At any present moment, before retrospect can make its exclusions, the cultural atmosphere is thick with junk ideation, which is, in that moment, indisputably influential, even dominant, and therefore not to be excluded from any meaningful understanding of what we are and how we proceed over time. It is the collective expression of the individual capacity for error which is continuous with our gift for hypothesis and no doubt crucial to our ability to learn and to imagine. ^[1]

Marilynne Robinson

 
It may be a fundamental aspect of human nature that we create kludges in the presence of mystery. We’re a story-telling species, more content with explanation than the anomalous unknown even if our stories are totally wrong.

I was reminded of this recently while reading an observation made by Eric Mazur, a physics professor at Harvard, who argued that lectures do not foster active learning in students. He said, “In a real-world problem, you know where you want to get, but you don’t know how to get there. … The goal is known, but the prescription to get there isn’t.” ^[2] Mazur contrasted this with the lecture-textbook situation where the algorithm is known but the answer it will bring is unknown. I think he’s on to something.

For a complex problem, we can often intuit an acceptable outcome but then have no idea how to get there. Creating stories to bridge this gap seems a natural inclination. In the course of doing this, we activate our enormous capacity to generate errors and to learn.

Consider global warming as an example. Most people would probably agree that it’s not a good idea to fry the earth. Living sustainably in our biosphere might be one way to phrase an acceptable outcome. But even if this imagined future received widespread support, no yellow-brick road leads to the destination. The goal may be clear, but the prescription is not.

This seems to be true for many real-world problems. It is certainly true in science. I’ll again use quantum foundations as a manageable example for exploring how errors help us grapple with complex problems.

§

Christopher Fuchs, now at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, argues that quantum theory puts the cart before the horse by emphasizing mathematics rather than physical meaning. Fuchs says, “We should be relentless in asking ourselves: From what deep physical principles might we derive this exquisite mathematical structure? Those principles should be crisp; they should be compelling. They should stir the soul.” ^[3] He concludes this thought with a concrete image, saying “Until we can explain quantum theory’s essence to a junior-high-school or high-school student and have them walk away with a deep, lasting memory. we will have not understood a thing about the quantum foundations.” ^[4]

Used in “shut up and calculate” mode, ^[5] quantum mechanics needs no interpretation. For many years now, its mathematical formalism has successfully helped design and build much of the technology of our ever-connected networked life. But if you dare to wonder what actually happens in the quantum world, deeper questions emerge that beg for explanation. It’s story-telling time. These stories are called interpretations.

I set myself the task of seeing if I could make any sense of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics. I did this as a proxy for Fuchs’ high school student. Could I walk away with anything approaching Fuchs’ “deep, lasting memory” of quantum mechanics?

My first thought was to use the Wikipedia summary of interpretations of quantum mechanics. ^[6] It includes a very nice table that compares and contrasts fourteen different interpretations along eight different dimensions (e.g., does the mathematics represent something physically real or only our knowledge about what may transpire during measurement?). The immediate visual impact of Wikipedia’s summary is one of considerable variation. No interpretations are identical when compared across dimensions. Conversely, no dimension receives unanimous agreement when compared across interpretations. Basically it’s a 14×10 table that identifies many points of dissension. ^[7]

This nicely captures the diversity among interpretations, but I’m reluctant to go much farther with that analysis. The basic problem is ancient. As Laozi said in roughly 300 BCE, “names can name no lasting name.” ^[8] Or as Gregory Bateson phrases the same notion, “the map is not the territory.” ^[9] Attaching names to interpretations is useful to a point, but it doesn’t capture the vibrancy that real people bring to learning situations. People are not static and neither are the stories that physicists use to make sense of quantum mechanics. In this sense an interpretation is a living entity that changes with time and may be unique to individuals.

Instead, I’ll rely on Maximilian Schlosshauer’s Quantum Interviews, ^[10] which uses written interviews with 17 prominent quantum physicists and philosophers. Each interviewee addressed the same series of questions. Their answers provide color and nuance to the diversity among interpretations, and clearly demonstrate a genuine sense of struggle with interpretational issues.

From the questions that Schlosshauer asked each individual, I chose three that I thought, in combination, might persuade me that quantum mechanics is understandable. These questions were:

1. Big Issues: What are the most pressing problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics today?
2. My Favorite Interpretation: What interpretive program can make the best sense of quantum mechanics, and why?
3. The Measurement Problem: The quantum measurement problem: serious roadblock or dissolvable pseudo-issue?

I chose the last question as representative of the various dimensions that distinguish interpretations. Measurement and the role of the observer has been a quintessential point of disagreement since Bohr and Einstein parried in the 1920s and 1930s.

It’s helpful to mention how the participants in the quantum interviews were selected. According to Schlosshauer, “The interviewees for this book come in all foundational stripes: agnostics, informationalists, Bohrians, Everettians, Bohmians, Bayesians, collapsists, ensemblists, reconstructionists—you name it.” ^[11]

As preparation for the analysis, I made a large table with names of interviewees in the rows and Schlosshauer’s questions in the columns. In each of the cells of this table, I entered notes while reading an interviewee’s response to a question. Quantum Interviews is organized around questions and that’s the order I used for this first reading. When completed, the table provided an convenient overview and made comparing and contrasting responses easier. I then re-read the responses, this time organized by person, so I could get a more coherent sense of what each interviewee was saying in total.

I did walk away from this exercise with Fuch’s “deep, lasting memory” of quantum mechanics, but it’s not the one he intended. Rather than a memory of understanding, it’s one of fracture. Splinters lie everywhere, ^[12] although some larger fragments remain intact. My conclusion was that I could never understand quantum mechanics in its present state.

§

Current interpretations of quantum mechanics are brilliant, creative, bold, and elegant. Yet given the considerable disagreement among these stories, most must also be wrong in part or total. Perhaps some new fundamental insight or principle will emerge that provides theoretical quantum physicists the catalyst needed to escape from their present trough. Or perhaps some particularly insightful experiments will winnow the interpretations, refine aspects of those remaining, or even point in entirely new directions.

These may sound like harsh words, but I do not intend them that way. What we see in quantum foundations today is a mass flailing entirely appropriate for states of ignorance. This is cause for celebration. It is the act of generating ideas, identifying errors, learning from the errors, and repeating the process.

At this point, please re-read the quote by Marilynne Robinson that opens this essay. Take your time, pausing with each phrase until the unfolding thoughts register. For me, the impact was remarkable.

Robinson uses the term junk ideation similarly to the way I use kludges. They are errors, sometimes even blunders of whopping proportion and tenacious durability. But kludges are us, and they are necessary components in the process of imagining, exploring, and, ultimately, learning.

Robinson also argues that mystery, our ignorance of the unknown, impels learning. She says, “Certainty is a relic, an atavism, a husk we ought to have outgrown. Mystery is openness to possibility, even at the scale now implied by physics and cosmology. The primordial human tropism toward mystery may well have provided the impetus for all that we have learned.” ^[13]

For real-world problems like the nature of quantum reality, learning is the only solution. Thinking, imagining, conjecturing, probing, failing, listening to the mystery, relaxing in the anomaly, and learning. It takes the best that we can give. It’s frustrating, humbling, slow, and tortuous. It’s also beautiful and cause for hope.

Reference Notes

1. ^ Marilynne Robinson, “Cosmology”, When I Was a Child I Read Books, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2012, p192.
2. ^ Craig Lambert, “Twilight of the Lecture,” Harvard Magazine, March-April 2012, pp26-27.
3. ^ Christopher A. Fuchs, Quantum Mechanics as Quantum Information (and only a little more), arXiv:quant-ph/0205039, 08-May-2002, p4.
4. ^ Ibid.
5. ^ The instrumentalist stance on quantum mechanics argues that no interpretation is necessary because no answer to why is required before using quantum mechanics. For a humorous but serious history of the origins of the phrase “shut up and calculate,” see N. David Mermin, Could Feynman Have Said This?, Physics Today, May 2004, p10. My regards to Wikipedia’s Interpretations of quantum mechanics for the link to this history.
6. ^ Wikipedia, Interpretations of quantum mechanics
7. ^ You can get a rough sense of the degree of variation across interpretations and dimensions by using the modal cell value in each dimension as a basis for comparison. For example, the modal (most common) entry for the dimension Wavefunction Real? is Yes. There are 7 Yes values, 3 No values, 1 Agnostic value, 1 footnote-qualified Yes, 1 footnote-qualified No, and 1 footnote-qualified Agnostic. The modal value here is Yes, and there are 7 other values that diagree with the modal value. If you do this across all dimensions, 44 of the total 132 cell values (33%) differ from modal values. I make no claims that this is in any way rigorous, but it does indicate that a substantial amount of disagreement exists among the 14 interpretations that Wikipedia considered.
8. ^ Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo (translators), Tao Te Ching Lao-Tzu, Boston: Shambhala, 2007, section 1.
9. ^ Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2002, p27
10. ^ Maximilian Schlosshauer (Ed.), Elegance and Enigma: The Quantum Interviews, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2011.
11. ^ Schlosshauer, Elegance and Enigma, page x.
12. ^ Considerable vitality exists in quantum foundations today. Here is just one example. During a single week while I was writing this post, three articles appeared on a quantum physics pre-print site that each offered fresh interpretations of quantum mechanics. One provided a “linguistic” interpretation, another a “quantum field” intepretation, and the last a “probabilistic transactional” interpretation. For details, see: Shiro Ishikawa, The Linguistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, arXiv:1204.3892 [physics:hist-ph], 17-Apr-2012; Art Hobson, There are no particles, there are only fields, arXiv:1204.4616 [quant-ph], 19-Apr-2012; and Ruth E. Kastner, The Possibilist Transactional Interpretation and Relativity, arXiv:1204.5227 [quant-ph], 23-Apr-2012.
13. ^ Robinson, When I was a Child, p197.

First, I am writing about tomorrow. I worry about the world’s kludges (e.g., global warming), and I have no magic answers. Writing helps me think through these concerns, forcing me to put words together as ideas I didn’t recognize previously.

Second, I am writing about learning. In the midst of daily living, the world of kludges can look positively frightening. But up a level, at a meta-level, learning processes occur almost everywhere. Think of evolution as an example; it’s learning. I find it hopeful that the world features learning so prominently.

Third, I am modeling the messiness of learning. What you see written in these posts about quantum physics is hard-won learning on my part. No doubt some of it is naive or uninformed. But that’s how everyone learns. You grapple with something, you do your best to straighten out the thoughts, you write them down, you discuss them with others, you scrap it all, and then do it over again. This process takes time, which is the main reason the posts appear infrequently.

I am literally immersed in the research and philosophy of quantum foundations. It is truly bewildering, but ever so slowly I am getting my bearings. I read pre-print articles, journal articles that are not behind paywalls, popular books, technical books, science magazines, and subscribe to many science-related RSS feeds. I also watch physics lectures and videos available on the web. I am still dreadfully unable to comprehend the mathematics, but that is not all bad. I see generally what physicists are attempting. But I cannot know it from the inside as theoretical quantum physicists do.

Fourth, I am writing about how we might engage the world’s kludges. Theoretical quantum physics is a mess, so it’s a wonderful analogy for other current messes in the world. The world will never be free of kludges, but perhaps we can learn how to blunt the most egregious ones and to build more flexibility into new kludges we construct. Quantum physics is trying desperately to tell us something profound about our world, as are other economic, political, and social kludges. While writing about quantum theory for illustration, I can refer naturally to these other searches for the fundamental.

Fifth, I am playing when I write. It all starts with the words I wonder and imagine if. Most of my thoughts like this turn out to be fanciful and get dropped quickly. But I’ve had one such thought for several years now. As I said earlier, I see learning everywhere. So then … I wonder if a generalized form of learning is hard-wired into the universe. If so, this might pop up in the statements of physical principles that eventually lead us out of the wilderness of quantum physics.

Most likely this is just another bizarre thought, synapses connecting dots that don’t exist. But a predisposition toward learning may be an essential component of the physical world. Some theoretical quantum physicists believe that information, simple binary zeroes and ones, is the essence of the material universe. It sounds impossible that a daffodil is somehow constructed from bits. But if true, then … imagine if learning is a way to remix or even create that information. Wouldn’t that be fantastic!

Sixth, I am writing to my daughter Tucker. I would like her kids (yet unborn) and grandchildren to have something that they can giggle about and say “weird old gramps.” Perhaps it will also affect the way they choose to live their lives.

So, Tucker, this is for you. Enjoy.

Seeing the Ox

Yellow oriole on a branch—one call after call.
Warm sun, gentle wind, green willows on the
        riverbank
Just this and no more; the meeting is unavoidable.
Stately head and stately horns: hard to finish that
        painting!

Translated by Lewis Hyde^[1]

 
The Oxherding Series of 10 drawings, text, and verse from 12th Century Buddhist tradition illustrates the ten stages on the path to satori or enlightenment. When I started drafting the present post, I realized that the Oxherding Series provided a metaphor for my two previous posts (Notions on How to Proceed and On the Right Track), although Buddhist thought and enlightenment were not at issue there or here.

The first entry in the Oxherding Series is Searching for the Ox, where we find ourselves knee-deep in self-constructed kludges and go in search of that which is fundamental.

The second Oxherding entry is Seeing the Tracks, when we’re at a still point between past and future and only the dance exists, and we first see footprints left by something fundamental.

The third Oxherding entry is Seeing the Ox, when we first glimpse the fundamental.

What might such an encounter be like?

Again I’ll use the context of quantum physics to explore this question, because the images are so intense. I also appear headed somewhere with these posts, and snippets from quantum mechanics will play an important role. More about this in my next post.

§

In 1927 at the age of 25, Werner Heisenberg^[2] published a tsunami that continues to ripple through the world of physics. His idea is most frequently referred to as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, although Heisenberg almost never called it a principle and preferred other terms than uncertainty.^[3] Regardless of the name, the idea was profound. Stephen Hawking, the renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist, calls the principle “a fundamental, inescapable property of the world.”^[4]

The core assertion in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is that classical physics, which describes the world we humans experience, does not translate well into quantum physics, which describes the atomic and sub-atomic world. Here’s how Heisenberg framed the issue, using the pronoun one to refer elliptically to himself:

One could speak of the position and of the velocity of an electron as in Newtonian mechanics and one could observe and measure these quantities. But one could not fix both quantities simultaneously with an arbitrary high accuracy. … One had learned that the old concepts fit nature only inaccurately.^[5]

The more accurately you measure the position of an electron, the less accurately you can measure its velocity,^[6] and vice versa. In fact, there is a small bound that limits their joint accuracy. This limit gets imposed only in the miniscule spaces of the atomic world. And … the actual joint accuracy is unpredictable.

Ouch. A conundrum with consequences, and the fallout starts with language.

§

People think in stories^[7] and the images those stories produce. But we have no language that corresponds with quantum phenomena. As Heisenberg descibed this disconnect, “it is not a precise language in which one could use the normal logical patterns; it is a language that produces pictures in our mind, but together with them the notion that the pictures have only a vague connection with reality, that they represent only a tendency toward reality.”^[8]

Quantum phenomena can be described in elegant mathematics, but not in simple physical concepts suitable for stories. Even the mathematics is strange; it provides recipes^[9] for experimentalists but couches all predictions as probabilities. Meaning that the outcome of any single observation is unpredictable, while repeated observations conform in total to the expected probability distribution.

The words particle and wave also fade in the quantum fog.

If one electron is directed toward a partition containing a single slit, the electron will pass through the slit and strike a screen placed behind the partition. Essentially the electron behaves as particle. But with two slits in the partition, the single electron passes through both slits simultaneously, behaving like a wave and leaving a banded interference pattern on the screen.^[10] Measurement and observation force quantum phenomena to express themselves in classical terms, but also leave the queasy sense that what actually happens in an atomic event remains disguised.

Position, velocity, particle, wave, and other concepts such as energy and time, all considered well-defined in classical physics, do not adequately describe the quantum world. And this just barely scratches the surface of quantum weirdness. Unfortunately, the mathematical alternative of quantum states in multidimensional Hilbert space doesn’t evoke many stories.

The result is that considerable room exists for interpretation and disagreement.

§

Heisenberg developed the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics, not from clear statements of physical principles, but by describing how the atomic world presented itself in spectroscopic observations. With the uncertainty principle, he declared that classical concepts do not describe what is actually happening in the atomic world. In both cases, he accepted the limitations of the observable.

From that foundation and after many intense discussions with Neils Bohr, Heisenberg insisted that the observable was a good as physicists could do, that they should worry less about what atoms are and concentrate more on what atoms do.^[11] As Heisenberg stressed, “we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”^[12] In an oft-quoted statement, Bohr put matters even more starkly: “It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.”^[13]

That stance raised the hackles of many physicists. Prominent among the early objectors was Albert Einstein. A decades-long struggle ensued, with Bohr and Einstein as principals.^[14]

Even though Einstein’s position evolved over the years, his core concern was unequivocable, “one can hardly view the quantum-theoretical description as a complete representation of the physically real.”^[15] In otherwords, there is something occurring underneath quantum theory that captures the physical essence; quantum mechanics only delivers what we can observe about that essence.

Sometimes this philosophical schism gets portrayed as realists (Einstein et al) versus anti-realists (Bohr, Heisenberg et al). I prefer not to attach names to moving targets. Let it suffice that the Bohr-Einstein dialogue was the most obvious splintering of theoretical quantum physicists into different camps. New fissures still appear today.^[16]

§

Jack Kornfeld wrote a book whose title captures much of the complex nature of things fundamental. He was referring to Buddhist enlightenment, but he could easily have been referring to anything fundamental. It’s called After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.^[17]

There’s a tendency, certainly for me anyway, to picture the fundamental as something that simplifies and clarifies, likely in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing.

The example of quantum physics should nuance that picture. Indeed, the fundamental may simplify, but it can also obfuscate, move us blindfolded into unfamiliar territory, and create disagreement and dissension. Quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle did all of those.

At first glance this might seem discouraging. But if you move up a level, another picture emerges. Theoretical quantum physics still looks a mess. But what process has been occurring since the 1920s? It’s learning, isn’t it? To be certain, learning occurs at the individual level, but it also occurs at an organic meta-level much like evolution.^[18]

This learning may require decades or even centuries. Very likely it will uncover many fundamentals along the way. Here I’m not just referring to quantum physics. We’re all involved in various forms of meta-level learning. Think of learning how to make economies less dependent on fossil fuels so we don’t fry the world with climate change; or learning globally how to live together with our diversities and disagreements; or learning how to create flexible institutions that don’t ossify into bastions of control and power.

Even though laundry time is not much fun, we all need clean clothes. I find this story hopeful.
 

Reference Notes

1. ^ In Lewis Hyde’s spare sense oxherding, he translates the Sung Dynasty Oxherding Series by rendering each syntactic Chinese unit as a simple English sentence. For comparison, see Hyde’s “one word ox” or “American ox” translations that provide respectively less and more language than the “spare sense ox.” For more background and another translation, see Roshi Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen: Teaching, Practice, and Englightenment, New York: Doubleday, 1980, pp313-325. For interpretive photographs, see Andrew Binkley’s Ten Ox Herding Pictures.
2. ^ Two years earlier, in 1925, Heisenberg provided the first mathematical foundation for quantum physics by explaining the spectroscopic characteristics of hydrogen. His achievements in the foundations of quantum theory brought Heisenberg the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics, when he was cited for “the creation of quantum mechanics.”
3. ^ The word uncertainty only appears in an appendix to Heisenberg’s paper, written after a critique by Neils Bohr. Heisenberg preferred the words inaccuracy or indeterminacy, and he always used these words in combination with relations rather than principle. See Jan Hilgevoord and Jos Uffink, The Uncertainty Principle, Stanford Encyclopdia of Philosophy, Section 2.4. For a wonderful discussion of the various names applied to Heisenberg’s idea, see: David Lindley, Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science, New York: Anchor Books, 2008, pp149-150. My favorite term is one used by current German-speaking physicists, which Lindley translates into English as the blurriness relation.
4. ^ Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, New York: Bantam, 1998, p57.
5. ^ Werner Heisenberg, Physics & Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2007 (original publication 1958), pp16-17.
6. ^ In the mathematics for the uncertainty principle, the two terms are position and momentum (rather than velocity). Momentum is just the mass of an object multiplied by its velocity. Here I follow Heisenberg’s lead in using the more accessible term.
7. ^ Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2002 (originally published 1979), pp12-16.
8. ^ Heisenberg, Physics & Philosophy, pp154-155.
9. ^ According to Anthony Leggett, a Nobel laureate in physics, “the whole formalism of quantum mechanics is, in effect, nothing but a reciple” [emphasis in original]. See Maximilian Schlosshauer (Ed.), Elegance and Enigma: The Quantum Interviews, Berlin: Springer, 2011, p79.
10. ^ For a more detailed description of this two-slit experiment, see Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, A Briefer History of Time, New York: Bantam, 2008 [original publication 2005], pp95-98.
11. ^ Lindley, Uncertainty, p110.
12. ^ Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, p32.
13. ^ Quoted in Lindley, Uncertainty, p196.
14. ^ For a wonderful story of “the struggle for the soul of science”, see: Lindley, Uncertainty
15. ^ Letter from Einstein to Max Born in 1948. Quoted in Don Howard, “Revisiting the Einstein-Bohr Dialogue,” 2005, pp31-32. PDF available here.
16. ^ For a compact overview of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, see the Wikipedia entry. To actually experience these interpretations, see the interviews of 17 physicists and philosophers in Schlosshauer (Ed.), Elegance and Enigma. It is truly remarkable how much disagreement exists.
17. ^ Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, New York: Bantam, 2000.
18. ^ Gregory Bateson refers to evolution and learning as the two “great stochastic processes.” See Bateson, Mind and Nature, chapter VI.

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement
     from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still
     point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.^[1]

T.S. Eliot

 
In Notions on How to Proceed, I suggested that we are knee-deep in nasty smelling kludges of our own making. I then claimed somewhat glibly that we know how to proceed. As with all kludges, discovering or rediscovering the fundamental opens a path forward.

That’s all very fine, but it raises an important question I did not address. If something fundamental is obscured, how would you recognize it? Even tripping over it might not be sufficient.

The special case of foundational research in the physical sciences sheds considerable light on this question.

§

In the beginning was the Classical, and the Classical was with Physics, and the Classical was Physics.^[2] That pretty much describes the legacy that classical physics casts on its descendents.

Classical physics concerns the physical reality that humans perceive.^[3] So it’s natural that an anthropocentric physics should be most highly developed. But the backwash of this legacy drags at progress when the classical meets the non-classical.

In such circumstances, the fundamental is easy to miss. Physical reality that Lilliputians might perceive offers a splendid example.

Quantum mechanics is the study of physics in the miniscule spaces of atomic and sub-atomic scale. The name itself marvelously incorporates the tension when classical meets non-classical, mechanics being a term inherited from human scale physics where it seems obvious to speak of bodies located and moving in space, and quantum referring to the discrete, non-continuous, yes-no nature of atomic scale where the classical concepts of bodies located and moving in space must be radically nuanced.

In 1900 Max Planck ushered in a new century and a new foundational concept in our description of nature when he suggested that energy in the form of light and other electromagnetic waves could only be emitted or absorbed in discrete bundles, or quanta. One hundred and ten years later, we have an exquisite mathematical formalism for quantum mechanics that frequently gets described with pride that goeth before a fall, as done here by Christopher Fuchs at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

In the history of physics, there has never been a healthier body than quantum theory; no theory has ever been more all-encompassing or more powerful. Its calculations are relevant at every scale of physical experience, from subnuclear particles, to table-top lasers, to the cores of neutron stars and even the first three minutes of the universe. Yet since its founding days, many physicists have feared that quantum theory’s common annoyance—the continuing feeling that something at the bottom of it does not make sense—may one day turn out to be the symptom of something fatal.^[4]

Ouch. How strange. The calculations of quantum mechanics work splendidly, but nobody can explain how the mathematics flow from simple physical principles. How quantum reality behaves is clear; but what is doing the behaving and why are impenetrable.^[5] Clearly something fundamental awaits discovery.

§

The meaning of quantum mechanics, its interpretation, falls under the moniker of quantum foundations. Physicists, philosophers, and mathematicians ply their trade there, and they share a mathematics wand with magical powers.

Roger Penrose speaks of the “deep unity between certain areas of mathematics and the workings of the physical world.”^[6] It is a genuine mystery why this unity exists, but mathematics does provide an elegant tool for touching physical reality. This occurs during the familiar but awkward dance between experiment, observation, mathematics, and theory. In the absence of experiment, as sometimes happens at the margins of science, aesthetics and beauty and symmetry and intuition offer a substitute.

This awkward dance has another name. Learning.

Consider how you learn something that is challenging when mentors, friends, books, or web searches do not readily offer guidance. It’s just you and your flailings that little-by-little bring specks of insight. Quantum foundations is like that. It is chaotic, incredibly creative, and strewn with epic battles that date to the 1920s when its mathematical rigor solidified and Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein enjoined their classic debates.^[7]

Those debates rage yet today with the intensity of religious fervor, as Maximilian Schlosshauer nicely notes: “Today, the soul-searching quantum foundationalist can choose from a great many faiths, each with their individual gospel of interpretive salvation.”^[8]

You’ve got to love quantum foundations today. It’s truly a mess, but in the best and most positive use of that term. Learning is always a mess, whether it’s done by individuals or in a network of other learners. That is cause for celebration.

§

The key points in the saga of quantum mechanics are that the fundamental still lies obscured; and that the way to discover the fundamental lies in learning.

This works better in the sciences than in our world of self-imposed kludges, where experiments occur on the massive scale called living, observations are filtered through politics and values and cultures, mathematics offers only a meager crutch, and theory is either non-existant or hotly contested.

The awkward dance of science and our own socially constructed kludgedom do share one similarity. Both are grounded in learning.

As Eliot notes, where past and future are gathered lies a still point and the only thing is the dance. The dance, I believe, is learning.
 

Reference Notes

1. ^ T.S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets, New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1943, p15-16.
2. ^ This plays on James 1:1 to describe classical physics. Very likely this description is not original with me, but I could not locate a citation.
3. ^ This is my colloquial rendering. Einstein and Infeld define classical physics more precisely in this way: “Classical physics aims at a description of objects existing in space, and the formulation of laws governing their changes in time.” See Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, The Evolution of Physics: from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta, New York: Touchstone, 2007, p291. But naming anything seems to provoke disagreement. The term classical when applied to physics is no different. See, for example, the Wikipedia entry for classical mechanics.
4. ^ Christopher A. Fuchs, “QBism, the Perimeter of Quantum Bayesianism”, arXiv:1003.5209v1 [quant-ph], 26-March-2010, p1.
5. ^ Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, New York: Vintage Books, 2007, p1028.
6. ^ Penrose, Road to Reality, p1033-1034.
7. ^ Don Howard, “Revisiting the Einstein-Bohr Dialogue” (PDF), 2005.
8. ^ Maximilian Schlosshauer (Ed.), Elegance and Enigma: The Quantum Interviews, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2011, p61.

We have access to all the information of the biosphere, arriving as elementary units in the stream of solar photons. When we have learned how these are rearranged against randomness, to make, say, springtails, quantum mechanics, and the late quartets, we may have a clearer notion how to proceed. The circuitry seems to be there, even if the current is not always on. ^[1]

Lewis Thomas

 
It got so I could smell a kludge before I ever saw it.

Anyone who’s written a computer program will know what I mean. I would code something, it worked, and eveyone was happy. But all too soon an enhancement request appeared. I patched the program and life proceeded. This got repeated repeatedly. Each iteration proved more difficult to cobble together than the last. Occasionally I noticed a faint scent, but quickly resumed programming accretions. At some point the odor became too ripe and pungent to ignore. Finally I faced facts. My program was now a kludge, a patchwork of work-arounds so brittle that its very usefulness was imperiled.

Truly this is a gift, a moment when a kludge becomes a playground. There you can bumble, inspect, consider, hack, imagine, create, and learn. Ultimately, to kludge is to learn. Only then can you discover what is fundamental but obscured, and recast it in a simple, elegant, and powerful way. To be certain this is painful, but it nonetheless opens a path forward.

Kludges happen on scales both grand and small. And, like a virus that mutates in the face of an antibiotic, a kludge enjoys unlimited reincarnations. This proves important and is best illustrated with a familiar example emphasizing only certain features.

§

The heavens have always awed humans with their mystery, but the movements of heavenly bodies also serve very practical functions. Navigation on open seas, predictions of celestial events such as eclipses, and calendrics of seasonal and religious events depend on an accurate understanding of the motions of the Earth, moon, sun, planets, and stars in the cosmos. Therein lies a story of kludges.

Let’s join the tale in the 4th century BCE, when Aristotle’s philosophical cosmology depicted a stationary Earth at the center of the universe. A series of concentric spheres, each composed of an ether substance, rotated around the Earth. Each sphere contained one visible object, including the moon, each of the five known planets, and the sun. A final sphere contained all stars since they appeared to move as one fixed unit. Each sphere rotated with a unique motion that approximated what an observer on Earth would see.

Aristotle’s geocentric conception contained circular and spherical symmetries consistent with belief in divine shapes, but its predictions of heavenly motion proved too inaccurate for practical use. Over the next 500 years, enhancements appeared that culminated in 150 CE when Ptolemy published his mathematical explanations for the movement of heavenly bodies. ^[2]

The Ptolemaic system was accurate within the measurement limits of the day, but its foundation rested on several ad hoc kludges. Heavenly spheres still rotated around the Earth, with centers now offset from the Earth. Philosophically, but not technically, the Earth remained the center of the universe. This helped match prediction with observation, but was not sufficient. Epicycles were then added. These allowed heavenly bodies to rotate in small circles within their sphere, so motion became a combination of spherical and epicyclical movement. This again helped, but not enough. Ptolemy then added another offset that effectively relaxed the requirement of perfectly circular motions. For the next 1200 years, the Ptolemaic system was good enough, as in “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Eventually cracks did appear in Ptolemy’s constructions. For example, the equinox slowly drifted away from the 21st. This played havoc with religious events such as Easter that were determined relative to the equinox.

In 1543 CE, the year of his death, Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs ^[3]. In it he reimagined what was fundamental by scrapping geocentric assumptions. Instead Copernicus proposed that Earth and the other planets orbited the sun. This settled some inconsistencies in Ptolemy’s system, but because it still retained spherical and circular movements the Copernican system did not significantly improve predictions of planetary motions. Better accuracy wouldn’t happen until the early 1600s when Kepler proposed elliptical orbits. Then in 1687 Newton introduced the idea of gravity and demonstrated how gravitational forces lead naturally to elliptical orbits.

That, however, is not the end of the story. Kludging to learn about the mysteries of the cosmos continues vigorously. We call it science, of course, because that sounds better than kludging. But whatever its name, the core is learning; repeated iterations of kludging and learning.

§

Like Lewis Thomas, my notions on how to proceed are hazy. Unlike him, I don’t believe we need an explanation for the late quartets before proceeding.

Perhaps an electrical switch for Thomas’ metaphoric circuit lies hidden in the nose. In which case, hmmm, do you smell something rank? Nasty; it’s [fill in your favorite kludge; mine is: nations drugged on oil and blind to climate change].

We’ve been handed a gift, a moment when a kludge becomes a playground. Maybe the Earth [fill in your favorite: mine include: oil; politics; financial services; higher education] isn’t the center of the universe.

If not, then what?

We know, don’t we? Across all political persuasions, we know. There’s no need for a Copernicus or a Newton. We can all smell a kludge.

In our daily actions, don’t we have enormous latitude to bumble, inspect, consider, hack, imagine, create, kludge, learn and then live that which is fundamental but now obscured?

Indeed.
 

Reference Notes

1. ^ Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell, New York: Viking Press, 1974, p15.
2. ^ The Galileo Project, Ptolemaic System.
3. ^ The Galileo Project, Copernican System.

As a result, however, I’m faced with an inevitable but entirely natural question from many people I haven’t seen in decades: “what are you doing these days?”

I only wish I knew. I could say: “I’m retired, I read and think a lot, I write a blog sometimes, I worry about the world, and I try to imagine how learning might change.”

That would be accurate, but it’s not exactly an engaging one-liner. More like a show-stopper instead.

So, unless someone can suggest something (please!), I think I’ll try the following and see what happens: “It’s all about my great-grandchildren!”

I suppose maybe a grandchild would be the first step.

ps:
Here’s the final draft of a toast I hope to give at the wedding. It’s called Wedding Thanks.

First, thanks to each of you for being who you are;
Second, thanks for reaching this moment in time together;
Third, thanks for this wonderful celebration of your love;
Fourth, thanks for your tomorrows shared with all of us; and
Fifth, thanks for the compassion each of you brings into the world.

Now factor in the multiple economic impacts of peak oil on a sprawling, dysfunctional collection of government bureacracies, on the one hand, and a corrupt and rapacious industry totally dependent on abundant credit and government loan guarantees, on the other. At the least, it’s a recipe for the end of American education as it’s currently practiced, and it’s not implausible that unless something else gets patched together in a hurry, it could mean the end of American education, period.

…

Reflection is the view that recognizes that human ideas of the order of the cosmos are, in the final analysis, just another set of human ideas, and that the hubbub and confusion of everyday life is the only reality we can be sure of. In an age dominated by reflection, Giambattista Vico’s great maxim—“we can truly know only what we make”—takes center stage, and humanity rather than the cosmos becomes the core subject of knowledge. It’s not a knowledge that can be extracted in the form of abstract generalizations, either; it’s a personal, tacit knowledge, a knowledge woven of examples, intuitions, and things felt rather than things defined. From the standpoint of abstraction, of course, this isn’t knowledge at all, but in practical application it works surprisingly well; a sensitivity to circumstances and a memory well stocked with good examples and concrete maxims tend, if anything, to be more useful in the real world than an uncritical reliance on the constructions of current theory.

gml
The two paragraphs above may seem unrelated. But within Greer’s wide-ranging post, they are not. Read the entire post; I cannot do justice to it in summary.

The post left me puzzled. It is enjoyable, erudite, and powerfully written in Greer’s inimitable style. And I’m sympathetic to his basic argument that American education, including higher education, is ill-prepared for systemic shock and urgently needs re-imagination. I also agree with Greer that reflective knowledge is under-appreciated today but will be vital in a future loaded with uncertainties.

My puzzlement stems mostly from disappointment. Greer makes the same mistake he condemns in his opening paragraph when categorizing a book on American conspiracy theorists this way:

… it was a depressing reminder of the reasons that the word “journalistic” has become a synonym for “facile and tendentious.”

For me there were just too many instances in the post where Greer made statements of fact about American education that caused me to wonder what sources he was using. Here’s an example:

It’s been shown repeatedly that the vast majority of high school seniors who enter university now will never recover financially from the economic burden of paying off their student loans.

What specifically does that mean? It’s unclear and, disappointedly, borders on the “facile and tendentious.”

Certainly in a widely read blog like Greer’s, you don’t want to impede a reader with footnotes or citations. But Greer, especially, knows that things are seldom as simple or black-and-white as they appear on the surface. Digging into complexity produces nuances, understanding and compassion.

Greer got the message right, but he missed an opportunity to tell the story in a softer but no less effective manner.

In one sense it matters a great deal whether we choose the low-carbon or high-carbon path: one way, we lay the groundwork for a sustainable (if modest) energy future; the other, we destabilize Earth’s climate while shackling ourselves even more tightly to energy sources that can only become dirtier and more expensive as time goes on. However, in another sense, it doesn’t matter which path we choose: either way, we will have less energy to burn. Plot any scenario between the low-carbon and high-carbon extremes and that conclusion still holds.
…
We will have less energy, like it or not. And with less energy, we will no longer be able to operate a growing consumer society. The kind of society we will be able to operate will almost certainly be as different from the industrial society of recent decades as that was from the agrarian society of the 19th century.

gml
Richard Heinberg is Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the Post Carbon Institute and a prolific writer and educator on peak oil and the social impact of energy resource changes. I’ve become immersed lately in sources that broadly sketch the context within which learning will occur in the future. Heinberg strikes me as someone who is knowledgeable, sincere in his concern for tomorrow, and reasoned when dealing with a topic that can easily become hyperbolic.

What might learning look like in a world that diverges significantly from more-of-the-same? It seems a question we’re about to answer, regardless of our degree of preparation.

None of the models being tried today are universally adoptable; the most we can say is that each of them happens to work somewhere, at least for the moment. This may seem like weak tea, given the enormity of the current changes, but if our test for any new way of producing news is whether it replaces all the functions of a newspaper, we’ll build things that look like newspapers, and if replicating newspapers online were a good idea, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

…

Having one kind of institution do most of the reporting for most communities in the US seemed like a great idea right up until it seemed like a single point of failure. As that failure spreads, the news ecosystem isn’t just getting more chaotic, we need it to be more chaotic, because we need multiple competing approaches. It isn’t newspapers we should be worrying about, but news, and there are many more ways of getting and reporting the news that we haven’t tried than that we have.

gml
If you simply replaced “news” and “newspapers” in Shirky’s first paragraph with “learning” and “college and universities,” it pretty well describes the transformation of what we now call higher education.

Certainly it’s true that “if our test for any new way of producing learning is whether it replaces all the functions of colleges and universities, we’ll build things that look like colleges and universities, and if replicating higher education online were a good idea, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.”

However, it is Shirky’s second paragraph that provides more insight into educational change.

First, I need to backtrack. Shirky’s multiple competing approaches and chaos will sound familiar to many programmers. You’ve got a goal in sight, which may seem solid but is often fuzzy and likely to modify with time. Moving toward the goal then becomes repeated iterations of experiment-fail-learn. You try something, fail, learn from the failure, and try another approach. Eventually you find a soft spot that allows movement toward the goal. Over and over this occurs in a herky-jerky Brownian movement forward. Experience and skill are certainly important, but in novel situations you simply do the best you can by probing, failing, learning, and persevering.

There’s a parallel between this type of programming and the chaotic social change that Shirky recommends. He’s absolutely right that we need the chaos of “multiple competing approaches.” Isn’t that what happens in evolutionary change and the adaptation of species to new environments?

Which brings me to a final point. In chaotic, evolutionary social change, it’s a matter of trial-error-learn and incremental movement. Theory provides a conversation starter because it helps you select another experiment. But rigid dogmatic clinging to theory is simply an impediment.

Let’s keep our eyes on the prize instead.

The thing that makes me bleak sometimes is just how quickly the science grows darker. We haven’t caught any breaks in the last 20 years. Everything that we’ve worried about has come in on the upper end of the projected range or off the charts altogether, whether it’s the melt of the arctic, or acidification of oceans, or the increase in drought and flood. So we’re clearly not going to stop global warming at this point. We’ve already raised the temperature of the planet one degree. We’ve got another degree in the pipeline from carbon we’ve already emitted. What we’re talking about now is whether we’re going to have a difficult, difficult century, or an impossible one. And we may still have enough room to maneuver to affect the outcome of that question.

gml
This is an interview with Bill McKibben, who edited The Global Warming Reader being published this month by OR books. From the publisher’s website:

This is a book for all of us: students, activists, Earthlings. Edited by perhaps the most widely-respected writer on the environment today, GWR is a comprehensive resource that collects seminal texts and voices on climate change from the phenomenon’s discovery in the late 19th century to the present. What is happening to our planet—and what can we do about it? This collection, which includes criticism of the very concept of global warming … attempts to answer these all-important questions.

The conjunction of climate change and new forms of learning is so obvious that I hesitate even to draw the connection. But honestly we cannot continue planning for tomorrow’s learning without factoring in large contextual changes that will influence or even determine what’s possible. Maybe I’m deaf to the discussion or listening to the wrong sources, but I do not see learning projects built or imagined for restricted conditions.