Essay on Philosophy: Maxwell ' s Equations and Quantum Mechanics

Submitted By JakePrichard08
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Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics Quantum Mechanics is something that has been of high interest to me for a large portion of my life. It is mysterious and complicated but somehow works in a way that is comparable to wizardry. Certainly the understanding of this field can be paralleled to the past of explaining natural phenomena using magic and other things now viewed as outlandish. As mentioned personally quantum mechanics has had a serious impact in my own life, not in the sense of it is the foundation of physics as we understand it, but in the fact I would not be where I am today without it. As a youth my father would often talk to me about Quantum Mechanics and the wondrous characteristics that it held. He would say things like “Jake, is it possible for a something to exist in two places at once?” I would, of course baffled, reply using my own understanding of reality and reply “of course not”. He would then explain to me that according to Quantum Mechanics this phenomena is indeed possible. This had a large influence on me, I would think wow this field sounds amazing and certainly something that would be interesting in pursuing as I got older. Flash forward slightly to me as a college freshman. I had decided on going to UCO because my two best friends were attending here and I could go live with them. This decision was purely based upon me having a good time and being with my two best friends. Like many freshman I had no idea what I might have wanted to study. I had always been strong in mathematics and it was recommended to me to look into engineering. I did, when looking at the course list for each of the engineering disciplines offered at UCO I noticed that one particular Engineering-Physics had offered Quantum Mechanics as one of the requirements for the major. This caused me to reminisce on the stories and wonder from when I was a child and was sold on what major I would pursue. That summer I had purchased several introduction to quantum mechanics books and read them when I had spare time. These of course not quite the mathematical introduction as our class, but once again this Quantum World was so fascinating, mostly because of my lack of understanding. Leptons, quarks, particle spin, how observing something can change its outcome, duality, and all these topics which could not be explained without the existence of quantum mechanics. But that made no sense to my intuitive understanding of the world that was around me. I give this background to show this is not a subject I have put little thought towards when I go through my personal thoughts towards my stance as a realist, orthodox, or agnostic. It sounds like a real cop-out but I feel my personal views towards the subject fall under I don’t know. In class it was stated that this would be considered agnostic and that it was a “why bother” sort of philosophy. I certainly don’t have that view point. I think having this degree of uncertainty is a good reason to be passionate and to pursue why it is that Quantum Mechanics works the way that it does. It may give me more confidence if this was a subject that I could view on a more applied level. It is always difficult to buy into something (for me) when you can’t have some experimental evidence to back it up. Not to say that these topics aren’t experimentally proven I mean it would
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