Newton worked out a mathematical formula for calculating the way gravity operates on and between objects. Newton did not explain how it is possible for gravity to operate or of what it consisted. Regarding the reality of gravity, he ruled nothing in and nothing out as long as that reality could operate according to the mathematical model he described. His readers were free to speculate on whether the reality of gravity consisted of particles or waves or whether an old man with a white beard encompassed the universe and saw to it that his laws were obeyed within this domain - or whether a green man with an orange beard or a woman or nobody was at the helm. The point is that the list of candidates for the scenario is endless and irrelevant.
I understand from his talk at last year’s PDG conference that Dr Alan Edmonds was one of the earliest proponents for regarding quantum theory in the same manner.
The reality of both quanta and gravity consist of unobservables but the experience of gravity is real in a way that quanta can never become real. An infant can rely on the constancy and feel of gravity more than on the attentions of his mother. It may be that the reality of quarks may never extend beyond the words and thoughts by which they are described. The reality of quanta only 'becomes real' through their consequences. Wave particle duality was manifest in the invention of transistors. Particles that exist for nanoseconds leave photographic traces in observable reality.
Now that Alain Aspect's experiments have been reproduced often I understand that we must accept as reality that simultaneous action at a distance can occur. If spin is reversed on a particle, its previously linked pair will reverse spin simultaneously at a distance of even up to five kilometres. Because such communication is obviously faster than light Einstein's constant is violated. One can imagine technological inventions of simultaneous communication becoming possible. But would we then be able to ignore the hidden reality and trust the mathematics that makes it work in our real world as Dr Edmonds enjoins. Could we ignore reality considerations if we know that these considerations must contradict Einstein, if they render absurd our most basic realities, those of space and time, if we have to believe the impossible is possible?
Let us imagine a group of people sitting round a table playing a previously unknown game. Around them are observers who after exhaustive observations draw up rules which account for every move in the game. The participants then read the observers’ reports and declare that though their rules predict every eventuality in the game these rules are not the rules by which they themselves were playing. The reality would clearly be different from the predictive formula. However we will never be participants sitting round the table of reality. We can only be observers (except in regard to the reality of subjective consciousness where the reverse obtains, we can never be observers).
We can nevertheless learn from the image of the observers and the players. The players knew that the rules by which they played were definitely the reality of their interaction and they could produce proof of why this could not be otherwise. The difference between a description of the way nature operates and a description of reality is that the latter accounts for why the rules could not have been otherwise. An account of reality might describe how the form determined the function, how the calculations of operation only remained true if the form remained exactly the same. Perhaps it might show that only one geometrical combination was possible to create a form from the available materials and that deficiency of any element in quality or quantity rendered that reality impossible to materialise.
Should we be seeking the limitations of building blocks rather than speculating on what they can build? Such an approach would make short shrift of parallel universes and cats in limbo. Accounting for inevitability would be the main thoroughfare for seeking to link the laws of nature with the reality of nature and would at least rule out the legislative caprice of green men with orange beards.
Roger Farnworth