One interesting fact about electrons is that they are all literally identical. And I really do mean completely and literally identical, in the sense of sharing all properties. Yes, even the spatial distribution of their wavefunctions.
To illustrate how this is possible, consider a simple scenario, where we have two electrons, one at point A, and the other at point B. At first it would seem that electron 1 has a different location from electron 2. But in fact, the universe is in a quantum superposition of two states–the first state has electron 1 at A and electron 2 at B, while the second state has electron 2 at A and electron 1 at B. So even though we observe electrons at two distinct locations, the two electrons involved are actually identical.
The fact that electrons are identical has really important consequences. One consequence is the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which states that no single state can be occupied by two electrons simultaneously. So when we have a large atom, electrons will occupy many different orbitals of the atom, instead of having all electrons occupy the one orbital with lowest energy.
Of course, it’s not really practical to think of it this way all the time. Generally we prefer to think of each electron as being at a distinct location, and then we tack on additional rules like the Pauli Exclusion Principle.
The point is that the individuality of electrons is an idea that arises from practical necessity, and not from the fundamental physics. Practical necessities arise from social context. And in principle, a different social context could have different needs that are better fulfilled by some other way of thinking about it. Therefore, the concept of individual electrons is a social construct.
(The above argument is slightly naive. I am led to believe, by the length of this Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article, that there might be a few caveats and complications. But I’m going to take the naive view and maybe I’ll read the article later.)
I take a somewhat extreme view of social constructionism–I believe that nearly everything is socially constructed. Or maybe it would be better to just say everything is socially constructed, without exception.
Generally, when people try to think of exceptions, they name something that they think exists out there in reality, independent of any human contact. Like that rock over there, that shit’s pretty real. My problem with this is, I don’t know what “real” means. If “real” applies to some arbitrary collection of “individual” particles that we’re calling a rock, then why can’t it also apply to other things? Are statistical properties like temperature also real? What about the International Monetary Fund? And gender?
“Real” appears to refer to certain social constructs that are culturally independent across a reasonable range of cultural variation. And fine, that’s a useful concept. Maybe rocks are real and beauty is not. But I fail to see why that means beauty is socially constructed and rocks are not. Both are socially constructed.
My robot boyfriend has expressed confusion at the idea that everything is socially constructed. He thinks of it in philosophical terms; social constructionism appears to be a predicate that applies to all objects. Does such a predicate have any meaning? And if x is socially constructed regardless of x, then what information could we possibly convey by asserting that any particular thing is socially constructed?
Let’s consider another predicate, “is made of electrons, neutrons, and protons”. This predicate applies to nearly all objects, but nonetheless has tremendous meaning. It is still useful to say that my computer is made of electrons, neutrons, and protons, even if the truth of that statement is totally obvious. Because now we can consider the consequences of that totally true statement.
Likewise, it may be completely true and obvious to say that a thing is socially constructed, but it’s still useful to say so, so that we may consider the consequences of that totally true statement.
Typically, it is only really useful to talk about the social construction of things that can actually be changed with a reasonable shift in culture. So we generally don’t talk about the social construction of electrons. But even if we don’t talk about it, I still think it’s true.
On the topic of social construction of electrons, read Ian Hacking, “Representing and Intervening”
Well, what you’re calling “interesting facts” are social constructions, which don’t tell us anything about other interpretations of quantum mechanics. They may not be true, which is just to say that your vision of things shouldn’t be presented as a settled, verified, actual scientific result. These aren’t facts in the sense that evolution is a fact or what have you.
According to de Broglie-Bohm theory, there actually are particles with trajectories. You really mean it that there are such things; the theory postulates that ordinary macroscopic objects that you encounter in the world are constituted by them. That’s what the things we experience consist of, and their behavior is what physics attempts to describe and explain. There evidently is matter which moves around, and we want to know all about it. Physics presumably doesn’t have any other job to do, which would somehow invalidate that.
So, according to dBB, there isn’t just a wavefunction on a 3N-dimensional configuration space, because there are N particles in ordinary 3-space. That is, it’s actually and literally true that there is a configuration in the world, and this is the space of them. You don’t need to do any semantic juggling or other parlor tricks to make this work or to have a clear idea of what theory says about reality. Any one point in that high-dimensional space corresponds to the entire configuration of all the particles, and this is a very helpful way of specifying how such configurations evolve over time.
If it weren’t so, that this represents a configuration of actual particle positions (with some non-classical dynamics for those things), it would be a difficult challenge to explain how it happens to have a number of dimensions equal to the number of particles multiplied by the number of physical spatial dimensions, which just so happens to behave in exactly the right way to account for experimental outcomes. It at least raises a lot of questions….
– If there aren’t any such things, is it just a remarkable coincidence, that not only the mathematical formulation about also all of our empirical experiences are suggesting the same thing?
– Since we evidently don’t live in 3N-space, can you tell us what there is and what’s going on in 3-space, assuming that is a legitimate job that physics is perfectly capable of handling?
– Can some better understanding of it all be gained in some other way, and what’s better about it? Your interpretation (whatever exactly that is) was just taken for granted above, as a collection of “facts” that everyone should presumably accept, but how would we get there and what if anything would we get out of it?
– How exactly are you connecting your theory with your experimental/observational data, such that this theory can make sense of experiments as physical interactions like any other physical interaction? If the dynamics tells us states don’t collapse, then how could you be deriving that they do they collapse when we “measure” them?
typo:
@consciousness razor,
If you take some alternative interpretation like de Broglie-Bohm, that will modify the picture, but not in the way you think. In de Broglie Bohm theory, electrons that we intuitively think of as distinct will sometimes swap places. And we can’t tell when it happens.
Since this is a post about social constructionism rather than physics, the point is not to pick nits about the physics, it’s to show that the fundamental physics is unlike our intuition. If you were to go deeper into the physics, you could get into second quantization, which I had deliberately avoided. But second quantization doesn’t make the intuitive picture more correct, it makes it less correct.
I don’t know what you mean by saying they “will sometimes swap places.”
Anyway, I don’t think haecceitism corresponds to my intuitions. But whatever, if “we” intuitively think that, then “we” might be wrong. I don’t think that involves empirically testable claims, and you seemed to suggest something about physics has somehow settled the question. (But then again, “we can’t tell” isn’t settling anything.)
It may not be like your intuition or mine in certain ways, but the fundamental physics, as such, doesn’t say electrons are spatially distributed, if that fundamental physics is dBB. They may not be zero-dimensional pointlike objects (perhaps strings or blobs or whatever), but they are always localized in some small region of spacetime, according to the version of quantum mechanics that I know how to comprehend. That’s what an electron is, according to dBB, and each one has a definite trajectory. So, the trajectory of each electron is distinguishable from the trajectory of other electrons.
They are not in the sense identical. And if there is going to be any “swapping” of the locations of two electrons at two spacetime points, then two different trajectories would exist. But it’s deterministic, implying the path that the point in configuration space takes never intersects itself. Counterfactually, at any particular moment, there would be no difference if this electron is here and that electron is there (or vice versa), but the history of the whole system tells the consistent story of what actually happens not what would happen or what we would be able to distinguish.
Anyway, I don’t see how this relates to social constructionism at all, other than the fact that you’re taking your own theory (undeniably a construction) for granted. We didn’t build electrons. They aren’t constructed by societies. They exist in the world, independently of us and our constructions. To whatever extent you are talking about something that is socially constructed, you’re not talking about a thing like an electron.
I mean that literally. According to dBB, the trajectories of the electrons will sometimes cause the electrons to swap places. If we have an electron on atom A, and a second electron on atom B, the trajectory of the first electron will sometimes find its way towards atom B while the trajectory of the second electron will sometimes find its way towards atom A. dBB says that either it has definitely happened, or definitely has not happened, and no experiment can determine which is the case.
So if we just consider the electron on atom A, it would be difficult to argue that it truly is distinct from the electron on atom B, since the underlying identity of the electron may change at any time. The dBB interpretation, rather than supporting the idea of “the electron on atom A” as an individual object, calls it into question. So it really isn’t any different from standard quantum interpretations in this regard.
Yes the quantum theory in the OP is a construction, and no I am not taking it for granted. As I’ve already noted, the OP deliberately avoids a discussion of second quantization, which is no small thing.
Come to think of it I have no idea how dBB deals with second quantization.
No, they move. That’s what each one of them does, and that isn’t difficult to argue at all. Either they move or they don’t.
It has nothing to do with “identity changing,” which is your invention and isn’t a feature of the theory. We may not know which has happened in some circumstances, and it may not matter to us. That’s certainly true. But our knowledge of it, or what matters to us and doesn’t matter to us, shouldn’t be confused with the actual electron itself.
If any sort of social constructionism is going to be coherent and somehow helpful, then that has to be abundantly clear, because something like that must be capable of putting itself into the context of a real world, in which not everything is constructed but only some of the things in it are. Otherwise, I wouldn’t call it “social constructionism” but “idealism” of some sort or another — you wouldn’t even have a coherent way of referring to a society, but only to you, a single individual, constructing things in your mind. And in that case, we wouldn’t really be having this conversation.
I won’t go into detail here, but the SEP article on Bohmian Mechanics is a decent start, if you want to understand how it works.
@consciousness razor,
I have a hunch that you do not know what second quantization is. Both the theory discussed in the OP and standard dBB are “first quantized” theories, which means that they are just wrong.
As far as social constructionism goes, I do not understand what point(s) you have been making. But I am not going to ask you to explain yourself, since your explanations are obviously ineffectual, I’m just going to disregard the points until they are clear.
How were electrons constructed before societies?
Quoting from the SEP article you may not have read:
You can follow that rabbit hole of citations if you want, as well as search for it on arxiv and so forth. The historical fact that it has been widely misunderstood/misrepresented and not a lot of stress has been put on developing it further … well, that is interesting and important to know … but that’s not to say there is any serious problem with it, just that much of the physics community has put its priorities elsewhere.
I will quote you in the OP:
I’m also confused about that. Your idea that “everything is socially constructed” is unclear, makes no sense, and is obviously ineffectual on me. I don’t think it is true. So both of us could play that game, although it wouldn’t get us anywhere. But it’s your thread. Disregard whatever you want.
@colinday,
Electrons were not socially constructed before people thought about them. They are socially constructed now. That is to say, the way we think about electrons is influenced, at least in principle, by social context. Case in point, consciousness razor thinks of electrons in a different way than I do, because they have a different relationship with physics from me. Obviously before any of us existed, the way we thought about electrons was not influenced by any social context, because we did not think of electrons at all.
@Siggy
#11
All that means is that our beliefs about electrons are socially constructed, not the electrons themselves.
Yup. It’s not clear.
Interestingly, Siggy doesn’t understand the meaning of the term “real”. (coincidence?)
But I’ll try to help both of you if I can! 🙂 *no guarantees on my superior knowledge or ability.
@Siggy
I think this type of inquiry is called ontology. You might not know how to answer ontological questions on every subject, but this shouldn’t pose a difficulty to simply understanding the term “reality”, any more than you need to understand all mathematics in order to understand the term “math”.
“Reality” is what exists, and how things are. This is distinguished from our models of what exists. (the “map and the territory” metaphor works here).
Failing to distinguish such things might be the source of confusion over both the phrase “everything is socially constructed” (which mixes up the things and our models of them) and confusion over the term “reality” (which is part of this distinction). I think colinday’s confusion also comes from using the term “electron” to refer to the model, not the thing being modeled. It’s confusing because that’s not what “electron” generally means.
Ah, colinday beat me to it. Exactly.
I didn’t refresh to check for new comments before I posted.
@colinday:
Exactly. So anything and everything you believe about electrons are mere beliefs about electrons. There are electrons, for important sense of “are” and “electrons”, that exist and have existed since before humans had language, but since communication is inherently subjective and social as soon as you start talking about electrons, you’re talking about your beliefs about those electrons as shaped by social context. While someone might use the pronoun “she” or the pronoun “he” to refer to me, the fact that the pronoun used is a pointer to a being with a physical body in this universe does not prevent those pronouns from socially constructing me. The choice of pronoun contains a huge amount of information which helps dictate how I am seen.
In a similar way, we could state that there is “a rock” in a particular place, but what makes it “a rock”? Is Uluru “a rock”?
Imagine a particular coherent hunk of mineral contains internal fractures that trap a small coherent fragment of mineral such that the fragment will always remain inside the hunk unless the hunk itself is broken apart. Maybe you can even hear the rattling of the smaller fragment when you shake the hunk.
Is the hunk “a rock”?
What about a hunk that shares ionic bonds with adjacent hunks, but these ionic bonds are few enough that any force sufficient to lift the first hunk will break those bonds? Is that first hunk “a rock”? Does it become “a rock” when lifted?
The coherent hunk of mineral may exist whether or not it is observed, whether or not intelligent beings (with the capacity to observe the hunk) even exist. But nonetheless every single rock we observe or indicate or discuss is socially constructed (likewise every electron)in the sense intended by those who employ theories of social construction.
So while your distinction is true, it only matters for electrons that are not observed, indicated, or discussed. As soon as we start talking – or even thinking! – about an electron, social construction comes into play.
@Brian Pansky,
The thing is that in physics, especially condensed matter physics, I’m very used to dealing with nested models. The idea of temperature is a model. Fermi liquid theory is a model. Individual electrons are a model. The idea of first-quantized physics is a model. I’m not saying it’s models all the way down, but the models go quite a ways down, much deeper than people generally realize. When people think they have identified the “territory”, usually they have just identified another model.
CR spent a lot of time attacking my short summary of what quantum physics says, and argued that it was a social construction. And I’m confused because that doesn’t really detract from my point. Yes, I know the models go even deeper than I said in the OP, I just didn’t talk about it, on account of I have readers who aren’t physicists.
The point is, people generally recognize electrons to be real. They recognize the International Monetary Fund to be real. These things that people call “real”, they are not part of the territory, they are part of the models. You seem to be saying “social construction” = “the map”, and “real” = “the territory”. I agree with “social construction” = “the map”, which is why I think nearly everything is socially constructed. I don’t agree with “real” = “the territory”, because it appears that’s not how people actually use the word.
colinday @12
Yes, generally when people say X is socially constructed, what it means is that our ideas about X are socially constructed. You might have intended that as a “gotcha”, but it just tells me that yes you have understood me correctly.
@Siggy
#17
I did not intend it as a gotcha, but I find that phrasing somewhat confusing. What if there are people who believe electrons (not our beliefs about them) are socially constructed?
@colinday,
Yeah, I can see how it can get muddled. You’re not wrong.
@16, Siggy
I had time at work today to think more about this, along with your response, and I think I’ve got it.
First I’ll try to define the meaning of the term “reality” hopefully better than my previous attempt, then I’ll try to deal with how that fits with what people mean when they refer to this or that as “real”:
1)
A model, a hypothesis, etc. has predictions. We can imagine whatever models we want. We can compare models to experience. Sometimes they match, sometimes not.
If our models and experience always matched 1 to 1 (no matter what we made out models to be), there would never be surprises. Since there are surprises, we posit something as the cause of this. Something capable of supplying experience besides our models and expectations. We call that “reality”. Reality is defined as the thing that has that capability.
Yes, this concept that “there’s a thing called reality that can do such and such” is a human concept. But that concept does not (can not) itself (nor in combination with other models) produce all the experienced differences between a successful prediction and a failed prediction. Or else we’d always have a 1 to 1 match between models and experience.
2)
Now, in everyday language, instead of talking about all of reality, we are usually talking about part of it. So a “real duck” is the part of reality that causes the experiences which will be surprising or familiar depending on our model. A “real decoy duck” causes experiences which will be surprising or familiar depending on our model. If your model is “real decoy duck” when there’s a biological duck, you’ll be surprised. If your model is “real duck” when there’s a “completely” unknown alien object there, you might be surprised. And so on.
I’m pretty sure this is what people mean. I hope I’ve tied enough of the loose ends.
Brian Pansky @20
I don’t think we’re in disagreement at this point. I think there are many ways to define what is “real”, and your definition is one of them. Actually I think that’s better than my attempted definition in the OP (i.e. reality is that which is culturally independent within a reasonable range).
Crip Dyke:
No, this is very confused. Compare these two statements:
1) Donald Trump is a president who threatens North Korea.
2) My belief about Donald Trump is a president who threatens North Korea.
My belief is not the type of thing that is a president who threatens North Korea. I’m not talking about that, when I talk about the person who is a president who threatens North Korea; I’m talking about Donald Trump.
Likewise, “the way we think about electrons is socially constructed” doesn’t mean anything like the statement “electrons are socially constructed.” Just as a matter of language, the simple word “is” can’t be legitimately replaced by “the way we think about X is” and convey the same content. But beyond that, it just doesn’t work conceptually to have experiences without a world, maps without territories, relations without relata, or however you may want to put it. You (or your ideas) are not the only thing that exists — other things do as well. And if you were going push ahead with that kind of claim despite its myriad problems, then like I said before, that’s idealism, not social constructionism.