Electrons
Feynman, Richard Phillips (1918-94), Physicist and Nobel laureate, educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University. Feynman worked on the Manhattan Project and taught at Cornell University. In 1950 he became a professor at the California Institute of Technology. In 1965 Feynman was given the Nobel Prize in physics (shared with Julian S. Schwinger (USA) and Shin’ichiro Tomonaga (Japan)) for his research on the transformation of a photon into an electron and a positron and the discovery of a method to measure the resulting changes in the charge and mass.The Character of Physical Lawby Richard FeynmanElectrons, when they were first discovered behaved exactly like particles or bullets, very simply. Further research showed, from electron diffraction experiments for example, that they behaved like waves. As time went on there was a growing confusion about how these things really behaved-waves or particles, particles or waves? Everything looked like both.This growing confusion was resolved in 1925 or 1926 with the advent of the correct equations for quantum mechanics. Now we know how the electrons and light behave. But what can I call it? If I say they behave like particles I give the wrong impression; also if I say they behave like waves. They behave in their own inimtable way, which technically could be called a quantum mechanical way. They behave in a way that is like nothing that you have ever seen before. Your experience with things that you have seen before is incomplete. The behavior of things on a very tiny scale is simply different. An atom does not behave like a weight hanging on a spring and oscillating. Nor does it behave like a miniature representation of the solar system with little planets going around in oribts. Nor does it appear to be somewhat like a cloud or a fog of some sort surrounding the nucleus. It behaves like nothing you have ever seen before.There is one simplification at least. Electrons behave in this respect in exactly the same way as photons; they are both screwy, but in exactly the same way…The difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual torment that results from you saying to yourself, “But how can it be like that?” which is a reflection of uncontrolled but utterly vain desire to see it in terms of something familiar. I will not describe it in terms of an analogy with something familiar; I will simply describe it. There was a time when the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the theory of relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time. There might have been a time when only one man did, because he was the only guy who caught on, before he wrote his paper. But after people read the paper a lot of people understood the theory of relativity in some way or other, certainly more than twelve. On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. So do not take the lecture too seriously feeling that you really have to understand in terms of some model what I am going to describe, but just relax and enjoy it. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, “But how can it be like that?” because you will get “down the drain”, into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.
Yoga Verses Reductionism
Why did Hindus adopt synthesis approach to science as opposed to analysis? That is, holistic approach versus divide-and-conquer reductionist approach of the West? I can think of two good reasons:a) Hindus assert that when the whole is reduced to a part, putting together the parts do not make up the Whole, because something is lost. In fact yogis focus their study on discovering that “essence” which is lost rather than on analizing the “parts”.b) Reductionism will not get you anywhere – for instance the search for the “smallest particle” is a futile search – for there will be always something smaller.Western science is on the brink of coming “full circle”, in that it is now seeing the crying need for holistic view of universe. Hence the search for the Grand Unification Theory (GUT). The one golden equation or Truth that will make everything make sense.
For instance the definition of the electron which started off pretty innocently as – “a negatively charged particle”, then became “neither a particle nor a wave”, then it become a very bizarre entity called “the wave-particle”, then it became an “energy distribution”, then a energy-probability-state-distribution, Schroedinger wave-equation, etc. Now fast forward to 2002, the definition of the electron is spread across thousands of journals around the world (each contributing a tiny piece of the puzzle).The result is that no one person can grasp it today. Actually not completely true, there a hand full of scientists in the entire world who think they are close to understanding it. Most likely they have taken the high road, elevated their minds to such high states of awareness as to “see” the unity and oneness of all these abstractions.Solid matter is described in terms of compounds, molecules, elements, atoms, subatomic particles, protons, neutrons, electrons, hadrons, mesons, leptons, pions, quarks,… Note each of these “particles” are as bizaare as our definition of electron, and by now “solid matter” is not just energy pure multi-dimensional equations representing, well representing multi-dimensional equations. Science has put a human-tangible-flavor by noting that these equations represent vibrations in n-dimensional space. Vibrations of what? nobody knows.