QUANTUM PHYSICS NEEDS PHILOSOPHY, BUT SHOULDN'T TRUST IT
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Jan Matejko
15 min read
Linked in the article (15 min read)
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Copenhagen interpretation
16 min read
The article directly references 'Copenhagen orthodoxy' and its 'Don't think, just calculate!' stance as the dominant view that quantum physicists are now moving beyond. Understanding this foundational interpretation of quantum mechanics is essential context for grasping Žižek's argument about why philosophy is now needed.
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Wave function collapse
11 min read
Central to the article's philosophical argument - Žižek discusses how 'a collapse occurs when a quantum process is observed,' the theological implications of God collapsing wave functions, and how obscurantist philosophers treat collapse as 'an act of free conscious decision.' This concept is the crux of the materialism vs. idealism debate in the piece.
Comrades,
I was invited to speak at a conference dedicated to the work of Lee Smolin in Waterloo (Canada) on June 5 2025:
Lee's Fest: Quantum Gravity and the Nature of Time.
Below, a text of this speech, now FREE to read
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(Picture: Astronomer Copernicus, or Conversations with God by Jan Matejko, 1873)
What am I, a philosopher, doing here, where specialists will debate features of quantum gravity well beyond the scope of my understanding? From its very beginnings, it was clear that quantum mechanics (QM) has earth-shattering implications for our notion of reality. However, although there were speculations here and there, the predominant stance until recently was Copenhagen orthodoxy: “Don’t think, just calculate!” In the last decades, ontological questions have exploded. At the very beginning of his bestselling The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking triumphantly proclaims that “philosophy is dead.” With the latest advances in quantum physics and cosmology, so-called experimental metaphysics has reached its apogee: metaphysical questions about the origins of the universe, the nature of space and time, etc.—which until now were the topic of philosophical speculation—can now be answered through experimental science and thus, in the long term at least, empirically tested. However, things are not as simple as that. Many quantum scientists are now aware that they should be raising proper philosophical questions (for example: What is the nature of quantum waves? Do they form a reality separate from our common material reality, or are they just instruments of calculation?).
Following these debates as an outsider, I noticed that many quantum physicists have taken refuge in esoteric spiritualism or direct subjective idealism. Here is a typical comment: “Do paradoxes like this really echo ancient philosophies like Advaita Vedanta, which say separateness is an illusion and everything is connected? Quantum entanglement reveals particles can remain linked across vast distances, as if part of one indivisible whole.” Even Roger Penrose wrote at some point that “Somehow, our consciousness is the reason the universe is here,” not to mention Zeilinger, who links QM to Tibetan Buddhism. No wonder that many obscurantist philosophers join them in this endeavour—for them, the quantum collapse is an act of free conscious decision.
Lacan knew what he was saying when he claimed that quantum mechanics is the first science that deals
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