There you've done it.. I fooled around and actually learned something..
Albeit I backed up and tripped over it.. I learn most things that way..
Photons bother the heck out of me too.. Except I don't know why.. or pretend to know why.. Photons are weird.. I can't conceive of them.. I can see them, some of them.. and cannot conceive of what they are.. Actually they screw up my concepts of speed.. weight.. and mass.. Its "somehow" comforting to me to know Einstein was bothered by them too.. I don't care "why".. All I know is there is something about photons(my conception of them) that I don't like..
Maybe it is because they limit me.. They limit my physical observation of "things".. but not metaphorical observation of other things.. Photons drive me to my "spirit" for observation.. How about that.. ;)
Jeepers it’s definitely true that photons are very strange critters, dear ’pipe! How to imagine a massless thingamajig, constantly moving at a velocity which is thought to be the “speed limit of the universe?” (And also theoretically being spontaneously emitted from a universal vacuum field?)
Still I think the photon is our friend! Without it, we would be unable to see anything. That is because the photon – quantized light -- is essential to signal processing going on between the external reality and the brain; for brain function evidently involves quantum processes. Which is why classical physics has been so unable to shed any light at all on the mind-brain connection after some 300 years and counting.
The brain cannot directly process light in its wave form; an intermediary process must occur first, as sense impressions must be received in “quantized” form before these “bits” of information can be accessed and registered by the relevant optical centers, first in the eye itself, and then in the regions of the brain that process such data. The “readout” we get at the end of the day is presented to us as light in its continuous waveform – thus we can see colors, contours, etc.
Thus we understand that the particle and wave nature of light are true complementaries. The physicist Henry Stapp has an interesting term for this sort of signal processing: the “Zeno Effect.”
Also speaking of “complementaries”: I agree with you that the respective thought and works of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr are “complementary.” I love and honor both men. But just between you and me and the lamppost, my own belief is that Einstein was “right” in insisting that at the very “bottom of things,” a geometrical form or “algorithm from inception” will be found as the underlying ordering structure/principle of the universe. But then, like Einstein, I am a natural-born Platonist. :^)
What I don’t understand is Einstein’s total rejection of quantum theory; for QM or QFT would ultimately as much depend on this geometry as the classical theory he loved so much.
We humans have more fun than cats, don’t we, dear brother in Christ?!!!
Thank you ever so much for writing!