The Hegelian Quantum: A Meta/Physical Exploration
The Hegelian Quantum: A Meta/Physical Exploration

Summary/Abstract: Quantum Physics (QP) in its explanatory framework deploys an idea of mutual ontological dependence of occurring states as irreducible to independent structures. Independent structures, often described in terms of a common ground of physical reality, are not quite compatible with mutually dependent states of either ‘ground states’ or ‘excited states.’ The paper presents a reading of Hegel’s notion of the Quantum in his Science of Logic in order to tease out the ontological dependence between ‘quanta’ and ‘magnitudes,’ which makes possible a quantified description of physical states irreducible to a unified and common physical reality. The specific relation of ontological dependence arises between ‘quanta’ and ‘magnitudes’ in terms of a phenomenologically salient dependence between the physical reality and its magnitudes on the one hand, and a transformation of this quantified physical reality into what Hegel terms the ‘quantum intrinsically affected by a beyond’ on the other. This is close to what QP terms ‘action at a distance’ or ‘non-locality.’ The ‘beyond’ of a superposed physical state in QP, the magnitude of which gets transformed from a ‘possible value’ to an ‘actual value,’ resembles the Hegelian description of being affected by a beyond. In this paper, an attempt is made to read how, for Hegel, the quantified physical reality alters itself following its internal limiting property of magnitudes only to sublate its altered state into a qualitative notion of reality.

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