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Ian J. Thompson, 7 Dec. 2009—
Quantum mechanics describes the probabilities of actual outcomes in terms of a wave function, or at least of a quantum state of amplitudes that varies with time. The public always asks what the wave function is, or what the amplitudes are amplitudes of. Usually, we reply that the amplitudes are ‘probability amplitudes’, or that the wave function is a ‘probability wave function’, but neither answer is ontologically satisfying since probabilities are numbers, not stuff. We have already rehearsed the objections to the natural world being made out of numbers, as these are pure forms. In fact, ‘waves’, ‘amplitudes’ and ‘probabilities’ are all forms, and none of them can be substances. So, what are quantum objects made of: what stuff?
According to Heisenberg , the quantum probability waves are “a quantitative formulation of the concept of ‘dynamis’, possibility, or in the later Latin version, ‘potentia’, in Aristotle’s philosophy. The concept of events not determined in a peremptory manner, but that the possibility or ‘tendency’ for an event to take place has a kind of reality—a certain intermediate layer of reality, halfway between the massive reality of matter and the intellectual reality of the idea or the image—this concept plays a decisive role in Aristotle’s philosophy. In modern quantum theory this concept takes on a new form; it is formulated quantitatively as probability and subjected to mathematically expressible laws of nature.” Unfortunately Heisenberg does not develop this interpretation much beyond the sort of generality of the above statements, and the concept of ‘potentiality’ remains awkwardly isolated from much of his other thought on this subject . It is unclear even what he means by ‘potentia’.
Reference
Heisenberg, W. 1961 On Modern Physics, London: Orion Press.
Notes
[6] W. Heisenberg, ‘Planck’s discovery and the philosophical problems of atomic physics’, pp. 3-20 in Heisenberg (1961).
[7] Heisenberg, for example, brings into his thought on quantum physics the Kantian phenomena/noumena distinction, as well as some of Bohr’s ideas on ‘complementarity’ in experimental arrangements.
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