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
