March 6, 2004

OK, I am getting pretty bad at posting, but then no one is reading so what difference does it make? This week; however, I am moved to write again. There is a juxtaposition of two things that really makes a point.

As is often the case, I was listening to the radio. In This instance they were broadcasting from a religious convention at super-big-mega-church in Dallas. The host interviewed the guy that is the head of missions for the Baptist convention. The host asked the missions guy what he thought of the mega-church. The missions guy admitted that there appeared to a be a certain ‘critical mass’ whereupon a church would take up a life of its own. Blessedly, he then talked about the fact that salvation was for individuals. Put a bookmark there while we visit:

I have recently read a book, "The Evolution of Physics" by Albert Einstein. (Bet I just lost all the readership I don’t have right there.) It was actually a pretty good book. It attempts to describe in non-mathematically terms the concepts, the ways of thinking that lead from Archimedes to Newton to Einstein to Quantum Theory. Einstein, as most people know was no fan of Quantum Theory. His concern about the theory is summed in the oft quoted, "I do not think God would play dice with the universe." To his credit, in this book he does a very good job of explaining the basic concepts of Quantum Theory. He does so; however, with a certain melancholy, a certain longing for the way things ought to be, as opposed to the way Quantum Theory works. I have quoted a very lengthy passage below my signature. It is too long to quote herein.

The root of Einstein’s melancholy is in the statistical nature of quantum mechanics. Consider this pull quotes, "We become indifferent to the fate of the individual gas particles." Do you sense the melancholy present in the use of the word "indifferent?" Consider this pull quote, "If we wish to know how many men and women over the age of twenty live in a city’, we must get every citizen to fill out a form under the headings: "male," "female," and "age." Provided every answer is correct, we can obtain, by counting and segregating them, a result of a statistical nature. …But in quantum physics the state of affairs is entirely different. Here the statistical laws are given immediately. The individual laws are discarded." Does it feel to you like he is giving up his best friend when he talks about discarding the individual laws?

I sensed the same melancholy in both Einstein and the Missionary head of the Baptist Convention. They both mourn deeply the loss of the individual into the statistical morass of the crowd.

You see, the mega church phenomenon, which so many seek to imitate, is based entirely on the behavior of crowds, not individuals. The behavior of an individual person is a terribly difficult thing to predict. But the behavior of a crowd is a relatively simply thing to predict. Most consumer marketing is based on the behavior of crowds. The marketing gurus have very scientific and relatively precise models that predict the behavior of a population and therefore know how to sell products to that population. They have not got the slightest idea if they are going to sell me a widget, but they can tell you to within a couple of hundred, how many widgets they will sell in the next year.

And so it goes with the mega churches. They can no more tell you whether Joe Sixpack will come to know Jesus Christ this year or not, but they can tell you how many people will attend this or that program. I have actually been with staff people in these types of churches and mentioned a problem with some individual and they said, actually, said, "What am I supposed to do about it?" There idea of helping that person was to funnel them to Program X – they were absolutely devoid of compassion for the individual.

Rather than just rant about what is wrong with this, I am going to end with some scriptural quotes, I think they will rant for me:

There is a vessel containing gas. In attempting to trace the motion of every particle one would have to commence by finding the initial states, that is, the initial positions and velocities of all the particles. Even if this were possible, it would take more than a human lifetime to set down the result on paper, owing to the enormous number of particles which would have to be considered. If one then tried to employ the known methods of classical mechanics for calculating the final positions of the particles, the difficulties would be insurmountable. In principle, it is possible to use the method applied for the motion of planets, but in practice this is useless and must give way to the method of statistics. This method dispenses with any exact knowledge of initial states. We know less about the system at any given moment and are thus less able to say anything about its past or future. We become indifferent to the fate of the individual gas particles. Our problem is of a different nature. For example: we do not ask, "What is the speed of every particle at this moment?" But we may ask: "How many particles have a speed between 1000 and 1100 feet per second?" We care nothing for individuals. What we seek to determine are average values typifying the whole aggregation. It is clear that there can be some point in a statistical method of reasoning only when the system consists of a large number of individuals.

By applying the statistical method we cannot foretell the behavior of an individual in a crowd. We can only foretell the chance, the probability, that it will behave in some particular manner. If our statistical laws tell us that one-third of the particles have a speed between 1000 and 1100 feet per second, it means that by repeating our observations for many particles, we shall really obtain this average, or in other words, that the probability of finding a particle within this limit is equal to one-third.

Similarly, to know the birth rate of a great community does not mean knowing whether any particular family is blessed with a child. It means a knowledge of statistical results in which the contributing personalities play no role.

By observing the registration plates of a great many cars we can soon discover that one-third of their numbers are divisible by three. But we cannot foretell whether the car which will pass in the next moment will have this property. Statistical laws can be applied only to big aggregations, but not to their individual members.

We can now return to our quantum problem.

The laws of quantum physics are of a statistical character. This means: they concern not one single system but an aggregation of identical systems; they cannot be verified by measurement of one individual, but only by a series of repeated measurements.

Radioactive disintegration is one of the many events for which quantum physics tries to formulate laws governing the spontaneous transmutation from one element to another. We know, for example, that in m 6oo years half of one gram of radium will disintegrate, and half will remain. We can foretell approximately how many atoms will disintegrate during the next half-hour, but we cannot say, even in our theoretical descriptions, why just these particular atoms are doomed. According to our present knowledge, we have no power to designate the individual atoms condemned to disintegration. The fate of an atom does not depend on its age. There is not the slightest trace of a law governing their individual behavior. Only statistical laws can be formulated, laws governing large aggregations of atoms.

Take another example. The luminous gas of some element placed before a spectroscope shows lines of definite wavelength. The appearance of a discontinuous set of definite wavelengths is characteristic of the atomic phenomena in which the existence of elementary quanta is revealed. But there is still another aspect of this problem. Some of the spectrum lines are very distinct, others are fainter. A distinct line means that a comparatively large number of photons belonging to this particular wavelength are emitted; a faint line means that a comparatively small number of photons belonging to this wavelength are emitted. Theory again gives us statements of a statistical nature only. Every line corresponds to a transition from higher to lower energy level. Theory tells us only about the probability of each of these possible transitions, but nothing about the actual transition of an individual atom. The theory works splendidly because all these phenomena involve large aggregations and not single individuals.

It seems that the new quantum physics resembles somewhat the kinetic theory of matter, since both are of a statistical nature and both refer to great aggregations. But this is not so! In this analogy an understanding not only of the similarities but also of the differences is most important. The similarity between the kinetic theory of matter and quantum physics lies chiefly in their statistical character. But what are the differences?

If we wish to know how many men and women over the age of twenty live in a city’, we must get every citizen to fill out a form under the headings: "male," "female," and "age." Provided every answer is correct, we can obtain, by counting and segregating them, a result of a statistical nature. The individual names and addresses on the forms are of no account. Our statistical view is gained by the knowledge of individual cases. Similarly, in the kinetic theory of matter, we have statistical laws governing the aggregation, gained on the basis of individual laws.

But in quantum physics the state of affairs is entirely different. Here the statistical laws are given immediately. The individual laws are discarded. In the example of a photon or an electron and two pinholes we have seen that we cannot describe the possible motion of elementary particles in space and time as we did in classical physics. Quantum physics abandons individual laws of elementary particles and states directly the statistical laws governing aggregations. It is impossible, on the basis of quantum physics, to describe positions and velocities of an elementary particle or to predict its future path as in classical physics. Quantum physics deals only with aggregations, and its laws are for crowds and not for individuals.