37 Pages on Quantum Mechanics That Could Change The Way You Look At The World | N. David Mermin

First let me tell you that these 37 pages are not going to b an easy read unless you are already familiar with the subject. It is one of the greatest compact sized texts I've ever read regarding Quantum Mechanics and the nature of reality. It's written by N. David Mermin Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics Cornell University, Ithaca. If properly studied this small text could completely change your entire worldview. You won't understand these things reading random bits on the fly. So I advise you to relax nd spare yourself some time (at least an hour) and start slowly firm the beginning. 

I explore whether it is possible to make sense of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality by taking the proper subject of physics to be correlation and only correlation, and by separating the problem of understanding the nature of quantum mechanics from the hard problem of understanding the nature of objective probability in individual systems, and the even harder problem of understanding the nature of conscious awareness. The resulting perspective on quantum mechanics is supported by some elementary but insufficiently emphasized theorems. Whether or not it is adequate as a new Weltanschauung, this point of view toward quantum mechanics provides a different perspective from which to teach the subject or explain its peculiar character to people in other fields

[W]e cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connection with other things. Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 2.0121 If everything that we call “being” and “non-being” consists in the existence and non-existence of connections between elements, it makes no sense to speak of an element’s being (non-being). . . . Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 50. It happened to him as it always happens to those who turn to science . . . simply to get an answer to an everyday question of life. Science answered thousands of other very subtle and ingenious questions . . . but not the one he was trying to solve. Tolstoy, Resurrection, XXX. [I]n our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, so far as it is possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience. Bohr.2

I would like to describe an attitude toward quantum mechanics which, whether or not it clarifies the interpretational problems that continue to plague the subject, at least sets them in a rather different perspective. This point of view alters somewhat the language used to address these issues — a glossary is provided in Appendix C — and it may offer a less perplexing basis for teaching quantum mechanics or explaining it to non-specialists. It is based on one fundamental insight, perhaps best introduced by an analogy. My complete answer to the late 19th century question “what is electrodynamics trying to tell us” would simply be this: Fields in empty space have physical reality; the medium that supports them does not. Having thus removed the mystery from electrodynamics, let me immediately do the same for quantum mechanics: Correlations have physical reality; that which they correlate does not. The first proposition probably sounded as bizarre to most late 19th century physicists as the second sounds to us today; I expect that the second will sound as boringly obvious to late 21st century physicists as the first sounds to us today. And that’s all there is to it. The rest is commentary. 

I'd like to re-emphasize what I consider to be the best part of the entire text

• Fields in empty space have physical reality; the medium that supports them does not. Having thus removed the mystery from electrodynamics, let me immediately do the same for quantum mechanics: Correlations have physical reality; that which they correlate does not. 
• The first proposition probably sounded as bizarre to most late 19th century physicists as the second sounds to us today; I expect that the second will sound as boringly obvious to late 21st century physicists as the first sounds to us today. And that’s all there is to it. The rest is commentary

Now here is a final quote from W. F. G. Swann: "As I have grown older, I have come more and more to the conclusion that there is no teaching in physics, there is only inspiration to learn. ... The teacher may stimulate the mind of the student... but the journey to that goal must be made by the student himself."

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