Mandates
for Ambiguity
Sidney
Perkowitz
The
laws that govern the quantum universe can
only
be called mandates for ambiguity...
The
wave nature of matter is also responsible for the
uncertainty
principle of Werner Heisenberg. The name of
the
principle is its message: certain physical data are
simply
unknowable. For example, it is not possible to
find
both the position and the momentum of a particle
simultaneously.
In fact, the more known about one,
the
less known about the other. The circumstance
has
a certain ironic power, not unlike the tale of the
'appointment
in Samarra': a man's strenuous efforts to
flee
Death brings him to the very spot where Death
finds
him. Similarly, according to the
uncertainty
principle, the harder one tries to outwit
the
intrinsic elusiveness of physical reality, the more
surely
one will have to confront it face to face.
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