I can’t explain QM very well, but here’s a video of “someone that can”. I would recommend paying special attention to the speech he gives around 37:00 minutes in about concepts like “wave” and “particle”, which we have coined in the macroscopic world and how we should not really apply terms which have mutually exclusive qualities in the macroscopic world to describe the world of fundamental particles.
His answers might still be unsatisfactory to you, but its the best I can offer.
Yes, “we should not really apply mutually exclusive terms.” And thank you for using the word concept when relating to wave and particle. I think the whole issue is knowing the dif between concepts and objects. Physics should be about objects. Of course all words are concepts, but if they can not resolve down to objects, they should not be used in ones hypothesis or theory.
Thanx for the link, hopefully I will be able to get to it.
My high-school physics class spent a lot of time talking about distances, and time, and forces, and velocity, and accelerations, and vectors. Neither distance, time, force, acceleration, velocity, nor vectors are objects; they are concepts we’ve formulated to characterize particular patterns in the ways objects behave. They sure seemed useful to me. So I’m inclined to reject this claim.
I can’t explain QM very well, but here’s a video of “someone that can”. I would recommend paying special attention to the speech he gives around 37:00 minutes in about concepts like “wave” and “particle”, which we have coined in the macroscopic world and how we should not really apply terms which have mutually exclusive qualities in the macroscopic world to describe the world of fundamental particles.
His answers might still be unsatisfactory to you, but its the best I can offer.
Yes, “we should not really apply mutually exclusive terms.” And thank you for using the word concept when relating to wave and particle. I think the whole issue is knowing the dif between concepts and objects. Physics should be about objects. Of course all words are concepts, but if they can not resolve down to objects, they should not be used in ones hypothesis or theory.
Thanx for the link, hopefully I will be able to get to it.
My high-school physics class spent a lot of time talking about distances, and time, and forces, and velocity, and accelerations, and vectors. Neither distance, time, force, acceleration, velocity, nor vectors are objects; they are concepts we’ve formulated to characterize particular patterns in the ways objects behave. They sure seemed useful to me. So I’m inclined to reject this claim.
Why shouldn’t physics talk about concepts? Or first, what is your definition of “object” and “concept”—even just by examples.