I did say classical mechanics, which is anything from Newton to GR, all of which are theories of some domain.
There's a rather important distinction (I'm not just nitpicking here, or at least I am doing so for reasons at least as important as your problem with the type of model Rosen and systems bioloby uses). And not just between "mechanics" and "theory", but between "theory" and everything else. The reason this has become particularly important in the sciences since the 20th century in general, and with physics in specifically, is precisely because of the rather drastic changes in how we not only understand the world, but the relationship between theory, methods, and the world. The first two things to radically alter the earlier positivism were Einstein's relativity theories and quantum mechanics. The latter was far more problematic in practice. Since the advent of modern science, hypotheses were formulated and tested against some isolated system. As far as the sciences were concerned, physics reigned supreme in its achievements and its development of sophisticated mathematical tools all of which not only provided a language of increasing rigor in which to frame hypotheses, but also the methods to test them and the equations for modelling them. Then all of a sudden this was no longer true. Physical systems existed which were not measured, tested, and then modelled, but were formulated out of the abstractions of mathematics themselves. No challenge to epistemology from Kant onwards had ever so disturbed the practice of
the science (physics). Centuries of developing mathematical models out of measurements performed on systems, and now suddenly the most basic stuff of all reality (matter) was no longer being measured using abstract, formal language as a
notational device; the notations
were the systems (or as close as we could get to them).
The reason, then, that it is so important to distinguish mechanics (classical or quantum or statistical), from theory is that whether one wishes to call mechanics a science or a method or a tool or whatever, it had been the systematic use of mathematical notations, mathematical methods, and observations on the dynamics of systems in order to build theories. Now, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory/quantum electrodynamics, etc,. no longer have these divides.
So are the two (adjusted) theories equal? That's a yes or no question; a "tautologically yes," is still a yes.
Again, that's the problem. These are
methods. Not theories. They are the means by which we construct models of reality. The issue, however, is that whatever problems there are describing complex systems like weather, these are of a fundamentally different nature. They are about too many interactions with other systems, processes within systems, and the number of "parts". But if our models say that the earth will warm over some number of years by x amount, and it doesn't hit x (but comes close), we
know how inaccurate our model was.
The problem with quantum mechanics, and the reason that your remark about philosophers is so fundamentally at odds with the nature of debates within physics, is that these same problems are certainly there, but there are also a qualitatively different set. Physics is suddenly beset by issues which have plagued the social sciences: too much of the "theories" are built into the practice (that is, into the experimental designs, mathematical techniques, and interpretations of the observed results).
Arguments over quantization, or quantum mechanics in general aren't simply decided by testing. They can't be. Even though we have actually been able to carry out what were previously thought experiements, that hasn't stopped debates such that your question:
So are the two (adjusted) theories equal? That's a yes or no question; a "tautologically yes," is still a yes.
can be answered.
That's more or less the measurement problem. The experiements run on quantum systems are fundamentally limited not simply because we aren't actually observing the system, but because we are setting it up in a particular way such that our set up, transcription, and subsequent measurments allow us to test hypotheses
only to the extent our set-up and transcription actually allowed us to. When Dickson talks about the measurement problem being one of assigning the "wrong state", its because what state we measure isn't telling us something about the state of a system in the classical sense, but is telling us that having set the state up in a particular way, and letting it "run", we then measured a corresponding state.
What this corresponding state will be is determined (at least in part) by how we set up the measurement devices and the experiment itself to begin with. Which means
when we measure some state we didn't expect, or measure any state of any quantum system, there is always the problem of knowing what exactly happened because of the system, vs. because of the way we set it up and measured it.
Because I know what the wave-function is: it's a function of 4 reals on to complex numbers.
If you want the wavefunction to be something like
a function of 4 reals on to complex numbers.
that's great. But then that's what it is, not something used to describe anything in reality. I can use the equation e=mc^2, as a function, model, in terms of physical reality or in terms of measurements of reality or in other ways, all because I don't limit it to some abstract mathematical realm. I say that e is "energy" and that m is "matter" and that "c" is the speed of light in a vacuum, such that
energy is a
function of both matter and of light. NOT "e", but something in the real world.
You seem to think that the cavalier treatment of quantum formalisms is not a problem. And this does explain rather well why your response to actual physicists saying "this is a problem" is "i don't see the problem". When you are actually trying to sort out what an experiment shows, and how to incorporate this result into our understanding of reality, but the system you were experimenting on is a
a function of 4 reals on to complex numbers.
, how on earth do you say anything about reality at all?
In terms of experimental data, the absolute square of the wavefunction at a location determines the probability that a particle will be found to have the statistic that location corresponds to. (Which might be position or momentum)
No. Because your "experimental data" meant transcribing your system
into your wavefunction. The specifications, transcriptions, and experimental design are not seperated. That's the "classical/quantum" divide (and measurement) problem. My system is my abstraction. You seem to think that all we need to do is throw out the Copenhagen interpretation and simply use the math and get the results. Were it that simple, we'd have done this. The problem is that we don't have anything except math to represent these systems, or parts of them. Perhaps the best way to make this quite clear, and the issue of the many-body problem too, is to take the intro example from a simple physics textbook
A Quantum Approach to Condensed Matter Physics (Cambridge University Press, 2002):
"The most fundamental question that one might be expected to answer is ‘‘why are there solids?’’ That is, if we were given a large number of atoms of copper, why should they form themselves into the regular array that we know as a crystal of metallic copper?
We are ill-equipped to answer these questions in any other than a qualitative way, for they demand the solution of the many-body problem in one of its most difficult forms. We should have to consider the interactions between large numbers of identical copper nuclei – identical, that is, if we were fortunate enough to have an isotopically pure specimen – and even larger numbers of electrons. We should be able to omit neither the spins of the electrons nor the electric quadrupole moments of the nuclei. Provided we treated the problem with the methods of relativistic quantum mechanics, we could hope that the solution we obtained would be a good picture of the physical reality, and that we should then be able to predict all the properties of copper.
But, of course, such a task is impossible. Methods have not yet been developed that can find even the lowest-lying exact energy level of such a complex system. The best that we can do at present is to guess at the form the states will take, and then to try and calculate their energy." p.1
When we set-up quantum experiments to determine things like the properties of matter (e.g., copper), we are significantly determining the results we get by the specifications and transcription process alone.
Whereas
these guys are under the impression that the paper you're citing is nonsense.
1) The paper you cited is 11 years older.
2) Guess what? There are lots of papers like the one I cited:
Laboratory Demonstration of Retroactive Influence in a Digital System
On the incompatibility between quantum theory and general relativity
Does time-symmetry imply retrocausality? How the quantum world says “Maybe”?
Quantum mechanics: The reality gap
And on and on. And there are lots of responses. Because the disagreement concerns interpretations of things we are representing mathematically.
