QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

which is searching for invariances. Plato is often said to have totally separated the eternal world
of ideas from the changing sense-world, but in spite of the heuristic separation between classical
and quantum levels, theory shows that the quantum world is not an isolated one. There is a clear
connection between the macroscopic world and the quantum level since every occurrence at the
visible (material) level changes the structure of future possibilities. Aristotle rejected Plato’s
strict boundary between the two worlds and put the “play of possibilities” down to a non-being
which was not directly detectable but which had the potential to be something. 793 With his idea of
potentiality, Aristotle clearly remained in this world, as does quantum theory. We have one
reality which includes various kinds of tendencies or dispositions which may become real and
detectable.
Even though the quantum state appears to be a relatively simple structure which develops in
accordance with deterministic laws, in the real observable world it can manifest many different
aspects in different interactive situations. In this way, the modern physics that has been refined
the mechanistic-deterministic way of thinking is also capable of responding to the criticism that
Aristotle aimed at the antique Atomists and pre-Socratic natural philosophers: since their
presumption of a world of ”dead” matter did not offer tools for their understanding of it, they had
been led astray from the path that concerned birth, destruction and change. Through quantum
mechanics’ abstract mathematics and its concept of state, physics is now able to address in a
theoretical manner the statistical dynamics of the shaping of individual events manifested in the
world of the senses. Quantum mechanics appears to be a universal theory which is actually able
to take account of not only the changes that take place, but also the context in which they occur.
If humans can, via mathematical description, also address something that is external to spacetime,
structures that can possibly be manifested in the observable world are not limited by
physics to the so-called ”world of matter”. The mathematical descriptions of physics are also not
limited to an eternal and unchanging world that lies beyond phenomena, in which only events
which result from certain initial conditions are thought to be possible. The existence of
statistically-predictable phenomena make it necessary to add some temporality and uncertainty to
an objective world ruled by absolute conformity to laws. Quantum mechanics also offers tools
for dealing with the evolving physical world that surrounds us, a world in which change is both
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In the opinion of the scientific realist, the non-observable can exist. As Parmenides concluded, non-being cannot
be.
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