Realistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Realistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics PDF Author: Emilio Santos Corchero
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527579808
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
According to Einstein “a physical theory should offer a picture of reality”. This made him frustrated and dissatisfied with the standard interpretation (or lack thereof) of quantum theory, since attempts to get a “picture” from it soon led to contradictions like the wave-particle duality. This book provides such a picture of the quantum world, that is, a “realistic interpretation”. Of course, this needs to be done in a way that is compatible with today’s experimental evidence, including the experiments that seem to contradict (local) realism. The book also offers a personal view on the meaning of general relativity and its relation with quantum mechanics, proposing a new perspective for dark energy, dark matter and stellar collapse. It is the result and a summary of the author’s extensive research on the foundations of quantum mechanics, spanning more than 50 years.

Realistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Realistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics PDF Author: Emilio Santos Corchero
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527579808
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
According to Einstein “a physical theory should offer a picture of reality”. This made him frustrated and dissatisfied with the standard interpretation (or lack thereof) of quantum theory, since attempts to get a “picture” from it soon led to contradictions like the wave-particle duality. This book provides such a picture of the quantum world, that is, a “realistic interpretation”. Of course, this needs to be done in a way that is compatible with today’s experimental evidence, including the experiments that seem to contradict (local) realism. The book also offers a personal view on the meaning of general relativity and its relation with quantum mechanics, proposing a new perspective for dark energy, dark matter and stellar collapse. It is the result and a summary of the author’s extensive research on the foundations of quantum mechanics, spanning more than 50 years.

Realistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Realistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics PDF Author: Emilio Santos Corchero
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 9781527579743
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Foundations of Relational Realism

Foundations of Relational Realism PDF Author: Michael Epperson
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739180339
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
If there is a central conceptual framework that has reliably borne the weight of modern physics as it ascends into the twenty-first century, it is the framework of quantum mechanics. Because of its enduring stability in experimental application, physics has today reached heights that not only inspire wonder, but arguably exceed the limits of intuitive vision, if not intuitive comprehension. For many physicists and philosophers, however, the currently fashionable tendency toward exotic interpretation of the theoretical formalism is recognized not as a mark of ascent for the tower of physics, but rather an indicator of sway—one that must be dampened rather than encouraged if practical progress is to continue. In this unique two-part volume, designed to be comprehensible to both specialists and non-specialists, the authors chart out a pathway forward by identifying the central deficiency in most interpretations of quantum mechanics: That in its conventional, metrical depiction of extension, inherited from the Enlightenment, objects are characterized as fundamental to relations—i.e., such that relations presuppose objects but objects do not presuppose relations. The authors, by contrast, argue that quantum mechanics exemplifies the fact that physical extensiveness is fundamentally topological rather than metrical, with its proper logico-mathematical framework being category theoretic rather than set theoretic. By this thesis, extensiveness fundamentally entails not only relations of objects, but also relations of relations. Thus, the fundamental quanta of quantum physics are properly defined as units of logico-physical relation rather than merely units of physical relata as is the current convention. Objects are always understood as relata, and likewise relations are always understood objectively. In this way, objects and relations are coherently defined as mutually implicative. The conventional notion of a history as “a story about fundamental objects” is thereby reversed, such that the classical “objects” become the story by which we understand physical systems that are fundamentally histories of quantum events. These are just a few of the novel critical claims explored in this volume—claims whose exemplification in quantum mechanics will, the authors argue, serve more broadly as foundational principles for the philosophy of nature as it evolves through the twenty-first century and beyond.

Einstein's Unfinished Revolution

Einstein's Unfinished Revolution PDF Author: Lee Smolin
Publisher: Knopf Canada
ISBN: 0345809122
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
A daring new vision of the quantum universe, and the scandals controversies, and questions that may illuminate our future--from Canada's leading mind on contemporary physics. Quantum physics is the golden child of modern science. It is the basis of our understanding of atoms, radiation, and so much else, from elementary particles and basic forces to the behaviour of materials. But for a century it has also been the problem child of science, plagued by intense disagreements between its intellectual giants, from Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking, over the strange paradoxes and implications that seem like the stuff of fantasy. Whether it's Schrödinger's cat--a creature that is simultaneously dead and alive--or a belief that the world does not exist independently of our observations of it, quantum theory is what challenges our fundamental assumptions about our reality. In Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, globally renowned theoretical physicist Lee Smolin provocatively argues that the problems which have bedeviled quantum physics since its inception are unsolved for the simple reason that the theory is incomplete. There is more, waiting to be discovered. Our task--if we are to have simple answers to our simple questions about the universe we live in--must be to go beyond it to a description of the world on an atomic scale that makes sense. In this vibrant and accessible book, Smolin takes us on a journey through the basics of quantum physics, introducing the stories of the experiments and figures that have transformed the field, before wrestling with the puzzles and conundrums that they present. Along the way, he illuminates the existing theories about the quantum world that might solve these problems, guiding us toward his own vision that embraces common sense realism. If we are to have any hope of completing the revolution that Einstein began nearly a century ago, we must go beyond quantum mechanics as we know it to find a theory that will give us a complete description of nature. In Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, Lee Smolin brings us a step closer to resolving one of the greatest scientific controversies of our age.

The Modal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

The Modal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics PDF Author: Dennis Dieks
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792352075
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
According to the modal interpretation, the standard mathematical framework of quantum mechanics specifies the physical magnitudes of a system, which have definite values. Probabilities are assigned to the possible values that these magnitudes may adopt. The interpretation is thus concerned with physical properties rather than with measurement results: it is a realistic interpretation (in the sense of scientific realism). One of the notable achievements of this interpretation is that it dissolves the notorious measurement problem. The papers collected here, together with the introduction and concluding critical appraisal, explain the various forms of the modal interpretation, survey its achievements, and discuss those problems that have yet to be solved. Audience: Philosophers of science, theoretical physicists, and graduate students in these disciplines.

Understanding Quantum Mechanics

Understanding Quantum Mechanics PDF Author: Lars-Göran Johansson
Publisher: Coronet Books
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description


A Realistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics?

A Realistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics? PDF Author: Richard Andrew Healey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Interpreting Quantum Mechanics

Interpreting Quantum Mechanics PDF Author: Lars-Göran Johansson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351926411
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Presenting a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics and, in particular, a realistic view of quantum waves, this book defends, with one exception, Schrodinger's views on quantum mechanics. Johansson goes on to defend the view that the collapse of a wave function during a measurement is a real physical collapse of a wave and argues that the collapse is a consequence of quantisation of interaction. Lastly Johansson argues for a revised principle of individuation in the quantum domain and that this principle enables a sort of explanation of non-local phenomena.

Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism

Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism PDF Author: Christopher Norris
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134595247
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
This book is a critical introduction to the long-standing debate concerning the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics and the problems it has posed for physicists and philosophers from Einstein to the present. Quantum theory has been a major infulence on postmodernism, and presents significant problems for realists. Keeping his own realist position in check, Christopher Norris subjects a wide range of key opponents and supporters of realism to a high and equal level of scrutiny. With a characteristic combination of rigour and intellectual generosity, he draws out the merits and weaknesses from opposing arguments. In a sequence of closely argued chapters, Norris examines the premises of orthodox quantum theory, as developed most influentially by Bohr and Heisenberg, and its impact on varous philosophical developments. These include the ideas developed by W.V Quine, Thomas Kuhn, Michael Dummett, Bas van Fraassen, and Hilary Puttnam. In each case, Norris argues, these thinkers have been influenced by the orthodox construal of quantum mechanics as requiring drastic revision of principles which had hitherto defined the very nature of scientific method, causal explanati and rational enquiry. Putting the case for a realist approach which adheres to well-tried scientific principles of causal reasoning and inference to the best explanation, Christopher Norris clarifies these debates to a non-specialist readership and scholars of philosophy, science studies and the philosophy of science alike. Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism suggests that philosophical reflection can contribute to a better understanding of these crucial, current issues.

Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Theory

Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Theory PDF Author: A.R. Marlow
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0323141188
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Theory is a collection of papers presented at the 1977 conference on the Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Theory, held in New Orleans. The contributors present their topics from a wide variety of backgrounds and specialization, but all shared a common interest in answering quantum issues. Organized into 20 chapters, this book's opening chapters establish a sound mathematical basis for quantum theory and a mode of observation in the double slit experiment. This book then describes the Lorentz particle system and other mathematical structures with which fundamental quantum theory must deal, and then some unsolved problems in the quantum logic approach to the foundations of quantum mechanics are considered. Considerable chapters cover topics on manuals and logics for quantum mechanics. This book also examines the problems in quantum logic, and then presents examples of their interpretation and relevance to nonclassical logic and statistics. The accommodation of conventional Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics in quantum mechanics or quantum field theory is illustrated. The final chapters of the book present a system of axioms for nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, with particular emphasis on the role of density operators as states. Specific connections of this theory with other formulations of quantum theory are also considered. These chapters also deal with the determination of the state of an elementary quantum mechanical system by the associated position and momentum distribution. This book is of value to physicists, mathematicians, and researchers who are interested in quantum theory.