Subject: Re: CCL:orbitals

From: "Dr. N. SUKUMAR" <nagams/at/rpi.edu>
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2003 14:32:26 EDT

On Fri, 6 Jun 2003 23:37:27 -0700 Eric Scerri wrote:

> 
> But far more obviously the anti-realistic view was adopted because so 
> many QM concepts seem to defy a realistic interpretation.  Is the 
> electron a wave or a particle?  The electron has no definite 
> trajectory.  Electron spin is not really spin, Collapse of the 
> wavefunction issue etc etc. 
> 

This is again a meaningless classification in this day and age. Which
Almighty Being declared that everything has to be a particle or a wave? An
electron is an electron, just as an elephant is an elephant. Is an elephant
a pillar or a rope? It has a massive leg like a pillar, but a flexible tail
like a rope. This does not imply any pillar-rope duality.

The closest I can think of to such an Almighty Being was Neils Bohr, the
Creator of the Copenhagen Interpretation. But waves and particles were just
everyday objects to give early 20th century physicists an intuitive feel
for difficult quantum mechanical concepts, to "explain" these concepts to
people of that generation (but I use this term rather warily, because many
consider an "explanation" as something absolute, rather than tentative: one
way of seeing things). Now two or more generations of students have grown
up "seeing" electrons on their TV screens and computer monitors, whereas
many are the inner city youth who have never seen a water wave in a lake or
sea. Bohr held the view that quantum objects always had to be formulated in
terms of classical everyday language. But as we all know, the everyday
language of today is not Bohr's classical language. Isn't it time to rework
these tired 20th century laymen's analogies?

Now in terms of mathematics, of course, we have Newtonian mechanics under
one set of limiting conditions and Newtonian (physical) optics under
another. But this does not mean that an electron is a particle or a wave or
a particle when you look and a wave when you don't.

> 
> 
> You did not explain why you felt that your example was "better" than 
> phlogiston. 
> 
> 

OK, not "better"; just more convenient for my argument :-)

> 
> ...  As Popper himself stated, "All theories 
> are born refuted", meaning that sooner or later they will all be 
> refuted.  Scientific theories are only provisionally useful.	Every 
> single one of them will eventually be refuted.  This is a 
> meta-induction based on the fate of all past and now defunct theories 
> from the history of science... 

But this itself is only a theory and hence is "born refuted". That makes it
a self-refuting argument.

> 
> Of course one may argue that induction from past instances is not a 
> reliable path to knowledge and that it just so happens that our 
> cherished current theories have finally reached the point where they 
> are refutable but will never actually be refuted.  But that would be 
> plain stupid of course. 
> 
> 

I myself donot disagree with your belief, but it is just that: a BELIEF.
Those who believe otherwise and seek the "ultimate" Theory of Everything or
Hoheberg and Kohn's Universal Functional are NOT plain stupid. 150 years
ago, one could have said that all attempts by humans to achieve powered
flight had failed and thus, by meta-induction, all future attempts would be
doomed to failure. Likewise for all attempts throughout human history to
transmute elements.

There are so many variables. If the federal governments stop funding high
energy physics altogether, as they are quite likely to sooner or later, or
if humanity does not survive into the next century, then the Standard Model
of physics may never be refuted (with apologies to Popper). Does any of
this make the Standard Model any more "true"? A meaningless question, in my
opinion.

The fact that all theories may (or may not) be "born refuted" does not make
all theories equal. Some theories are more useful than others. Some explain
more observations than earlier ones. In that limited sense, it IS fair to
say that these theories are perhaps more "true" or closer to "reality".

But we are straying far afield from orbitals, I'm afraid.

Dr. N. Sukumar
http://www.drugmining.com/
Visiting Scientist
Rensselaer Department of Chemistry and
Wadsworth Center, New York State Dept.of Health