Mathematical Institute, 24-29 St Giles', Oxford OX1 3LB, UK.
Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2011 Dec 13;369(1956):4864-90. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2011.0179.
The word 'uncertainty', in the context of quantum mechanics, usually evokes an impression of an essential unknowability of what might actually be going on at the quantum level of activity, as is made explicit in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and in the fact that the theory normally provides only probabilities for the results of quantum measurement. These issues limit our ultimate understanding of the behaviour of things, if we take quantum mechanics to represent an absolute truth. But they do not cause us to put that very 'truth' into question. This article addresses the issue of quantum 'uncertainty' from a different perspective, raising the question of whether this term might be applied to the theory itself, despite its unrefuted huge success over an enormously diverse range of observed phenomena. There are, indeed, seeming internal contradictions in the theory that lead us to infer that a total faith in it at all levels of scale leads us to almost fantastical implications.
在量子力学的语境中，“不确定性”一词通常会让人产生一种印象，即对量子活动层面实际发生的事情存在着本质上的不可知性，这在海森堡的不确定性原理以及该理论通常只为量子测量结果提供概率这一事实中得到了明确体现。如果我们认为量子力学代表了绝对真理，那么这些问题就限制了我们对事物行为的最终理解。但它们并没有导致我们对这一“真理”本身产生质疑。本文从一个不同的角度探讨了量子“不确定性”的问题，提出了这样一个问题：尽管量子力学在极其广泛的观测现象中取得了无可辩驳的巨大成功，但这个术语是否可以应用于该理论本身。事实上，该理论中存在着明显的内在矛盾，这让我们推断，在所有尺度上对其完全信任，会导致近乎荒诞的结论。
