enowning
Thursday, February 21, 2008
 
Andrew Haas discerns some affinities with modern physics.
[W]hile Einstein shows how time and space shift as we approach the speed of light, for Heisenberg: 'an objective description for events in space and time is possible only when we have to deal with objects or processes on a comparitively large scale, where Planck's constant can be regarded as infinitely small. When our experiments approach the region where the quantum of action becomes essential we get into all these difficulties.' But when are we not 'approaching' the 'universal' constant of the speed of light? And when can Planck's constant be regarded as 'infinitely' small? When are we not 'approaching' the region where the quantum of action becomes essential? In fact, although we would like to ignore the effects of relativity and quantum theory as 'practically infinite', they react upon everything we do, everywhere, all the time. Practical infinity is no infinity at all. And uncertainty is everywhere. The quantum world constantly interferes with phenomena, with thing as they show themselves, and as they are thought, with technology itself and with our attempy to raise the question of its essence. And overlooking events on the quantum level is a 'dangerous oversimplification', like splitting the world up into subject and object, us and nature, like forgetting the technology of the question.

P. 152-153
 
Comments:
Perhaps the quantum phenomenon is the effect of scientific method itself:
On quantum physics' assault on time
http://www.arte-fact.org/dgtlon_e.html#ps2
 
So then Planck is just an quantum illusion?
 
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