QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

form. 126 The concept of quantum states has points of contact with the central ideas of Plato and
Aristotle. Because of its wave description, quantum mechanics has been seen as necessitating
renewal of both the particle-mechanistic way of thinking and the concept of matter. In some
experimental situations, the shaping of matter appears to be connected with mathematical forms,
waves, which can be viewed as manifesting something new out of what is generally accepted to
be ‘dead’ material. In this connection, modern thinking can be thought of as undergoing the same
type of change from substance to form as happened in antique thought when pre-Socratic
thinking was replaced by Platonic-Aristotlean ways of conceiving reality which emphasised the
role played by form. 127
Quantum mechanics does not, of course, force us to accept either Plato’s doctrine of a
mathematical idea-world or Aristotle’s world of potentiality. However, as is discussed in more
details in Section 5.2. of this thesis, regardless of whether it is presumed that the probability
functions or additional dimensions of modern theories are true representations of the structure of
some trancendent world or just systematising tools for empirical evidence, they offer new kinds
of tools for use in natural philosophy: they might permit us to achieve a better-than-before
description of such ontological tendencies of reality which Plato attempted to pin down with his
Idea-world and Aristotles tried to associate with his different causes and concept of potentiality.
Their philosophy, which emphasises immaterial form and universal principles, is better equipped
than the idea of mechanical clock-work to ponder the relationship between man and his inner
world and the rest of the universe.
The mathematical tools of modern physics are able to predict the probability of certain kind of
individual events which may occur in different contexts. Modern physics' indeterministic laws
could make possible an improved approach to internal phenomena in living nature and the
structure of future possibilities that are linked to these. Just as the differential equations and laws
of causality of the modern age transcended and went beyond the ability of the Greeks to describe
movement at the macroscopic scale, the mathematical tools of modern physics could make it
possible to handle the changing and varying phenomena in nature in a more concrete and
126
Collingwood 1960, 92.
127
The usefulness of the ideas of Aristotle and Plato in the interpretation of quantum mechanics is further discussed
in Section 5.1.
128
For example, Heisenberg suggested that the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanisc dealt with some
kind of potential realm which he located between the sense world and Plato’s world of ideas.
56