact would an understanding of Wave Mechanics have on our spirituality or on our relationship to music? Where can we go? What can we do, and what can we be if we study waves? How do we study them? How do physicists begin?
Physicists don’t begin the study. Writers and artists begin the study by naming ideas and imagining what can be. We like to laugh at how many of the devices seen in the Star Trek episodes have been developed into actual products. Our flip phones couldn’t communicate with the space station, but we have developed means to communicate with the space station and with our explorers on Mars. We have a space station. We need our writers to name ides, concepts and possibilities so that we can talk about them and begin to play with the concepts.
We need to relearn what the renaissance artists knew. Science and art are not two opposing fields, They are connected. Artists must have some sense of spacial relationships, human nature, perspective, and the properties of their materials before they can create. On the other hand, it is the imagination of the artist that gives birth to scientific study.
***
My daughter, Melissa doesn’t agree with me on the role that wave mechanics plays in quantum physics. We are only amateurs, after all, in the study of physics, but she performs her job as a writer by giving names and descriptions to the concept of overlapping universes in her Blackwood Curse series. She thinks her physical objects slide through overlapping universes. I’d write them as becoming waves that pass through matter, space and time. https://www.amazon.com/Blackwood-Curse-Queen-Corruption-ebook/dp/B077CWT6JB/ref
Some scientists tell us that an electron can behave like either a wave or a particle. Oooookay. Actually, we’re pretty familiar with the properties of particles.They’re reliably solid. We can manipulate, weigh and measure them. We can interact with particles as we build roads, buildings and machines. Particles are the building blocks of our history.
On the other hand, what is hidden in our history? Could it have been a basic understanding of how waves work that built Stonehenge? What have we dismissed as impossible? What science and knowledge has gotten thrown out as superstition or witchcraft?
We don’t have much information on waves. Most of what I was taught, even in college, has been proven wrong. I was told that sound waves are nothing more than a bunch of particles bumping into each other. Thoughts are particles in the brain arranged in such a way as to stimulate a certain sequence of neurons to fire, giving us the thought that we like chocolate ice cream. This has been our contemporary understanding.
However, if electrons behave both as particles and as waves, how do we interact with them as waves? I think the recent historical answer is that we don’t. I suspect that answer is wrong. It is more probable that it is impossible not to interact with electrons as waves. We just don’t understand how that is done. We don’t recognize it when it happens. We are so immersed in Western logic and scientific thought that we cannot see something that has not been named and described for us.
We’ve long recognized the problem of not being able to see something because we don’t have a word for it, particularly in low descriptive languages. Some early languages don’t have a word for blue. It gets classed as dark along with black and green. Brown is often called orange. As an English speaker, I see a big difference between brown and orange and all the shades in between. People who don't have the words for brown or blue can't identify them as different from orange or green. We've all learned that people living in the far north have many words for snow. For those of us who don't live with snow constantly, we don't see many of the subtle differences and don't know what they mean.
In the same way that naming colors influences perception, recognizing those aspects of our lives that are influenced by wave mechanics might be easier if we named them. Perhaps we do have some names for encountering wave mechanics.
We talk about energy waves, which sounds like a bunch of electrons acting like waves. The theory, I learned for feeling warm when the sun strikes me, is that a bunch of electrons get excited by heat from the sun and bounce around hitting me causing my electrons to bounce around faster, and I experience this as heat. I think we can talk easier about the phenomenon if we forget the bouncing particles and go straight to waves. Waves of energy from the sun strike my skin, and I experience this as heat. Who knows maybe the sun waves turn some of my electrons into waves? The point is, we don’t have words to describe the phenomenon.
However, we know humans have built machines that observe electrons acting as waves. What do we do with this information. Why is it important?
I think it is important because limiting ourselves to the use of particles only limits our potential. Refusing to look at waves and consider the possibilities is willful ignorance. Will understanding Wave Mechanics help us understand our history and the ancient myths and legends? What impact would an understanding of Wave Mechanics have on our spirituality or on our relationship to music? Where can we go? What can we do, and what can we be if we study waves? How do we study them? How do physicists begin?
Physicists don’t begin the study. Writers and artists begin the study by naming ideas and imagining what can be. We like to laugh at how many of the devices seen in the Star Trek episodes have been developed into actual products. Our flip phones couldn’t communicate with the space station, but we have developed means to communicate with the space station and with our explorers on Mars. We have a space station. We need our writers to name ides, concepts and possibilities so that we can talk about them and begin to play with the concepts.
We need to relearn what the renaissance artists knew. Science and art are not two opposing fields, They are connected. Artists must have some sense of spacial relationships, human nature, perspective, and the properties of their materials before they can create. On the other hand, it is the imagination of the artist that gives birth to scientific study.
***
My daughter, Melissa doesn’t agree with me on the role that wave mechanics plays in quantum physics. We are only amateurs, after all, in the study of physics, but she performs her job as a writer by giving names and descriptions to the concept of overlapping universes in her Blackwood Curse series. She thinks her physical objects slide through overlapping universes. I’d write them as becoming waves that pass through matter, space and time. https://www.amazon.com/Blackwood-Curse-Queen-Corruption-ebook/dp/B077CWT6JB/ref
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