Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Editors' preface
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I An overview of the contributions of John Archibald Wheeler
- Part II An historian's tribute to John Archibald Wheeler and scientific speculation through the ages
- Part III Quantum reality: theory
- Part IV Quantum reality: experiment
- 11 Why the quantum? “It” from “bit”? A participatory universe? Three far-reaching challenges from John Archibald Wheeler and their relation to experiment
- 12 Speakable and unspeakable, past and future
- 13 Conceptual tensions between quantum mechanics and general relativity: are there experimental consequences?
- 14 Breeding nonlocal Schrödinger cats: a thought-experiment to explore the quantum–classical boundary
- 15 Quantum erasing the nature of reality: or, perhaps, the reality of nature?
- 16 Quantum feedback and the quantum–classical transition
- 17 What quantum computers may tell us about quantum mechanics
- Part V Big questions in cosmology
- Part VI Emergence, life, and related topics
- Appendix A Science and Ultimate Reality Program Committees
- Appendix B Young Researchers Competition in honor of John Archibald Wheeler for physics graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young faculty
- Index
12 - Speakable and unspeakable, past and future
from Part IV - Quantum reality: experiment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 March 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Editors' preface
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I An overview of the contributions of John Archibald Wheeler
- Part II An historian's tribute to John Archibald Wheeler and scientific speculation through the ages
- Part III Quantum reality: theory
- Part IV Quantum reality: experiment
- 11 Why the quantum? “It” from “bit”? A participatory universe? Three far-reaching challenges from John Archibald Wheeler and their relation to experiment
- 12 Speakable and unspeakable, past and future
- 13 Conceptual tensions between quantum mechanics and general relativity: are there experimental consequences?
- 14 Breeding nonlocal Schrödinger cats: a thought-experiment to explore the quantum–classical boundary
- 15 Quantum erasing the nature of reality: or, perhaps, the reality of nature?
- 16 Quantum feedback and the quantum–classical transition
- 17 What quantum computers may tell us about quantum mechanics
- Part V Big questions in cosmology
- Part VI Emergence, life, and related topics
- Appendix A Science and Ultimate Reality Program Committees
- Appendix B Young Researchers Competition in honor of John Archibald Wheeler for physics graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young faculty
- Index
Summary
Introduction
A volume in honor of a visionary thinker such as John Archibald Wheeler is a rare license to exercise in the kind of speculation and exploration for which Wheeler is famous, but which most of the rest of us usually feel we had better keep to ourselves. We have all – even those of us who never had the fortune to work directly with him – been inspired and motivated by Wheeler's creativity and open-mindedness. For all of our apparent understanding of quantum mechanics, our ability to calculate remarkable things using this theory, and the regularity with which experiment has borne out these predictions, at the turn of the twenty-first century it seems there are as many puzzles on the road to a true understanding of quantum theory as there were at the start of the previous century. Then, at least, one could hope to be guided by the mysteries of unexplained experiment. Now, by contrast, we may seem to have lost our way, as even though our experiments are all “explained” (in some narrow sense which can only be deemed satisfactory out of fear to leap beyond the comfortable realm of formalism), the theory itself is mysterious. Further explorations, without the anchor of experiment, certainly run the risk of becoming mere flights of metaphysical fancy, giving rise to factions characterized less by intellectual rigor than by fundamentalist zeal. Yet it would be premature to give up the journey before at least trying to establish a foothold on the terrain ahead.
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- Science and Ultimate RealityQuantum Theory, Cosmology, and Complexity, pp. 221 - 253Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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