Monday 24 October 2016

SOLAR (IAN MCEWAN) AND THE QUANTUM MECHANICS AS ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY

Quantum mechanics. What a repository, a dump, of human aspiration it was, the borderland where mathematical rigour defeated commom sense, and reason and fantasy irrationally merged. Here, the mystically inclined could find whatever they required, and claim sciene as their proof. And for these ingenious men in their spare time, what ghostly and beautiful music it must be- ‘spectral asymmetry, resonances, entanglement, quantum harmonic oscillators’- beguiling ancient airs, the harmony of the spheres that might transmute a lead wall into gold, and bring into being the engine that ran on virtually nothing, on virtual particles, that emitted no harm and would power the human enterprise as well as save it



Whose fault is it that charlatans have claimed the property of the word “quantum”? The opposites attract each other, as they say, and they even touch each other, closing the circle, no doubt. The longest-established physicist or mathematician, whith glasses and a calculator, shares the quantum nomenclature with the pseudo-mystic, bald but ponytailed man who talks about Universe harmony.
Maths are too diffciult, that´s true, and the text words it very well; further in the novel the next question appears: was the starnge reality described by quantum mechanics a descrption of the actual world, or was it simply a system that happened to work?.
I would really like that, as I read last night ‘there wouldnt be disloyalty or contradicition separating the ordinary from the unusual’

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