Quantum Unpredictability

            The physicist Richard Feynman (1988) stated that quantum theory can be used to explain all of our physical world except gravity. It has been proved over and over to be a successful theory. However, when it comes to understanding what quantum theory says about our world, he acknowledged that “my physics students don’t understand it ... I don’t understand it. No-body does” (p. 9).

            There is no agreement in the scientific community as to what is really going on in the microscopic world of quantum mechanics (Herbert, 1985). There is agreement with the results of quantum experiments and observations. The problem comes when those results are interpreted. Herbert (1985) lists eight different interpretations of our world, all based on the same experimental results:

1.  The Copenhagen Interpretation #1. There is no deep reality. Our physical world is real enough, but its quantum foundations are not real (Segrè, 1980).  This interpretation was favored by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.

2.  The Copenhagen Interpretation #2. Reality is created by observation. The world has a phenomenal reality, but we each create our own reality through our observations (Wolf, 1984). John Wheeler’s famous maxim states that “no elementary phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon” (Herbert, 1985, p. 18).

3.  The Undefined Wholeness Interpretation. Quantum wholeness suggests that everything is inherently interconnected. This connection is unaffected by time or space. Adherents include David Bohm, Fritjof Capra, and Walter Heitler.

4.  The Many-Worlds Interpretation. Reality in an increasing number of parallel worlds. Every possible outcome of every decision actually occurs, but it does so by splitting off into new, parallel universes (Wolf, 1988). Formulated in 1957, by Hugh Evertt, one of its chief adherents today is Paul Davies (1980). 

5. The Quantum Logic Interpretation. The world obeys a reasoning which is non-human. In the same way that Einstein’s relativity requires a new way of logic from the old Newtonian universe, so the quantum world requires a new logic in order for us to understand it. Its chief adherent today is quantum theorist David Finkelstein.

6. The Neorealism Interpretation. The world is composed of ordinary objects and is ruled by logic and reason and order. The champions of this view were several pioneers in quantum mechanics including Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, and Prince Louis de Broglie.

7.  The Consciousness Creates Reality Interpretation. In this view, it is not enough to observe phenomena, such as a camera or recording device, but the observer must be conscious. Adherents include Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner and the famous mathematician John von Neumann.

8.  The World as Duality Interpretation. The world consists of potentials and actualities. Our everyday world is real, but atoms and subatomic particles only exist in the form of possibilities. This interpretation was described by Werner Heisenberg.

            Each of these explanations or interpretations of the quantum facts has adherents, but only the first two (two versions of the Copenhagen Interpretation) are generally accepted by physicists. Whichever view we accept, our deterministic world no longer seems so predictable:

Not only does quantum theory deny the standard idea of objectivity but it also has destroyed the deterministic world view. According to the quantum theory, some events such as electrons jumping around atoms occur at random. There just isn’t any physical law that will ever tell us when an electron is going to jump; the best we can do is to give the probability of a jump. The smallest wheels of the great clockwork, the atoms, do not obey deterministic laws.”  (Pagels, 1982, p. 64).

            At the quantum level, our world is indeterministic. Our comfortable world of causality disappears when we make observations into the atom. Wolf (1984) writes:

My study of quantum physics made me realize that it is a psychological science as well as a physical one. This realization followed from the fact that the observer had a dramatic effect, as a result of choosing what to look for (the principle of complementarity), on the results of his or her observations.”  (p. 6)

            Bohr’s principle of complementarity says that “two magnitudes are complementary when the measurement of one of them prevents the accurate simultaneous measurement of the other. Similarly, two concepts are complementary when one imposes limitations on the other” (Sergrè, 1980, p. 167). This principle, and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which says that we cannot measure both the position and momentum of a subatomic particle simultaneously, are two major limitations placed on reality by quantum theory.  Bohr used this principle to explain the dualistic wave-particle nature of light (Sergrè, 1980).

            The Greek letter psi (Q) is used in quantum theory to represent the wave function of a particle, a complex function of the particle’s position, momentum, energy, spin, and angular momentum. In short, everything that we can possibly know about a particle is inherent in its wave function - each of these qualities is called an observable. This is mathematically expressed for position as Q(x) where x is position. For each position x, the wave function has a specific value Q(x), which defines the amplitude of the particle at position x. The wave function Q, is called the quantum state and it is a collection of all possible positions for the particle (Penrose, 1989). Of course, when we measure any particle’s position, we will only get one value - this is the famous quantum measurement problem. The same is true for all other observables of a particle.

            At the quantum level, particles behave as waves with amplitudes that can be accurately described by their wave functions. When physicists try to determine what is going on at the quantum level, they must convert from amplitudes (certainties) to probabilities (uncertainties). The physicist Max Born showed that the quantity Q² is a measure of the probability that the particle will be near any position x. 

            According to Penrose (1989), “the rule is that we must take the squared modulus of the quantum complex amplitude to get the classical probabilities” (p. 239). This conversion is called the collapse of the wave function. Basically, it implies that all of the existing quantum possibilities suddenly collapse down to a single actual event--the result of our observation. Mathematics can easily account for the wave function, and for the converted probabilities, but not for the collapse itself, which remains a mystery. If we perform enough identical measurements, we will get an array of results that correspond to the quantum probabilities of the wave function, but for any one observation, only one measurement will be found and there is no way to predict which of the possibilities it will be. In this way, observation reduces probabilities to certainties.

            Wolf (1984) shows that the wave function (which he poetically calls a qwiff) violates causality and suggests the possibility that space-time is not fundamental. In the quantum world, instantaneous events can, and do, occur.  Such events cannot be causally related. John Bell’s famous inequality was a death blow to causality as we seem to experience it. Bell’s inequality demonstrated that local causality (causality within any specific reference frame) can be violated. Physicists have concluded from Bell’s inequality that our world is not locally causal, although it seems to be in our daily experience (Pagels, 1982).  Physical objects are real, but the reality that they represent (i.e, quantum reality) has to be nonlocal. In other words, if we look at quantum reality as containing ordinary objects, then we also must accept speeds that are faster than light despite the basic assumption of Einstein’s relativity is that no object with mass can move faster than light. 

            According to Mansfield (1995), “The role of the archetype in synchronicity parallels the role of the wave function, Q, in quantum mechanics” (p. 82). This suggests that the quantum wave function may serve as a bridge between science and psychology. Indeed, this is not surprising when we note that Jung developed his theory of synchronicity with the assistance of Professor Wolfgang Pauli, one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics.