One of the most peculiar phenomenon uncovered in physics over the past century is known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This states – to the great frustration and irritation of many – that we cannot know with precision both elements of certain pairs of characteristics of an object. Most commonly, position and velocity are used, and the meaning of the principle is that the more precise is our knowledge about an object’s position, the less so is our knowledge of its speed, and vice versa.
There is some debate about what this principle is saying to us at a fundamental level: is our current ability to measure these characteristics simply unable to grasp both at once, or is the inability to simultaneously measure both just inherent in the nature of the physical world? Can it possibly make any sense that if we know precisely the speed of an object, in the very act of attaining that knowledge we have reduced the fact of its location to a mere range of possibilities?
Some argue that that is exactly the case – that it is not merely that the object could be in any one of the places comprehended by the range of possibilities, but that it is at once in none and all of them. It is, they insist, in a suspended state of probability that is only glimpsed at by the probability range, and that will not become concrete until we abandon our precise knowledge of the other characteristic to the hazy realm of probability, and capture a particular location. We cannot know both, because there is no both; at least, not at the same time.
Does that make sense to you? Mind you, while many quantum physicists have a peculiar habit of adopting rather dogmatic attitudes about the oddest features suggested by the most distant, and least understood, corners reached by their meandering logical inquiries, the truth is that they really don’t know either. Even Einstein had difficulty with this one, although other physicists insist it is only the inevitable consequence of some of his own discoveries.
Well, let’s leave them to sort that out. How about us in management? We’ll look at that next. See you soon!
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Today’s tip: Canada may not boast only one of the most insightful management thinkers around today (as we will see in the next post), but also the freest economy in North America. Please see this WSJ piece for why – and why there is even more bad news in this for the United States.
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For people studying quantum physics there is nothing odd about the uncertainty principle as well as other uncommon things at the “classical levels” such as particle time travel, teleportation, the existence of quantum-scale wormholes, etc. anyone entering the field of quantum physics knows right from the beginning that he or she will be dealing with things that sometimes defy “common sense” but bear in mind that save some very specific phenomena like the Casimir effect or the Hawking evaporation, quantum physics has nothing to do with us, at, indeed, a classical level of existence in the sense given by traditional physics. These two strange quantum effects do manifest at a macroscopic scale, but they are rather exceptional and their only conceivable application would be if someday humankind would develop some sort of faster-than-light or hyperspace-bending method for fast interstellar travel. More than challenging old-fashioned ideas in known areas, quantum stuff opens completely new ones that are hard to compare with the old ones, so strictly speaking, using quantum metaphors to explain our “real” world might prove as uncertain as what Schroedinger and Heisenberg suggested.
Hello Pablo,
Thank you for your visit and your comments. You certainly don’t lack certainty about the Uncertainty Principle, do you? It is odd, though – even to many quantum physicists, including the one who opened the field, Einstein. On the one hand, he’s not alone, and on the other, many quantum physicists who suffer little doubt about the veracity of theorems like this seem to brush aside the very question of doubt the way the rest of us do when we, simply, think the evidence appears sufficient and we want to just move on.
I’m certainly not picking a side in this fight, and haven’t the training to do so. What I can do, though, is evaluate the arguments presented to me, and I see problems in many of them, and clear indications that far too much than is presently warranted is being made of the evidence offered for this or that idea. This is what leads me to listen with rapt attention when these scientists explain their fascinating – and even peculiarly plausible, often highly satisfying – theorems, but still to keep my options open. There is too much evidence of scientists from too many specialties turning out to have sometimes heated disagreements with each other (climatology is hardly the only or even most prominent one).
And yet, for all that, none of this means I disagree with anything you have said – and certainly not with your caution about using these insights as metaphors to explain what is happening in our lives in the classical dimensions. Many management gurus, sadly, are jumping on that bandwagon and claiming the most absurd connections between the two, often leaving the question of metaphor out of it altogether.
So, your comments are welcome and interesting in this context, and I thank you for them! I hope we’ll see you here again soon.