Del mecanicismo causistico a lo probabilistico

Del mecanicismo causistico a lo probabilistico

Today most sophisticated people imagine that they have transcended Newton and have come to terms with the findings of modern science. But they have not. As an intellectual faith, materialist logic still prevails.

We still believe that the solid world we see and feel—governed by determinate chains of cause and effect, rooted in Newtonian masses and forces—is real and in some sense definitive. The atom may not be ultimate, but they assume some other particle is, perhaps the quark.

At the foundations of the physical world, so it is supposed, are physical solids—”building blocks”—that resemble in some way the solids we see. They link together in causal chains of mechanical logic like a set of cogs and levers. These solids are deemed to comprise all matter, from atoms and billiard balls to bricks and the human brain.

Announced in 1913 and proved for the single electron of the hydrogen atom, the Bohr model was the first great vindication of quantum theory. One test of scientific advance is whether it extends the realms of human understanding and control.

The established physics could not explain the effectiveness of chemistry, let alone extend it to atoms. Unlike a solar system, atoms do not exist in majestic isolation. Ceaselessly in movement, they endlessly jiggle together in what is called Brownian motion. We even step on them. In a world of Newtonian continuities, electron orbits would vary continually as atoms collided with one another. Constantly knocked loose in these collisions, electrons in a conductor should flow far more copiously and respond to heat more massively than experiments showed.

Reunifying chemistry and physics in the microcosm, the new model of the atom explained the apparent solidity of the physical world. Establishing a gap, called a band gap, between an electron in its ground state and an electron excited to a higher energy level, the new physics showed why the constant collisions of atoms do not cause the atomic structure to collapse. A small collision will not affect an atom. An electron will not respond to any small disturbance. It will react only if it receives its necessary quantum of energy, defined by its resonant frequency times Planck’s constant.

Microcosm The Quantum Revolution In Economics And Technology .  Pagina 21