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I am looking for a good reference of the following kind:
some text/book which would discuss the subject of “interpretation of quantum mechanics” not by way of propagating any one such interpretation, but instead by critically reviewing the desire and/or need for any interpretation in the first place, the meaning of what would qualify as such and what not and why, so forth?
I guess I am looking for a text written by some philosopher of physics which would be such that one could hand it to any inclined person without any relevant background to give him or her an idea of what all the fuss is about, and a critical discussion of what the upshot is or may be.
Is there a good such text?
Ah, maybe
or maybe some entry from the Cambridge Philosophy of Physics reading list
Anyone has an informed opinion here?
Normally the Stanford encylopedia is good. Hmm, there’s a general entry on quantum mechanics:
Quantum mechanics is, at least at first glance and at least in part, a mathematical machine for predicting the behaviors of microscopic particles — or, at least, of the measuring instruments we use to explore those behaviors — and in that capacity, it is spectacularly successful: in terms of power and precision, head and shoulders above any theory we have ever had. Mathematically, the theory is well understood; we know what its parts are, how they are put together, and why, in the mechanical sense (i.e., in a sense that can be answered by describing the internal grinding of gear against gear), the whole thing performs the way it does, how the information that gets fed in at one end is converted into what comes out the other. The question of what kind of a world it describes, however, is controversial; there is very little agreement, among physicists and among philosophers, about what the world is like according to quantum mechanics. Minimally interpreted, the theory describes a set of facts about the way the microscopic world impinges on the macroscopic one, how it affects our measuring instruments, described in everyday language or the language of classical mechanics. Disagreement centers on the question of what a microscopic world, which affects our apparatuses in the prescribed manner, is, or even could be, like intrinsically; or how those apparatuses could themselves be built out of microscopic parts of the sort the theory describes.[1]
That is what an interpretation of the theory would provide: a proper account of what the world is like according to quantum mechanics, intrinsically and from the bottom up. The problems with giving an interpretation (not just a comforting, homey sort of interpretation, i.e., not just an interpretation according to which the world isn’t too different from the familiar world of common sense, but any interpretation at all) are dealt with in other sections of this encyclopedia. Here, we are concerned only with the mathematical heart of the theory, the theory in its capacity as a mathematical machine, and — whatever is true of the rest of it — this part of the theory makes exquisitely good sense.
At the bottom of the page are links to interpretations. They ought to have a general page though.
Thanks! That’s an excellent quote in itself, I have copied that to an entry interpretation of quantum mechanics.
That’s the attitude in which I would like to see a more comprehensive citable text being written. I am just after a pointer that I can hand to people and say: “Here, if you know nothing about the topic and want an intellectually non-naive discussion , read this.”
Philpapers offers over 1000 papers for the search ’interpretation quantum mechanics’. I agree there really ought to be some good overviews of the problem itself. I expect there will be hearty disagreement about what an interpretation should be like.
I’ll see what I can find.
I have found the following great quote from Feynman’s “The character of physical law” and added it to interpretation of quantum mechanics.
For those people who insist that the only thing that is important is that the theory agrees with experiment, I would like to imagine a discussion between a Mayan astronomer and his student. The Mayans were able to calculate with great precision predictions, for example, for eclipses and for the position of the moon in the sky, the position of Venus, etc. It was all done by arithmetic. They counted a certain number, and subtracted some numbers, and so on. There was no discussion of what the moon was. There was no discussion even of the idea that it went around. They just calculated the time when there would be an eclipse, or when the moon would rise at the full, and so on. Suppose that a young man went to the astronomer and said ’I have an idea. Maybe those things are going around, and there are balls of something like rocks out there, and we could calculate how they move in a completely different way from just calculating what time they appear in the sky’, ’Yes’, says the astronomer, ’and how accurately can you predict eclipses?’ He says, ’I haven’t developed the thing very far yet’, Then says the astronomer, ’Well, we can calculate eclipses more accurately than you can with your model, so you must not pay any attention to your idea because obviously the mathematical scheme is better’. There is a very strong tendency, when someone comes up with an idea and says, ’Let’s suppose that the world is this way’, for people to say to him, ’What would you get for the answer to such and such a problem?’ And he says ’I haven’t developed it far enough’. And they say, ’Well, we have already developed it much further, and we can get the answers very accurately’. So it is a problem whether or not to worry about philosophies behind ideas.
There is Jeff Bub’s book Interpreting the Quantum World. A recent review is David Wallace’s The Quantum Measurement Problem: State of Play. Also available, though not text, are Rob Spekkens’ lectures on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.
Thanks for the pointers! (For some reason I had almost missed your post, sorry for the slow reply.)
I haven’t had a chance yet to look into the large files, but the table of contents of that lecture by Spekkens looks really promising. Would be nice if there were a writeup of this available, but I suppose there is not?
I have added links to this to the entries interpretation of quantum mechanics and quantum measurement.
I haven’t loked at the book by Bub yet. The abstract makes me slightly worried that it might be buying much into some personal philosophy. But probably that’s an unjustified worry. I should try to find time to look at it.
Thanks again.
Apparently Spekkens is co-authoring a book, The Quantum Puzzle, to be published by OUP, which covers much the same ground as the lectures.
As for Bub, I have not read the book, just seen it referenced. From the table of contents and what I have skimmed, it seems very clear and thorough, and includes in it’s discussion quantum logic, the complementarity interpretation (as distinguished from the “orthodox” interpretation), and a unifying perspective on several interpretations through the use of a general theorem, all features which I think would be appreciated here.
Thanks, yes, I started to look at the book a bit.
Started Bub-Clifton theorem, but not much there yet.
Also I created (not directly related to this) a brief subsection interpretation of quantum mechanics – Bohr’s standpoint
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