QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

Theory of Everything, TOE). He felt that the search for the ultimate theory of physics might
never reach a satisfying conclusion, since as physicists sought to penerate further into nature,
they would face questions of increasing complexity and difficulty which would eventually
overwhelm them. 737
The nature of physical reality and the status of mathematics
The Copenhagen group focused their attention on the fact that a notable feature of physics at the
beginning of the twentieth century was the increasingly abstract nature of theories. The
usefulness of quantum formalism was demonstrated before it was provided with interpretation in
everyday language. Everything that measurement could acquire from a system being investigated
was contained within the wave or state function, but this mathematical construction itself did not
appear to have any clear counterpart in observable reality. As the significance of mathematics
increased, the concept of the nature of matter became more abstract. Elementary particles were
not eternal and unchanging. Rest mass changed to energy in collisions and kinetic energy
became mass in pair formation. The form of allowed material structures appeared to be specified
on the basis of laws of conservation and fundamental symmetries of nature. The Copenhagen
group concluded that the increased immateriality (entstofflichung) of elementary particles meant
that the concept of dead matter in our world-view was replaced by a kind of interplay of forms.
The first step in this direction had already been taken by the theory of relativity in its equivalence
between mass and energy. 738
Heisenberg suggested that the world was going through the same type of change that took place
in antique times when the atomist teachings of Leucippus and Democritus were replaced by the
ways of thinking employed by Pythagoras and Plato, in which form was a more important factor
than matter. Even though the final shaping of a situation could not yet be achieved, Heisenberg
felt able to express his belief that Plato’s philosophical concepts were more suitable for
addressing reality than proposals made by the antique Materialists. Also, the Aristotlean terms
'form and content' or 'form and substance' were given new meaning since the elementary
particles of modern physics were neither eternal or unchanging particles of matter, but
abstractions in the same way as Plato’s regular elements consisting of triangles. In Heisenberg’s
view, elementary particles were different forms in which energy could be manifested. The result
737 Horgan 1998, 83. Bohr’s son told this to Wheeler whom Horgan interviewed.
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