The book "The Island of Knowledge. The limits of reach of big science "

A person is characterized by a craving for knowledge, but all that is available to our observations is only a tiny part of the surrounding world. In the book “The Island of Knowledge”, physicist Marcelo Glazer tells how we searched for answers to the most fundamental questions about the meaning of our existence. At the same time, he comes to a provocative conclusion: science, our main tool of knowledge, has insurmountable limitations.

Outlining the dramatic history of human desire to understand everything, the “Island of Knowledge” book offers an exclusively original interpretation of the ideas of many of the greatest thinkers, from Plato to Einstein, telling how their searches influence us today. The authoritative and encyclopedic history of meaning and knowledge, told in this book, tells what “being human” is in a universe full of secrets.

Chapter 22
The tale of a brave anthropologist in which the role of the observer in quantum physics and how measurements affect the measurable

This tale will help us understand how the act of observation affects its object. Once upon a time there was once a brave anthropologist who spent many years searching for a lost tribe in the wilds of the Amazon. He learned about this tribe from a random mention in a letter of a little-known Portuguese explorer, written several centuries ago. The exact location of the tribe was not indicated in the letter, and the researcher himself disappeared without a trace. Colleagues laughed at our scientists, but the brave anthropologist (say, his name was Werner) did not abandon his quest. He was sure that unknown tribes had to live in the Amazon jungle — if not the ones mentioned in the letter, but others. “If you don’t look, you’ll never find it,” said Werner to his doubting colleagues.

After many mistakes, wrong turns and long months spent in the farthest corners of the northeast Amazonian Selva, Werner finally came across a small glade in a grove of tropical trees. In her, almost invisible to the eye, was a village of 20 huts hidden. A few naked children ran along it, kicking some kind of round fruit. Werner smiled: “They even play football here.” Realizing that the locals would quickly notice him, he looked around for cover. Finally, Werner climbed onto a nearby tree, spread his sleeping bag on a wide branch, and made sure that anaconda or some other unpleasant neighbor did not lurk next to him - there were enough annoying flies from him. There was enough food and water for three days.
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Werner took out his binoculars and notepad and began his observations. As in other tribes, women spent most of their time in the village for weaving baskets, caring for gardens and raising children. Men and boys made weapons and engaged in hunting and fishing. The whole village acted as a single organism, in which everyone was busy with something. People are constantly going back and forth. The elder and his wife sat in the shade of the largest hut and silently watched the work. “It is possible that all these people are one family or clan,” thought Werner. He enthusiastically realized that no one before him had observed the life of this tribe in its original form: “They have everything that they may need. The forest supplies them with everything they need. It is impossible to draw the line between the human village and the forest - they are in complete fusion with each other. ”

The boy, looking about five years old, fell and scratched his leg badly. The elder's wife immediately hurried to him and rubbed a little ointment into his wound. The boy smiled and ran to play on. Apparently, he no longer felt pain. “This woman is obviously a tribal doctor,” Werner wrote in a notebook. “We need to know what kind of herbs she uses as an anesthetic.”

In the evening, after the men and teenagers returned from the hunt, the whole tribe gathered around the campfire in the center of the village. The elder told them something, probably legends about days gone by, and at the end of each of his sentences, the whole tribe sang some mantra in unison, praising the exploits of their distant ancestors.

When the whole tribe broke up in huts, Werner also began to prepare for bed. “What an incredible success,” he whispered. “These idiots at home will die of envy!” He felt like the happiest man on earth. Werner was almost asleep when someone shook him by the shoulders. He was discovered! Three strong men dragged him from a tree and dragged him into an elder’s tent. There were shouts all around, and the villagers pointed at him with their fingers. Werner was stripped naked and carefully examined his clothes and body. Now it was not he who studied them, but they him! “If I survive, I will do my best to protect this village,” thought Werner. To his surprise, the elder's wife offered him a cup with a hot drink and offered to drink it with gestures. Werner did as he was told, and within a few minutes he was fast asleep.

When he woke up, the sun was already high. Locals built a hut for him near the elders' dwelling, expecting him to settle in the village with them. Werner was delighted. “So I am alive. So I can continue to observe, ”he decided. But after a while he noticed that life in the clan had completely changed. It became the center of existence for both adults and children. Kids went after him, tugged at his beard and offered to play with them with an improvised ball. The young women looked at him with passion, wondering what it was like to make love with a white-skinned man. The warriors were constantly on guard, expecting an attack from him every minute. “They are no longer the same as before, and they never will be,” Werner realized sadly. “My presence changed their behavior, and there is no going back.” I destroyed their ideas about the world and gave them others who will remain with them forever. ” But Werner himself has changed. He was no longer sure he wanted to go home.

I told you the story of Werner to illustrate the difference between the classical and quantum approach to measurements. Before the tribe discovered Werner, he possessed "primordial" information about his life, that is, the facts he possessed were not affected by his presence. This is an ideal situation for an observer in which he does not affect the object of observation and the distance between them is maintained. Our perception of reality is largely dependent on such observations, given that we are aware of the presence of only large objects for which quantum effects, apparently, are not of great importance. We see books folded on the table, cars passing along the street, flies buzzing around us, and our observation does not affect their behavior. Of course, if you make a move in the direction of cars or flies, they will react accordingly, but now this is not about that. This is a classic approximation, the world of sensory perception, in which quantum effects do not manifest themselves. As we will see later, by studying the realism of such an approximation (even if we take it for granted, since the approximation is built on how we perceive the world), much can be learned about the nature of quantum physics.

The second part of the story, in which the tribe already knows about Werner's presence, is an illustration of the space of quantum effects, in which the act of observation affects both the observed object and the observer and changes them in an irreversible way. Neither the tribe nor Werner himself was the same after he was discovered. Werner became part of the tribe, and the tribe became part of Werner. They have become an inseparable whole. Knowledge of the existence of each other influenced their stories, and neither Werner nor the villagers could return to the independent state that preceded their acquaintance. They were "entangled" in each other - it was this term that Schrodinger proposed in 1935 to denote one of the main characteristics of quantum systems.

»More information about the book can be found on the publisher's website.
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