Particle or Wave?

I'm trying not to get lost in the emo. Thinking about something completely different. Been thinking about the fabled lack of agreement between the systems described by Classical (or, more accurately Einsteinian) Physics and Quantum Physics. In most ordinary situations, they agree perfectly, but at the very basic fundamental level - when things get very SMALL, or very OLD - they just don't agree at all. (This is a vast simplification because I'm not a physicist.)

Now I've been having a rather silly flirty argument about whether these descriptions actually comprise seperate *realities* or whether they're just clumbsy mathematical descriptions/approximations of some ultimate (Platonic?) Reality.

I rather like the idea that things become unfathomably *different* depending on how you look at them or approach them. That there is no actual single Reality, and the harder you poke it to investigate it, the weirder it becomes, the more complex, until it only makes sense in superstring branes of ten dimensions (which most minds cannot grasp conceptually) or with probability curves involving imaginary numbers. It's absurd enough to please me, this "ha ha!" of Quantum Physics that defies common sense. I like it on a philsophical level, the Answer is that there is No Answer.



I've been trying to explain it metaphorically. Thinking about The Self, or rather myself, as metaphor for the elusive particle/wave of Fundamental Reality. One of my greatest problems is that I exist in so many completely different environments that I have to be a completely different person in each. I'm one person when I'm at work, the super-analytical, highly logical maths machine. I'm a different person when I'm with my band, the creative, absent-minded musical genius. I'm another person on the interweb, another person in relationships, another person when I'm dealing with my family. Each environment brings out an (often completely) different aspect to me.

I can recall sitting down and doing accounts for my ex-boyfriend. This was my partner, the person I lived with for over a year, who thought he knew me - moody, dark, creative - and he said he was surprised at how I utterly changed when I did maths, that I snapped into being this super-organised, super-efficient being he said he barely recognised.

It's been noted, that I don't really want people from work coming to see my band. They think it's because I'm kind of ashamed or embarrassed of my music. Or maybe of them! (Can you imagine a load of bankers and accountants at an indie gig?) Who knows. When really, it's because I don't want those two worlds intersecting, because I am such a different person in each of them.

So this is me. I don't have a Self. I don't even know that there *is* a core me. I mean, yes, I'm a different person again when I'm alone, by myself, locked in my flat with no one watching. But that's not the "Real" me, either, it's just another of the multitude of selves that exist in different environments. There is no Platonic Kate, there is only the collection of sets of behaviours and reactions that comprise Kate in her various settings.

So tell me, then. Which is the real Reality? This changeable, unknowable vortex of Kates through which situations pass? (How the hell are you going to measure or even observe that? What unit of measurement would you ever use? Pop songs written? Millions of data records analysed? Shoes worn?) Or the various settings, the Environments in which these Kates exist?

So now let's backtrack to Our Friend, The Atom. (Remember him? The particle/wave we were worrying about the Quantum vs. Classical/Einsteinian Nature of?) Does he have an actual Platonic essence? Or is he a vortex, a collection of possible realities he could be involved with, like The Kate? Are Quantum Physics and Classical Physics just two ways of looking at the same thing? Or are they two, separate realities themselves, rather than descriptions?

I don't know. Proper Scientists will probably be annoyed by this cod-philosophical abuse of their beautiful concepts. Just a bit of fun, be cool.