Atoms' shadows in the cave

[Baby Astronaut]

If we can't really see an atom, but only infer its existence through interactions with other atoms (I'm refering mostly to scenarios where just a few single atoms are being experimented with), the logic there seems to resemble the properties of a circular argument.

 

I'm definitely missing an important component of the process, so I ask: how can you see what atom A did to atom B if you can't see either of them, or other atoms it would affect?

 

But -- the question above isn't the main reason for this post.

 

So here we go.

 

I've had a thought. The manner in which we view atoms is closely related to the how reality is viewed in Allegory of the Cave.

 

Imagine if one day we can directly view the atom, witnessing many things we couldn't tell by interactions alone. Maybe its proton wobbles like a quasi-liquid sphere would if poked, and/or its electrons are like high-powered slinkies. Or maybe the true nature of atoms would blow our minds.

 

I'm unsure if magnification is really the problem in getting a direct view of the atom. It could be that a photon can't really bounce off an atom, thus preventing us from seeing it in the normal way of seeing things.

 

But the future might hold a new way of sight. It could be found that a certain subatomic particle can be bounced off other subatomic things and hold a record of it in much the same way a photon operates, and that the information can be converted and absorbed by a photon so that we can now directly view the atom.

 

Just a thought.

[swansont]

The allegory isn't apt. We don't do the equivalent of relying on a single 2D projection to determine the nature of atoms. We do the equivalent of looking at projections from various angles, and even using probes that can penetrate part of the objects and cast different shadows, to reveal internal structure.

 

IOW, scientists understand the allegory, and devise interrogations accordingly.

[Baby Astronaut]

We do the equivalent of looking at projections from various angles, and even using probes that can penetrate part of the objects and cast different shadows, to reveal internal structure.

The allegory implies that even after careful study is done, in the end it's all just shadows. Below is an excerpt, about a guy having left the cave and then returning to it after seeing the "real" world.

 

Wouldn't he remember his first home, what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners, and consider himself happy and they, pitiable? And wouldn't he disdain whatever honors, praises, and prizes were awarded there to the ones who guessed best which shadows followed which?

I think we'd learn way more from direct observation than from inferring, which does yield very good results with calculations and experiments, but mostly along the lines of obvious reasoning, thus more apt to miss what's beyond our learned visual understanding.

 

For instance, even if the 1500s scientists had 21st century mathematics and calculations at their disposal, they'd be unlikely to recognize bacteria as the culprit of a disease without first having known about them. I'm not completely sure, but you probably can't find out the existence of bacteria without some form of direct observation into the microscopic world, but even if you could, you'd probably learn far more by direct observation than you would by inferring what you can by precise measurements of how their shadows interact. There are many nuances you would simply miss.

[swansont]

Direct observation isn't available to us in this case. And ultimately science tells us how nature behaves, not what nature actually is.

[npts2020]

Also direct observation has limits. No matter how you go about observing at some point you are left to infer things from what is observed, even if what you observe is an illusion (ie the earth is flat and at center of the universe).

[Sisyphus]

Also, there's really no such thing as "direct observation," in the strictest sense. When you're looking at that bacterium through the microscope, you're inferring the existence of things based on the stream of photons hitting your retina from a certain direction, i.e. very indirectly. Observation of an individual atoms is not so different, but the indirectness of it seems more jarring because it's not what we do naturally all the time, and because it's at the scale where fundamental uncertainties start to make themselves more inconvenient.