Quantum Fundamentalism refers to the view that quantum mechanics provides the most fundamental description of physical phenomena.
”Apparently, we are living in a quantum world since everything is constituted by atomic and subatomic particles. Hence classical physics seems merely to be a useful approximation to a world which is quantum mechanical on all scales.” (Zinkernagel, 2015)
“The basic assumption behind quantum fundamentalism is that the structure of the formalism, in this case the wave function, corresponds to how the world is structured”.1
(Faye, 2019)
So, how does the world seem to be structured?
In a quantum world, which is abiding to the laws of quantum mechanics, Energy levels do not shift linearly but rather in discrete steps. This is a fundamental principle in quantum mechanics.
To each change in nature corresponds an integer number of quanta of action. Action variables may only change by integer values of 2, requiring all other physical quantities to change by discrete steps, “quantum jumps”.
(Capellmann, 2021, S. 1)
Sources
- Faye, Jan (2019) Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Capellmann, H. (2021). Space-Time in Quantum Theory. Foundations of Physics, 51(2), 44. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-021-00441-0
- Zinkernagel, Henrik (2015) Are we living in a quantum world? Bohr and quantum fundamentalism One hundred years of the Bohr atom: Proceedings from a conference (Edited by F. Aaserud and H. Kragh). Scientia Danica. Series M: Mathematica et physica, vol. 1., 2015. pp. 419-434. ISSN 1904-5514
Footnotes
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"For instance, according to the wave function description every quantum system may be in a superposition of different states because a combination of state vectors is also a state vector. Now, assuming that both the quantum object and the measuring apparatus are quantum systems that each can be described by a wave function, it follows that their entangled state would likewise be represented by a state vector.” (Faye, 2019) ↩
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Planck’s constant ↩