The Year of Mathematics

I have just learned that 2026 has been declared "The Year of Mathematics"or YoM2026, by the Conference Board on Mathematical Societies.  Unlike previous celebrations noted on this blog, such as last year being the international quantum year, this YoM2026 designation seems to be restricted to the United States.  At time of writing, they have announced that a bipartisan Congressional resolution has been introduced in the U.S. Senate.

Why 2026?  Apparently this year the International Congress of Mathematicians will be meeting in Philadelphia, in the year of the United States' 250th anniversary. The quadrennial Congress was held in the U.S., according to Wikipedia, on only two previous occasions (1950 and 1986).  Otherwise, I am not aware of any particular anniversary being celebrated in 2026 in connection with mathematics.  In this respect the selection of the year seems as arbitrary as 2020-2021 as the International Year of Sound.  In contrast, I noted several epochal anniversaries being celebrated when 2015 was designated the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies.  (Wikipedia tells us that in addition to the ones I noted in my post at the time, there were also 1865 and 1965, respectively, anniversaries of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory and the Penzias/Wilson cosmic microwave background discovery.)  Of course 2005 was the World Year of Physics to celebrate the centenary of Einstein's annus mirabilis.  Then 2011 was the International Year of Chemistry, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Marie Curie's Nobel Prize in Chemistry (um. she also won a Nobel in Physics in 1903) as well as the centenary of the International Association of Chemical Societies.

So, in contrast with these various physics-related celebration years, there is no specific anniversary being celebrated by YoM2026, nor is the celebration international.  Even the International Year of Statistics (2013) was a global event, though I am not aware of any particular statistics anniversary being celebrated that year.  Last year's quantum year celebrated, of course, the centenary of Heisenberg's matrix mechanics.

Perhaps the granddaddy of them all was the International Geophysical year in 1957-1957, which Wikipedia tells us traces its heritage the International Polar Years of 1882-1883 and 1932-1933.  However, unlike the more recent celebrations I noted above, the geophysical and polar years featured surges of actual research and international collaboration.  In comparison, the more recent celebratory "years" seem to be largely about outreach and propaganda.

 

Hydrodynamic Quantum Analogs and nonlocality

Last month's SIAM News featured a front-page, above-the-fold article by Prof. John Bush of MIT, "Shifting the Classical-Quantum Boundary:  Insights from Pilot-wave Hydrodynamics".  Among other things, the article challenges the conventional wisdom that quantum theory is inherently and demonstrably nonlocal.  It does so by championing Hydrodynamic Quantum Analogs (HQAs), which are classical analogs of quantum phenomena, using fluid mechanics.  The author uses HQAs to lend credence to the de Broglie-Bohm pilot wave formulation of quantum mechanics.

I have a passing interest in HQAs, regardless of whether they supports alternate interpretations of quantum mechanics, or challenge nonlocality.  I keep an open mind about Bush's assertions, but am neither a cheerleader nor dogmatic opponent of these ideas.  More importantly, I know almost nothing about the field, except what I've learned from Bush's article, and glimpses of other papers in the area (including his) that I've seen over the years.

However I do think Bush does his readers a disservice in the following passage.

The notion of nonlocality, or action at a distance, should be anathema to any rational scientist. Nevertheless, most physicists have made peace with it; they either remain agnostic on the subject or believe it to be an essential, inescapable feature of quantum physics. Because standard quantum theory describes probabilities but not particle dynamics, nonlocality is perceived to be everywhere — in wavefunction collapse, single-particle interference, the quantum mirage, and interaction-free measurement. Correlation at a distance is taken as evidence of action at a distance. HQAs have demonstrated that if we adopt de Broglie’s physical picture of quantum dynamics, we need not invoke nonlocality for any such effects. In short, HQAs suggest that quantum nonlocality is a misinference that is rooted in the incompleteness of quantum theory. While nonlocality is a feature of quantum theory, it need not be a feature of quantum physics.

I've quoted the whole paragraph to ensure that context is provided, but the main problem I have is with the very first sentence of this paragraph.  Should "action at a distance" be "anathema to any rational scientist"?  I am reminded of Bohr's response to Einstein, who said "God does not play dice."  Bohr replied, "Don't tell God what to do."

Newton's original formulation of his gravitational law was manifestly an action-at-a-distance phenomenon.  Yes, it has been superseded by a local field theory, Einstein's general relativity. But is it fair to accuse Newton of not being a "rational scientist"?  (Perhaps so given his interest in alchemy and biblical chronology, but surely not because of his gravity theory!)  What about the 19th century action-at-a-distance rivals to Maxwell's theory (such as Weber's electrodynamics).  Note how Coulomb's law resembles Newton's.  Again, the rival theories were essentially cast aside as incomplete or even wrong once Maxwell's local field theory was fully understood and accepted, but does that make Coulomb, the Webers, and others failures as rational scientists?

Bush gives no citation nor even an argument as to why action at a distance is unworthy of a "rational scientist".  This is because it is nothing more than an opinion, a preference of the author.  He is just offended by the notion of nonlocality in nature.  Offended!

It's okay to be offended.  Such attitudes drive research on the foundations of quantum theory, in defiance of the "shut up and calculate" mentality.  Such research has led to quantum information science, quantum computing, etc.  This is all good stuff!

All I'm saying is that Bush's dictum, that nonlocality should be anathema to rational scientists, is the least persuasive sentence in this article.  The sentence is itself irrational, as it is based on neither reason nor evidence - it is a purely emotional expression as it stands.  And yes I am also making an emotional expression when I condemn it.  

Perhaps there is a good reason that nonlocality should not be considered rational science, and I'm sure other physicists and philosophers have advanced such reasons.  But Bush fails to do so in this article, nor did he cite those who do.  It's nothing but a cheap shot.  In this, he has not served his readers well.

Finally, I realize that it's quite funny that I wrote an entire blog post about one pesky sentence in an otherwise intriguing and informative article :-)