File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1998/bhaskar.9810, message 7


Date: Thu, 01 Oct 1998 23:02:57 +0100
From: Colin Wight <Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: quantumnese


Hi Louis,

>
>Re quantum phenomena.  Consider a closed system (by some definition of
>closure or other).  If quantum phenomena were to exist within that system,
>then event regularity would be lost. 

Not necessarily, quantum phenomena do exist in most systems surely? After
all if not where do they exist?

Moreover, as you say:

 If quantum phenomena are
>truly random, there is in principle no way to predict the outcome. 

Well this is a big *if*, moreover quantum phenomena aren't random so much
as probabilistic.

In other words, although the world would be technically open
>at a microscopic level, 

Well this isn't strictly speaking true is it? And it relates to the issue
of closure. After all the isolation of an EPR photon constitutes closure -
it must or the EPR photon couldn't be isolated and then you couldn't link
them - but there are no regularities. And actually, if you think about it,
experiments don't always aim to produce event regularities but rather
isolate a mechanism (e.g. genes) so that they can be studied in isolation;
this is fundamental to quantum phenomena. 


Cheers,


============================================

Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Wales
SY23 3DA
Tel: (01970) 621769 


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