Quantum Theory & GNP
I am reading Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science, by Peter Atkins. It's refreshing reading.
Anyway, as I continue to fret about the current faith-based insurgency attacking science in America, I was struck by this comment of Mr. Atkins' about the effect of science on society:
…No exception to the predictions of quantum mechanics has ever been observed and no theory has been tested so intensively and to such high precision. The problem is that although we can use the theory with great skill and authority, despite a hundred years of argument no one quite know what it all means. Nevertheless, it has been estimated that 30 per cent of the GNP of the USA depends on applications of quantum mechanics in one form or another. That's not bad for a theory that no one understands.
[pp. 201–202.]
NB: The "Quantum Theory" has always been referred to as a Theory, and yet there seems to be no herds of salivating protesters demanding that books on "Quantum Theory" have stickers pointing out that it is just a "theory". Why is that?
It's odd how everybody and his cousin Joe can be an "expert" on Evolutionary Theory ("expert" = "critic" rather than "contributor", of course), just as they all turn into "experts" (same definition) on The Theory of Relativity when they get drunk, and yet there seem to be exceptionally few folk experts on The Quantum Theory. Why is that? (I myself have a few remarks to make in criticism of the Copenhagen interpretation, but the margins of this blog entry are too narrow to contain them.)
I don't know whether I'll accept the quoted "30 per cent" number so readily without knowing its source, but the point of the statement is still valid: modern technology, and our modern technologically enabled economy, are all built on the foundations of rational, humanistic science. "Faith-based science" may calm some atavistic anxieties, but it is not going to keep the airplanes in the air, or keep the television networks broadcasting, or keep our cars on the road, or keep our air conditioners cooling, or even keep our supermarket check-out lines moving (pace G.H.W. Bush).
I'm always surprised to see fundamentalists using cell phones, iPods, electricity, and all the innumerable other non-biblical fruits of the godless sciences that make modern life possible and sometimes even enjoyable. Is it ironic that the printing press that made their quaint book of creation myths a universal best seller is itself not mentioned in the book?
In passing, on p. 120, Mr. Atkins reminds us that there have been faith-based intiatives in science before when he describes how Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis came up with his "principle of least action" largely through theological musing on the perfection of the presumed creator; however, the theory was then subjected to scientific scrutiny and found applicable.