In reply to my comment
>was only concerned to show that
>>historical materialism has no relation to the philosophical question of
>>the objectivity or otherwise of the material world.
>
>No you were not.
To which I can only say, read the post again, whose principal references were to Lenin's Materialism and empirio-criticism and Paul Mattick's Marxism and the New Physics. If you had been paying attention to what I said rather than what you thought I ought to have been saying, then you would have noticed that my argument was precisely to insist on the separation of the special findings of quantum mechanics from Marx's historical materialism.
>Einstein presumed that sense experience can be understood in
>terms of an idea of some external reality whose spatially separated parts
>are independent realities, in the sense that they depend on each other only
>via connections that respect space time separation in the usual way:
>instaneous connections are excluded. But the existence of such a reality
>lying behind the world of observed phenomena is precisely what Bell's
>theorem--not the Tao of physics--proves to be impossible.
Well, doubtless Bell will be read when Einstein is long forgotten.
I wrote
>>You read more into the Copenhagen Interpretation than it will support.
>>Heisenberg identified an indeterminacy in the measurement the position
>>and momentum of sub-atomic particles. That in itself has no bearing on
>>other areas of science. It is sheer philosophical speculation to expand
>>Heisenberg's indeterminacy exponentially to contain the entire objective
>>universe, as if biology, cosmology, anatomy, chemistry, an every other
>>science were rendered indeterminate by quantum mechanics.
>
Jan replies:
>Who was doing this?
Well, forgive me but I thought you were. Of course, if you mean that the question of objectivity is only compromised in the special questions raised within quantum physics, then that seems very agreeable. By all means lets acknowledge that there is this question still left unresolved there, and leave all the other scientists to continue investigating objective reality.
>yes but this is einstein's position in a very complicated debate. why are
>you choosing sides when you don't have a clue except what your faith tells
>you?
Well, 'don't have a clue' and 'your faith' is a bit rude. Don't you know that to know all is to forgive all, Jan? I'm happy to be as foolish as Einstein.
>How do you make sense of different and incompatible measurements made on the
>same system not yielding consistent results?
>
Well, my first surmise would be error in the measurements. Perhaps, as Einstein suggested, the incomplete nature of quantum mechanics accounts for its troubling results.
>If you dip into the literature just a little bit, as I have, you will find
>that there are real difficulties for this view in regards to superposition.
>I am not saying that it's untenable; only that your pronunciamento will not
>do.
Well, I'm very sorry to have failed the test, sir.
-- James Heartfield