[FRIAM] two books

[Jon Zingale]

`As one who learned quantum mechanics as a chemist, I have to say that the
lack of reality that bothers the physicists never really bothers me.  I
don't really care how an electron spreads itself in space to create a wave
function.   I get electron densities from the wave function magnitudes,
which serve to glue together nuclei of different elements into molecules,
and changes of electron densities, which allow reactions to happen.`

Roger,

I tend to harbor similar feelings regarding the 'unreality'
of the wave / particle duality. Further, I tend to regard
mysticism with respect to the apparent paradox with suspicion.
Much of mechanics (classical or not) is counterintuitive
to the initiate. Generalized coordinates, deriving equations
of motion from the Hamiltonian and interpreting energy
levels on a phase space all require significant preparations,
which border on autosuggestion. Is Quantum Mechanics
really that much more counterintuitive?

In modern mathematics, one encounters categories whose
`points` have an internal structure which can be more
complicated than one's initial intuition would provide.
There is a sense that what the interested physicist is doing
by exploring the duality is attempting to understand the nature
of 'physical points'. How is a physical point like a point in
Euclidean geometry? To what extent can there be a consistent
formal description which matches our knowledge of these points?

Perhaps from some phenomenological perspective, we should
understand these physical points as founding all experience
regarding points and waves. After all, assuming the present
quantum mechanical presentation, all of the classical
experiences of  wave-like nature and particle-like nature
are derived from interactions of these underlying primitive
objects.

Cheers,
Jonathan Zingale
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