Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 296.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2026-01-22 07:41:05+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: quantum computing

Sufficient time has passed, enough applications devised and sufficient
explanatory efforts made so that, I like to think, we can at least grasp
the relation between digital computing and the human sciences. But not
so for quantum computing. Philip Ball's Beyond Weird: Why Everything You
Thought You Knew About Quantum Physics Is Different (2018) says it about
the science. He quotes the legendary Richard Feynman: “I think I can
safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” Ball comments:
"... when Feynman said he didn’t understand quantum mechanics, he didn’t
mean that he couldn’t do it – he meant that’s all he could do. He didn’t
understand what the equations were saying: what quantum mechanics tells
us about reality."
(https://philipball.co.uk/beyond-weird/)

If we, less equipped than Feynman, cannot understand that, how can we
begin to work out the relation of what we do to the new machine?

Comments?

WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts,
   Sciences and Humanities (Berghahn); Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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