Concept
Quantum indeterminacy
Overview
Quantum indeterminacy is the apparent necessary incompleteness in the description of a physical system, that has become one of the characteristics of the standard description of quantum physics. Prior to quantum physics, it was thought that
Quantum indeterminacy can be quantitatively characterized by a probability distribution on the set of outcomes of measurements of an observable. The distribution is uniquely determined by the system state, and moreover quantum mechanics provides a recipe for calculating this probability distribution.
Indeterminacy in measurement was not an innovation of quantum mechanics, since it had been established early on by experimentalists that errors in measurement may lead to indeterminate outcomes. By the later half of the 18th century, measurement errors were well understood, and it was known that they could either be reduced by better equipment or accounted for by statistical error models. In quantum mechanics, however, indeterminacy is of a much more fundamental nature, having nothing to do with errors or disturbance.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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So that when the scale is moved over the line by any continuous series of shiftings of one kind, there are two points which no numbers on the scale can ever reach, except the numbers fixed there. This pair of points, thus unattainable in measurement, is called the Absolute. These two points may be distinct and real, or they may coincide, or they may be both imaginary. As an example of a linear quantity with a double…
Charles S. Peirce, Chance, Love, and Logic
States what Quantum indeterminacy is.
The determinations of a substance, which are only particular modes of its existence, are called accidents. They are always real, because they concern the existence of substance (negations are only determinations, which express the non-existence of something in the substance).
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
States what Quantum indeterminacy is.
That can only happen under the influence of external forces (although we have supposed, for simplicity, that the algebraic sum of the effects of these forces is null). In fact, if the system were completely isolated from all external action, the values of our _n_ parameters at a given instant would suffice to determine the state of the system at any subsequent instant, provided always we retain the determinist…
Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science
States what Quantum indeterminacy is.
Philosophers who discussed Quantum indeterminacy
Related ideas
- Independence (mathematical logic)
- John von Neumann
- Classical mechanics
- Mathematical logic
- Observation
- Quantum mechanics
- Uncertainty principle
- Thought experiment
- Complex number
- Albert Einstein
- Measurement problem
Place in the tradition
Part of Determinism.