There are different ways of “knowing”. I know my hand, my cup, my room, my bouse, my street in intimate everyday ways, in ever-widening circles of decreasing closeness and increasing size or scope. Outward going, my knowledge gets wider but more shallow, like the damped circular wave wben a pebble drops in a pond. Yet it is the same KIND of knowledge — immediate practical experience, farniliarity, intuitive grasp.
The other kind of “knowing” is the scientific mode — of the fundamental particles and forces of pbysics that bebave so strangely that we hardly know what to do. with our mathematical descriptions of them. We can describe, even predict their behaviour on a probabilistic basis, but normally we do not approacb the feeling of familiarity. We experience something akin to culture sbock.
Could one get the “gut” form of knowledge even of “GUT” objects? (play on words: GUT stands for Grand Unified Theory of 3 of the 4 fundamental forces.) Perhaps from daily repetition of acquaintance.. plus simulated or imagined sensory experience uninstructed by the precise mathematics, plus emotional connotations — like those that make me “know” my cup because I took tea from it with a friend.
A few examples to illustrate: For a long time I “knew” that tbe Moon was a spbere lit froB different sides at different times of the month by the Sun; but I still “saw” it as a flat circle or various types
and sizes of crescent — until Armstrong landed on the Moon. and my perception changed. For me, the Moon has been forever transformed into a Sun-lit sphere.
After reading an article on “Collision-less Shock Waves” in the April 1991 issue of Scientific American, I am beginning to understand a little bit about solitons in terms of wave trains or packets, and their analogy to particles. (A previous article on solitons some years ago in this magazine left me completely puzzled.) I think of Betchov’s theory (see my essay The Peak of Non-linearity in this collection), and 1 can almost visualize a highly compressed wave-packet of very high amplitude as a particle.
As to the puzzle of its localization, another analogy. The particle/wave-packet, of course, is in a state of extremely rapid vibration. hence the principle of uncertainty of its position if we know its velocity. But in an experiment probing it, we “catch” it at a definite location and therefore perceive it as a particle; the wave-packet collapses. 1 have recently observed a phenomenon which to me makes this more concrete. When 1 turn off the computer by throwing the switch, there appears a vertical line in the middle of the screen which at some point usually has either a circular or wavy pattern around it — just before the whole pattern fades. 1 can imagine (I almost “see”) the vertical line being generated by a rapidly up-and-down moving point of light (an electron?). 1 could not tell just where the point is at any given time (in the gross way that 1 perceive time). Yet when the switch stops the movement, 1 “catch” it in the act, so to speak. Why should it be THERE and not somewhere else? The probability is quite small for any point location on the line — but it’s got to be SOMEWHERE.
1 wonder: If 1 could shrink down to sub-atomic dimensions like Alice in Wonderland, could 1 “know” a soliton like 1 know my cup? Or are there physicists who know solitons that way already?