Apr 12 2009
The Reality of Events
It is my belief that old terms and concepts and even the superficially benign connotations of words can constrain human intellectual progress. One example of this is old-school materialism. In this perspective, something exists, something is “real,” only if it consists of matter and can be pinned down and identified.
Yet is a photon not a fundamental “part” of our reality? The photon is a massless . . . part-icle. Or is it a wave? We clearly lack an accurate label. From Einstein’s mind-bending theoretical advances we have learned that mass and energy aren’t two separate things. However, there is not mass on one hand and energy on the other. Energy is not simply what causes change to matter.
Sure, from today’s relatively static cosmos we have formed the opinion that matter rules. But reverse the tape billions of years and what you’d likely see is an incredibly hot and energetic plasma-like state with particles flitting in and out of existence. Energy would be the rule, identifiable matter more of an exception. Was the “stuff” of the universe at that time somehow less real?
In a science article from August of last year I read this about research into quantum events -
Because theorists had believed since 1926 that a measurement of a quantum particle inevitably forced a collapse, it was said that in a way, measurements created reality as we understand it. Katz, however, says being able to reverse the collapse “tells us that we really can’t assume that measurements create reality because it is possible to erase the effects of a measurement and start again.”
My question is this: Do not events, such as the collapse-causing measurement of a quantum state, have a reality of their own? Must there be some duration of temporal persistence for us to grant an event the status of being part of reality? Why?
