Re:There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)
by lmm on Monday August 29, 2016 @04:21AM
(#12380690)
Well, we still have the fact that e.g. light is quantized on emission (photoelectric effect) and yet behaves continuously in the double slit experiment. I don't think you need particular preexisting concepts of waves and particles for this combination to be surprising.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)
by michaelfeathers on Thursday September 01, 2016 @07:36AM
(#12404437)
It's just the same issue at another level. There's no reason that something can't have both properties. The issue is that it jars our preconceptions, which are formed from the things we've encountered so far. We want to understand things in terms of what we've seen. That's a basis of analogical reasoning.
It's kind of like the "monad tutorial" problem in software. Everyone tries to reach for analogy for that computational structure. Although there are some decent ones, in the end, people who work with monads just have to accept the monad laws (sort of a parallel to the data that physics has on quantuum phenomena) and eventually they develop a sense of what they are independent of cafeteria trays and burritos ( http://codetojoy.blogspot.com/2009/03/monads-are-burritos.ht... )