Determinism and Indeterminism Robert C. Bishop Faculty Of
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
At Least in Biophysical Novelties Amihud Gilead
The Twilight of Determinism: At Least in Biophysical Novelties Amihud Gilead Department of Philosophy, Eshkol Tower, University of Haifa, Haifa 3498838 Email: [email protected] Abstract. In the 1990s, Richard Lewontin referred to what appeared to be the twilight of determinism in biology. He pointed out that DNA determines only a little part of life phenomena, which are very complex. In fact, organisms determine the environment and vice versa in a nonlinear way. Very recently, biophysicists, Shimon Marom and Erez Braun, have demonstrated that controlled biophysical systems have shown a relative autonomy and flexibility in response which could not be predicted. Within the boundaries of some restraints, most of them genetic, this freedom from determinism is well maintained. Marom and Braun have challenged not only biophysical determinism but also reverse-engineering, naive reductionism, mechanism, and systems biology. Metaphysically possibly, anything actual is contingent.1 Of course, such a possibility is entirely excluded in Spinoza’s philosophy as well as in many philosophical views at present. Kant believed that anything phenomenal, namely, anything that is experimental or empirical, is inescapably subject to space, time, and categories (such as causality) which entail the undeniable validity of determinism. Both Kant and Laplace assumed that modern science, such as Newton’s physics, must rely upon such a deterministic view. According to Kant, free will is possible not in the phenomenal world, the empirical world in which we 1 This is an assumption of a full-blown metaphysics—panenmentalism—whose author is Amihud Gilead. See Gilead 1999, 2003, 2009 and 2011, including literary, psychological, and natural applications and examples —especially in chemistry —in Gilead 2009, 2010, 2013, 2014a–c, and 2015a–d. -
An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory
AN INTRODUCTION TO QUANTUM FIELD THEORY By Dr M Dasgupta University of Manchester Lecture presented at the School for Experimental High Energy Physics Students Somerville College, Oxford, September 2009 - 1 - - 2 - Contents 0 Prologue....................................................................................................... 5 1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 6 1.1 Lagrangian formalism in classical mechanics......................................... 6 1.2 Quantum mechanics................................................................................... 8 1.3 The Schrödinger picture........................................................................... 10 1.4 The Heisenberg picture............................................................................ 11 1.5 The quantum mechanical harmonic oscillator ..................................... 12 Problems .............................................................................................................. 13 2 Classical Field Theory............................................................................. 14 2.1 From N-point mechanics to field theory ............................................... 14 2.2 Relativistic field theory ............................................................................ 15 2.3 Action for a scalar field ............................................................................ 15 2.4 Plane wave solution to the Klein-Gordon equation ........................... -
Causality and Determinism: Tension, Or Outright Conflict?
1 Causality and Determinism: Tension, or Outright Conflict? Carl Hoefer ICREA and Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona Draft October 2004 Abstract: In the philosophical tradition, the notions of determinism and causality are strongly linked: it is assumed that in a world of deterministic laws, causality may be said to reign supreme; and in any world where the causality is strong enough, determinism must hold. I will show that these alleged linkages are based on mistakes, and in fact get things almost completely wrong. In a deterministic world that is anything like ours, there is no room for genuine causation. Though there may be stable enough macro-level regularities to serve the purposes of human agents, the sense of “causality” that can be maintained is one that will at best satisfy Humeans and pragmatists, not causal fundamentalists. Introduction. There has been a strong tendency in the philosophical literature to conflate determinism and causality, or at the very least, to see the former as a particularly strong form of the latter. The tendency persists even today. When the editors of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy asked me to write the entry on determinism, I found that the title was to be “Causal determinism”.1 I therefore felt obliged to point out in the opening paragraph that determinism actually has little or nothing to do with causation; for the philosophical tradition has it all wrong. What I hope to show in this paper is that, in fact, in a complex world such as the one we inhabit, determinism and genuine causality are probably incompatible with each other. -
On the Time Evolution of Wavefunctions in Quantum Mechanics C
On the Time Evolution of Wavefunctions in Quantum Mechanics C. David Sherrill School of Chemistry and Biochemistry Georgia Institute of Technology October 1999 1 Introduction The purpose of these notes is to help you appreciate the connection between eigenfunctions of the Hamiltonian and classical normal modes, and to help you understand the time propagator. 2 The Classical Coupled Mass Problem Here we will review the results of the coupled mass problem, Example 1.8.6 from Shankar. This is an example from classical physics which nevertheless demonstrates some of the essential features of coupled degrees of freedom in quantum mechanical problems and a general approach for removing such coupling. The problem involves two objects of equal mass, connected to two different walls andalsotoeachotherbysprings.UsingF = ma and Hooke’s Law( F = −kx) for the springs, and denoting the displacements of the two masses as x1 and x2, it is straightforward to deduce equations for the acceleration (second derivative in time,x ¨1 andx ¨2): k k x −2 x x ¨1 = m 1 + m 2 (1) k k x x − 2 x . ¨2 = m 1 m 2 (2) The goal of the problem is to solve these second-order differential equations to obtain the functions x1(t)andx2(t) describing the motion of the two masses at any given time. Since they are second-order differential equations, we need two initial conditions for each variable, i.e., x1(0), x˙ 1(0),x2(0), andx ˙ 2(0). Our two differential equations are clearly coupled,since¨x1 depends not only on x1, but also on x2 (and likewise forx ¨2). -
An S-Matrix for Massless Particles Arxiv:1911.06821V2 [Hep-Th]
An S-Matrix for Massless Particles Holmfridur Hannesdottir and Matthew D. Schwartz Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Abstract The traditional S-matrix does not exist for theories with massless particles, such as quantum electrodynamics. The difficulty in isolating asymptotic states manifests itself as infrared divergences at each order in perturbation theory. Building on insights from the literature on coherent states and factorization, we construct an S-matrix that is free of singularities order-by-order in perturbation theory. Factorization guarantees that the asymptotic evolution in gauge theories is universal, i.e. independent of the hard process. Although the hard S-matrix element is computed between well-defined few particle Fock states, dressed/coherent states can be seen to form as intermediate states in the calculation of hard S-matrix elements. We present a framework for the perturbative calculation of hard S-matrix elements combining Lorentz-covariant Feyn- man rules for the dressed-state scattering with time-ordered perturbation theory for the asymptotic evolution. With hard cutoffs on the asymptotic Hamiltonian, the cancella- tion of divergences can be seen explicitly. In dimensional regularization, where the hard cutoffs are replaced by a renormalization scale, the contribution from the asymptotic evolution produces scaleless integrals that vanish. A number of illustrative examples are given in QED, QCD, and N = 4 super Yang-Mills theory. arXiv:1911.06821v2 [hep-th] 24 Aug 2020 Contents 1 Introduction1 2 The hard S-matrix6 2.1 SH and dressed states . .9 2.2 Computing observables using SH ........................... 11 2.3 Soft Wilson lines . 14 3 Computing the hard S-matrix 17 3.1 Asymptotic region Feynman rules . -
Advanced Quantum Mechanics
Advanced Quantum Mechanics Rajdeep Sensarma [email protected] Quantum Dynamics Lecture #9 Schrodinger and Heisenberg Picture Time Independent Hamiltonian Schrodinger Picture: A time evolving state in the Hilbert space with time independent operators iHtˆ i@t (t) = Hˆ (t) (t) = e− (0) | i | i | i | i i✏nt Eigenbasis of Hamiltonian: Hˆ n = ✏ n (t) = cn(t) n c (t)=c (0)e− n | i | i n n | i | i n X iHtˆ iHtˆ Operators and Expectation: A(t)= (t) Aˆ (t) = (0) e Aeˆ − (0) = (0) Aˆ(t) (0) h | | i h | | i h | | i Heisenberg Picture: A static initial state and time dependent operators iHtˆ iHtˆ Aˆ(t)=e Aeˆ − Schrodinger Picture Heisenberg Picture (0) (t) (0) (0) | i!| i | i!| i Equivalent description iHtˆ iHtˆ Aˆ Aˆ Aˆ Aˆ(t)=e Aeˆ − ! ! of a quantum system i@ (t) = Hˆ (t) i@ Aˆ(t)=[Aˆ(t), Hˆ ] t| i | i t Time Evolution and Propagator iHtˆ (t) = e− (0) Time Evolution Operator | i | i (x, t)= x (t) = x Uˆ(t) (0) = dx0 x Uˆ(t) x0 x0 (0) h | i h | | i h | | ih | i Z Propagator: Example : Free Particle The propagator satisfies and hence is often called the Green’s function Retarded and Advanced Propagator The following propagators are useful in different contexts Retarded or Causal Propagator: This propagates states forward in time for t > t’ Advanced or Anti-Causal Propagator: This propagates states backward in time for t < t’ Both the retarded and the advanced propagator satisfies the same diff. eqn., but with different boundary conditions Propagators in Frequency Space Energy Eigenbasis |n> The integral is ill defined due to oscillatory nature -
The Liouville Equation in Atmospheric Predictability
The Liouville Equation in Atmospheric Predictability Martin Ehrendorfer Institut fur¨ Meteorologie und Geophysik, Universitat¨ Innsbruck Innrain 52, A–6020 Innsbruck, Austria [email protected] 1 Introduction and Motivation It is widely recognized that weather forecasts made with dynamical models of the atmosphere are in- herently uncertain. Such uncertainty of forecasts produced with numerical weather prediction (NWP) models arises primarily from two sources: namely, from imperfect knowledge of the initial model condi- tions and from imperfections in the model formulation itself. The recognition of the potential importance of accurate initial model conditions and an accurate model formulation dates back to times even prior to operational NWP (Bjerknes 1904; Thompson 1957). In the context of NWP, the importance of these error sources in degrading the quality of forecasts was demonstrated to arise because errors introduced in atmospheric models, are, in general, growing (Lorenz 1982; Lorenz 1963; Lorenz 1993), which at the same time implies that the predictability of the atmosphere is subject to limitations (see, Errico et al. 2002). An example of the amplification of small errors in the initial conditions, or, equivalently, the di- vergence of initially nearby trajectories is given in Fig. 1, for the system discussed by Lorenz (1984). The uncertainty introduced into forecasts through uncertain initial model conditions, and uncertainties in model formulations, has been the subject of numerous studies carried out in parallel to the continuous development of NWP models (e.g., Leith 1974; Epstein 1969; Palmer 2000). In addition to studying the intrinsic predictability of the atmosphere (e.g., Lorenz 1969a; Lorenz 1969b; Thompson 1985a; Thompson 1985b), efforts have been directed at the quantification or predic- tion of forecast uncertainty that arises due to the sources of uncertainty mentioned above (see the review papers by Ehrendorfer 1997 and Palmer 2000, and Ehrendorfer 1999). -
Indeterminism in Physics and Intuitionistic Mathematics
Indeterminism in Physics and Intuitionistic Mathematics Nicolas Gisin Group of Applied Physics, University of Geneva, 1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland (Dated: November 5, 2020) Most physics theories are deterministic, with the notable exception of quantum mechanics which, however, comes plagued by the so-called measurement problem. This state of affairs might well be due to the inability of standard mathematics to “speak” of indeterminism, its inability to present us a worldview in which new information is created as time passes. In such a case, scientific determinism would only be an illusion due to the timeless mathematical language scientists use. To investigate this possibility it is necessary to develop an alternative mathematical language that is both powerful enough to allow scientists to compute predictions and compatible with indeterminism and the passage of time. We argue that intuitionistic mathematics provides such a language and we illustrate it in simple terms. I. INTRODUCTION I have always been amazed by the huge difficulties that my fellow physicists seem to encounter when con- templating indeterminism and the highly sophisticated Physicists are not used to thinking of the world as in- circumlocutions they are ready to swallow to avoid the determinate and its evolution as indeterministic. New- straightforward conclusion that physics does not neces- ton’s equations, like Maxwell’s and Schr¨odinger’s equa- sarily present us a deterministic worldview. But even tions, are (partial) differential equations describing the more surprising to me is the attitude of most philoso- continuous evolution of the initial condition as a func- phers, especially philosophers of science. Indeed, most tion of a parameter identified with time. -
Wittgenstein on Freedom of the Will: Not Determinism, Yet Not Indeterminism
Wittgenstein on Freedom of the Will: Not Determinism, Yet Not Indeterminism Thomas Nadelhoffer This is a prepublication draft. This version is being revised for resubmission to a journal. Abstract Since the publication of Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Freedom of the Will, his remarks about free will and determinism have received very little attention. Insofar as these lectures give us an opportunity to see him at work on a traditional—and seemingly intractable—philosophical problem and given the voluminous secondary literature written about nearly every other facet of Wittgenstein’s life and philosophy, this neglect is both surprising and unfortunate. Perhaps these lectures have not attracted much attention because they are available to us only in the form of a single student’s notes (Yorick Smythies). Or perhaps it is because, as one Wittgenstein scholar put it, the lectures represent only “cursory reflections” that “are themselves uncompelling." (Glock 1996: 390) Either way, my goal is to show that Wittgenstein’s views about freedom of the will merit closer attention. All of these arguments might look as if I wanted to argue for the freedom of the will or against it. But I don't want to. --Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures on Freedom of the Will Since the publication of Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Freedom of the Will,1 his remarks from these lectures about free will and determinism have received very little attention.2 Insofar as these lectures give us an opportunity to see him at work on a traditional—and seemingly intractable— philosophical problem and given the voluminous secondary literature written about nearly every 1 Wittgenstein’s “Lectures on Freedom of the Will” will be abbreviated as LFW 1993 in this paper (see bibliography) since I am using the version reprinted in Philosophical Occasions (1993). -
Chapter 6. Time Evolution in Quantum Mechanics
6. Time Evolution in Quantum Mechanics 6.1 Time-dependent Schrodinger¨ equation 6.1.1 Solutions to the Schr¨odinger equation 6.1.2 Unitary Evolution 6.2 Evolution of wave-packets 6.3 Evolution of operators and expectation values 6.3.1 Heisenberg Equation 6.3.2 Ehrenfest’s theorem 6.4 Fermi’s Golden Rule Until now we used quantum mechanics to predict properties of atoms and nuclei. Since we were interested mostly in the equilibrium states of nuclei and in their energies, we only needed to look at a time-independent description of quantum-mechanical systems. To describe dynamical processes, such as radiation decays, scattering and nuclear reactions, we need to study how quantum mechanical systems evolve in time. 6.1 Time-dependent Schro¨dinger equation When we first introduced quantum mechanics, we saw that the fourth postulate of QM states that: The evolution of a closed system is unitary (reversible). The evolution is given by the time-dependent Schrodinger¨ equation ∂ ψ iI | ) = ψ ∂t H| ) where is the Hamiltonian of the system (the energy operator) and I is the reduced Planck constant (I = h/H2π with h the Planck constant, allowing conversion from energy to frequency units). We will focus mainly on the Schr¨odinger equation to describe the evolution of a quantum-mechanical system. The statement that the evolution of a closed quantum system is unitary is however more general. It means that the state of a system at a later time t is given by ψ(t) = U(t) ψ(0) , where U(t) is a unitary operator. -
Is the Cosmos Random?
IS THE RANDOM? COSMOS QUANTUM PHYSICS Einstein’s assertion that God does not play dice with the universe has been misinterpreted By George Musser Few of Albert Einstein’s sayings have been as widely quot- ed as his remark that God does not play dice with the universe. People have naturally taken his quip as proof that he was dogmatically opposed to quantum mechanics, which views randomness as a built-in feature of the physical world. When a radioactive nucleus decays, it does so sponta- neously; no rule will tell you when or why. When a particle of light strikes a half-silvered mirror, it either reflects off it or passes through; the out- come is open until the moment it occurs. You do not need to visit a labora- tory to see these processes: lots of Web sites display streams of random digits generated by Geiger counters or quantum optics. Being unpredict- able even in principle, such numbers are ideal for cryptography, statistics and online poker. Einstein, so the standard tale goes, refused to accept that some things are indeterministic—they just happen, and there is not a darned thing anyone can do to figure out why. Almost alone among his peers, he clung to the clockwork universe of classical physics, ticking mechanistically, each moment dictating the next. The dice-playing line became emblemat- ic of the B side of his life: the tragedy of a revolutionary turned reaction- ary who upended physics with relativity theory but was, as Niels Bohr put it, “out to lunch” on quantum theory. -
SPINOZA's ETHICS: FREEDOM and DETERMINISM by Alfredo Lucero
SPINOZA’S ETHICS: FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM by Alfredo Lucero-Montaño 1. What remains alive of a philosopher's thought are the realities that concern him, the problems that he addresses, as well as the questions that he poses. The breath and depth of a philosopher's thought is what continues to excite and incite today. However, his answers are limited to his time and circumstances, and these are subject to the historical evolution of thought, yet his principal commitments are based on the problems and questions with which he is concerned. And this is what resounds of a philosopher's thought, which we can theoretically and practically adopt and adapt. Spinoza is immersed in a time of reforms, and he is a revolutionary and a reformer himself. The reforming trend in modern philosophy is expressed in an eminent way by Descartes' philosophy. Descartes, the great restorer of science and metaphysics, had left unfinished the task of a new foundation of ethics. Spinoza was thus faced with this enterprise. But he couldn't carry it out without the conviction of the importance of the ethical problems or that ethics is involved in a fundamental aspect of existence: the moral destiny of man. Spinoza's Ethics[1] is based on a theory of man or, more precisely, on an ontology of man. Ethics is, for him, ontology. He does not approach the problems of morality — the nature of good and evil, why and wherefore of human life — if it is not on the basis of a conception of man's being-in-itself, to wit, that the moral existence of man can only be explained by its own condition.