David Peat

Quantum Uncertainty 23“pictures of the world” in greater depth when we meet the work ofLudwig Wittgenstein in Chapter 4. For the moment let us examineBohr’s argument that all these pictures and models are based uponconcepts that have evolved out of classical physics. Therefore they willalways give rise to paradox and confusion when applied to the quantumworld.Bohr went even further. Physicists may work with measurements,mathematics, and equations but when they meet to discuss the meaningof these equations and describe the work they are doing, they haveto speak using the same ordinary language (spoken or written) that weall use. Admittedly they employ a large number of technical terms andequations, but the bulk of these discussions take place in everyday languagethat evolved amongst human groups who live in the large-scaleworld and who are of a particular size and lifespan. The human scaleof things is vastly different from that of atoms and electrons. As humanconsciousness evolved so too did notions of position, space, time,and causality. In their most basic form these concepts help us to surviveand to explain the world around us. All these “large-scale” notionsare so deeply ingrained within our language that it is impossible tocarry on a discussion without (subtly and largely unconsciously) usingthem. But when we speak of the quantum world we find we are employingconcepts that simply do not fit. When we discuss our modelsof reality we are continually importing ideas that are inappropriateand have no real meaning in the quantum domain. It is for this reasonthat Bohr declared, “We are suspended in language so that we don’tknow which is up and which is down.” Our discursive thought alwaystakes place within language, and that language predisposes us to picturethe world in a certain way, a way that is incompatible with thequantum world. 6As soon as we ask, What is the nature of quantum reality? What isthe underlying nature of the world? Is there a reality at the quantumlevel? we find ourselves entangled in words, pictures, images, models,and ideas from the large-scale world. The result, Bohr pointed out, is6Wheeler and Zurek. Op cit.