Wait though, how does quantum dynamics give rise to the Kinetic Theory of Gasses?
See, this is why I hate quantum physics. It implies that we don’t actually understand anything all the way down.
I console myself by thinking that explanations at different levels can be simultaneously valid. Explosions push stuff and people do things they believe they should are both acceptable explanations for most purposes even without tracking them down to the quantum level.
We understand quantum physics. I mean, I don’t, personally. But I know people who do. And I own books that could explain the whole thing to me if I had the stamina to get all the way through them.
The kinetic theory of gases was developed decades before quantum mechanics. It gives the same results whether its constituent particles are quantum or classical, at least for ordinary phenomena like explosions.
If I understand correctly, we (not me but people) understand what quantum physics predicts but not why the universe works that way. Professionals disagree dramatically on what underlying reality makes the wave equations work as they do.
That would seem to put it on the same epistemic footing as everything else: empirically verifiable but not a base-level explanation.
It’s to the point that there’s articles being written days ago where the trend starting a century ago of there being professional risks in trying to answer the ‘why’ of QM and not just the ‘how’ is still ongoing.
Not exactly a very reassuring context for thinking QM is understood in a base-level way at all.
Dogma isn’t exactly a good bedfellow to truth seeking.
Well, it seems like you have very high standards for “epistemic footing”; indeed standards so high that nothing can meet them. I’m willing to settle for mere empirical verification, mathematical elegance, and logical coherence. All of which are satisfied by our present understanding of quantum field theory.
The controversy over “underlying reality” continues because all theories of underlying reality reproduce identical experimental predictions, so arguments in this area are philosophy rather than physics, and so rather inconclusive.
Of course we don’t know how to reconcile our empirically valid theory of quantum mechanics with our empirically valid theory of gravity, so at least one of the theories is wrong.
I think my standards for epistemic footing are exactly what you mention. What Ii’m saying is that, without an explanation of why quantum mechanics works as it does, it’s not really a privileged level of explanation. Explanations at higher levels of analysis—chemical, psychological, etc—can all have those properties and be adequate in themselves. Coherence across levels is of course valuable as it’s more logical coherence.
I guess maybe it is just an abstraction like any other. I can’t put my finger on it but it seems weird in a way that abstracting fingers into a “hand” does not. Maybe something to do with the connotation of “explosion” as “uncontrolled and destructive” when internal combustion is neither.
Wait though, how does quantum dynamics give rise to the Kinetic Theory of Gasses?
See, this is why I hate quantum physics. It implies that we don’t actually understand anything all the way down.
I console myself by thinking that explanations at different levels can be simultaneously valid. Explosions push stuff and people do things they believe they should are both acceptable explanations for most purposes even without tracking them down to the quantum level.
Two comments:
We understand quantum physics. I mean, I don’t, personally. But I know people who do. And I own books that could explain the whole thing to me if I had the stamina to get all the way through them.
The kinetic theory of gases was developed decades before quantum mechanics. It gives the same results whether its constituent particles are quantum or classical, at least for ordinary phenomena like explosions.
If I understand correctly, we (not me but people) understand what quantum physics predicts but not why the universe works that way. Professionals disagree dramatically on what underlying reality makes the wave equations work as they do.
That would seem to put it on the same epistemic footing as everything else: empirically verifiable but not a base-level explanation.
It’s to the point that there’s articles being written days ago where the trend starting a century ago of there being professional risks in trying to answer the ‘why’ of QM and not just the ‘how’ is still ongoing.
Not exactly a very reassuring context for thinking QM is understood in a base-level way at all.
Dogma isn’t exactly a good bedfellow to truth seeking.
Well, it seems like you have very high standards for “epistemic footing”; indeed standards so high that nothing can meet them. I’m willing to settle for mere empirical verification, mathematical elegance, and logical coherence. All of which are satisfied by our present understanding of quantum field theory.
The controversy over “underlying reality” continues because all theories of underlying reality reproduce identical experimental predictions, so arguments in this area are philosophy rather than physics, and so rather inconclusive.
Of course we don’t know how to reconcile our empirically valid theory of quantum mechanics with our empirically valid theory of gravity, so at least one of the theories is wrong.
I think my standards for epistemic footing are exactly what you mention. What Ii’m saying is that, without an explanation of why quantum mechanics works as it does, it’s not really a privileged level of explanation. Explanations at higher levels of analysis—chemical, psychological, etc—can all have those properties and be adequate in themselves. Coherence across levels is of course valuable as it’s more logical coherence.
I guess maybe it is just an abstraction like any other. I can’t put my finger on it but it seems weird in a way that abstracting fingers into a “hand” does not. Maybe something to do with the connotation of “explosion” as “uncontrolled and destructive” when internal combustion is neither.