How Come the Quantum? a

The quantum, foundation principle of twentieth century physics, and indispensible working tool for anyone who would make reliable predictions in the world of the small, still comes to many as strange, unwelcome, forced on man from outside against his will. The necessity of the quantum in the construction of existence: out of what deeper requirement does it arise? Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, so compelling that when-in a decade, a century, or a millennium-we grasp it, we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid for so long? It was not by asking always small questions that physics has achieved its astounding advances. It will surely not be by asking always small questions that the community will some day find the answer to the great question, “HOW come the quantum?” To ask the right question, however, one must have, as is well known, some glimmer of the answer. It is also old experience that in order to break out of blank puzzlement and into the right question-and-answer circuit, one must try and try again. One must, if necessary, make a fool of oneself many times over, thus following the example of the engine inventor, John Kris, with his familiar words about each new model-“Start her up and see why she don’t work.” What are the features and difficulties of a recent model, “existence as meaning circuit”?’-3 First, let us look at the model, then a t the problems.