Dialogues on Modern Physics

The following sections are included:

• Contents

• Acknowledgements

• Preface

• FOREWORD

The campus at Leber College in Oregon was quiet at four o'clock in the afternoon. It was a beautiful fall day, without any hint of the deluge of rain that just ended a day ago. The students were mostly in their dormitories at this hour, or else they were working in the central library. The crisp sounds of the chirping of the robins and sparrows had replaced the calls and laughs of the undergraduates throughout this small campus…

It was four o'clock in the afternoon again, and Manny, Mo and Jackie were pouring their brewed coffee. Everyone had gone home and it was deliciously quiet in the Physics Department Conference Room. The sun's rays were especially bright as they penetrated the west window from a point in the sky not too far above the horizon, along the rushing Willamette. It was getting to be late fall and the days were becoming noticeably shorter. Jackie put her cup down, after a long sip, and started to open her mind to her colleagues…

A brilliant white cap of snow was covering the tops of the mountains, and the sky was clear blue. Mo was waiting for Manny and Jackie, who were detained at the faculty meeting that he had been able to avoid this time. He was thinking about the controversy on whether the world might really be based on fundamental uncertainty or whether it is rooted in order. The experience of the meeting of the Physics faculty would certainly have gone in the direction of uncertainty! But human relations are much more complicated than problems of physics!…

MANNY: What have you been thinking about since last week? Do you still believe, Jackie, that there is total order in the universe, necessarily, or have you seen the way of the majority yet on the fundamental role of uncertainty in physics?…

Manny, Mo and Jackie arrived together with excitement in their steps. It was precisely four o'clock in the afternoon this late fall day. They were gazing out of the western window of the Conference Room. Only the upper rim of the sun could be seen, softly falling below the horizon. There was a bright orange border along the top of the rushing Willamette River. The blending of Nature's colors was fabulous — the deep blue of the river, with its white caps, the orange of the sun, fading into the dark night sky, the dark green of the campus lawns. Were they separate things? Or were they all manifestations of a single glorious entity?…

The view was awe-inspiring to Manny, Mo and Jackie, as they stood, spellbound, at the eastern window of the Conference Room. A thin blanket of fog filled the valley between the campus of Leber College and the base of the Cascade Mountains. The sun's rays from the west could be seen casting shadows on the mountains, whose tops had much more snow than they did the week before. It was two minutes after four o'clock in the afternoon, this late fall day. Before commencing their dialogue, Manny, Mo and Jackie were deep in meditation on the beauty of Nature before them…

It was that time of the week again for further explorations into the mysteries of the universe. As they waited to use the Conference Room, Mo thought about the conversation between Einstein's wife and an astronomer at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California. The scientist was showing Mrs. Einstein all of the elaborate equipment that was used to explore the furthest stars of the heavens and their implicit order. Mrs. Einstein replied, “You know, my husband studies the same problems of the heavens on the back of an envelope!”…

MO: Well, here we are, colleagues, in the last week of the fall quarter. Do you think that we've made progress in our search for scientific truth? As for myself, I am more certain now on what the problems are that stand in the way of discovering truth in science than I was before we started our dialogues. I am still not certain, however, as to the correct approach to the truth. Perhaps there is no definite, correct approach!…

The following sections are included:

• Definitions

• Notes

• Epilogue AN ESSAY ON DIALOGUE

• Notes