ENTANGLEMENT NECESSARY TO ANY CLASSICAL THEORY

Ms. K.M. shared this one from our friends at phys.org, and it is, if I may employ the expression, a whopper-doozie if it should prove to be the case.

But first, a bit of background by way of an all-too-brief excursion through the history of science. One of the revolutionary things that Christianity did was to lay a metaphysical foundation for "natural philosophy," which is what the Middle Ages and the early enlightenment would now call "physics." I've long suspected that the older term was, perhaps, a more accurate one, for it acknowledged the presence of implicit metaphysical and cosmological assumptions were at the core. In the milieu in which Christianity appeared, the common assumption - with many variations to be sure - was that the natural order was comprised of "levels", each with their own special laws of operation: the heavens obeyed heavenly laws, the Earth terrestrial ones. The Greeks began a process of the unification of all of these levels under reason, or logos, and Christianity more or less cemented this process by insisting that the Hightest Logos became incarnate in "lowest flesh" as it were, and thus, the metaphysical Grundwerk was laid for the idea that all levels of reality obeyed more or less the same natural logoi (small logoses, or "laws" or "rational principles"). From this it was but a short epistemological and metaphysical conclusion (coupled with a very long historical development) as the principles were worked out, but basically, we may boil this whole complex and almost infinitely detailed and at times frustrating process down to the corollary that if all this was true, then observations made of certain physical phenomena here on earth could be extrapolated to the cosmos itself. Universal physical laws became "universe-al" or applicable on a cosmological scale.

But this remained, as will be evident, a metaphysical assumption...until now:
Entanglement is an inevitable feature of reality

Now I am going to assume for a moment that most people here are vaguely familiar with the related phenomena of entanglement and non-locality, i.e., the idea that if two particles with completely identical information are "launched" from a particular point in space-time, that regardless of how far apart they become, that alteration in the information set of one will produce the identical or conjugate alteration in the information set of the other, instantaneously and regardless of distance. The paper in question, however, goes on to build this out, as it were, as the physical underpinning of the metaphysical assumption I all-too-cursorily sketched above: namely, that if one is to make any system of cosmological laws, one must have entanglement as its central component. The article outlines this argument as follows:

Although the full proof is very detailed, the main idea behind it is simply that any theory that describes reality must behave like classical theory in some limit. This requirement seems pretty obvious, but as the physicists show, it imparts strong constraints on the structure of any non-classical theory.

Quantum theory fulfills this requirement of having a classical limit through the process of decoherence. When a quantum system interacts with the outside environment, the system loses its quantum coherence and everything that makes it quantum. So the system becomes classical and behaves as expected by classical theory.

Here, the physicists show that any non-classical theory that recovers classical theory must contain entangled states. To prove this, they assume the opposite: that such a theory does not have entanglement. Then they show that, without entanglement, any theory that recovers classical theory must be classical theory itself—a contradiction of the original hypothesis that the theory in question is non-classical. This result implies that the assumption that such a theory does not have entanglement is false, which means that any theory of this kind must have .

This result may be just the beginning of many other related discoveries, since it opens up the possibility that other physical features of quantum theory can be reproduced simply by requiring that the theory has a classical limit. The physicists anticipate that features such as information causality, bit symmetry, and macroscopic locality may all be shown to arise from this single requirement. The results also provide a clearer idea of what any future non-classical, post-quantum theory must look like.

In short, the work has breathtaking implications, for if this method is successful in these other areas, then what was once a metaphysical assumption inherited from Greece and Christianity will no longer be a metaphysical assumption about science, but rather, the sine qua non proven necessity for "natural philosophy," that is, for its very occurrence itself.  If so, then it will remake not only physical science or "natural philosophy", but cast an entirely new philosophical light on its historiography.

See you on the flip side...

 

Posted in

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

13 Comments

  1. Pierre on September 15, 2017 at 9:52 pm

    but most importantly can it be weaponised?



  2. goshawks on September 15, 2017 at 3:25 pm

    Paper: “When a quantum system interacts with the outside environment, the system loses its quantum coherence and everything that makes it quantum.”

    This is a fancy way of saying the observer collapses the system. Which, of course, implies Consciousness is the major player…

    The paper is good as far as it goes with “requiring that the theory has a classical limit.” However, therein lies the rub. Who picks a ‘classical limit’? Science has stuck with the Easy Stuff. When science takes-on, say, poltergeist phenomena, precognition, and altered states, I wonder what they will define as a ‘classical limit’…



    • Robert Barricklow on September 15, 2017 at 7:09 pm

      Good point Goshawks.
      There is much more than meets the all seeing EYE here.
      Consciousness is one of the keys unlocking/collapsing
      the quantum mechanics particle/wave wonderland.
      There are “other” concerns outside Earth’s realm that
      also mix-it up in that classical quantum border/land.
      A Ying/yang univers al exotic particle/wave sandbox.
      A mind/brain quantum quagmire that is anything but…
      classical.



    • Neru on September 16, 2017 at 6:38 am

      I always wonder if the consciousness of a crude 3d being vs a fine ethereal being would make differences. The level of manipulation that takes place on the 3d level suggests yes but who knows?



      • goshawks on September 16, 2017 at 1:28 pm

        One of the things I grokked (grin) when reading Andre Norton as a teenager was that when a Class 4 telepath meets a Class 2 telepath (higher numbers indicate more accomplished), the Class 2 telepath eventually ‘agrees’ with the Class 4 telepath. That could explain a lot of things here on earth-plane…

        (Of course, if the Class 2 telepath has Class 6 telepath ‘friends’, it gets even more interesting…)



  3. marcos toledo on September 15, 2017 at 11:54 am

    Science always getting caught with their pants dropped and entangled around their legs. The Saturn Cassini mission being only the latest duh moment in their ignorance.



  4. Kelly Em on September 15, 2017 at 11:44 am

    Site members might remember that Joseph and I discussed this in a vidchat question two years ago. So I am not surprised at all. A better term would be quantum relatedness.



  5. metaOne on September 15, 2017 at 7:13 am

    Deeply – ask One’s self the question – where can i see these thoughts? Show me my thoughts – it helps to tune the body up and down to access the proper “channel” as it were – but the fact that we can’t see our thoughts, yet these thoughts are the basis and background of all our manifested creations (outside of the by product of lust/”dna” commands)…

    The fact that science can’t accept nor see this root fact supporting/binding this conscious experience – leaves the rest of the work wanting…

    It truly is like trying to tell fish they are swimming in water!



  6. Kahlypso on September 15, 2017 at 5:55 am

    Science doesnt work the way we thought it did? Nah.. get out of here..
    Heresy! this makes my life too complicated.. burn him at the stake..



  7. DanaThomas on September 15, 2017 at 5:55 am

    Yet again, science has erased another once-uncrossable line in the sand.



    • Baz on September 15, 2017 at 10:45 am

      Perhaps natural philosophy is the metaphor and entanglement is its contapuntal syntax ?



      • Robert Barricklow on September 15, 2017 at 1:09 pm

        Music to my ears…
        Your singing my tune.
        Your definitely on to something there…
        baz!



      • alisonbell on September 17, 2017 at 11:44 am

        Astute.



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