The Nature of Contingency

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198846215
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis The Nature of Contingency by : Alastair Wilson

Download or read book The Nature of Contingency written by Alastair Wilson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book defends a radical new theory of contingency as a physical phenomenon. Drawing on the many-worlds approach to quantum theory and cutting-edge metaphysics and philosophy of science, it argues that quantum theories are best understood as telling us about the space of genuine possibilities, rather than as telling us solely about actuality. When quantum physics is taken seriously in the way first proposed by Hugh Everett III, it provides the resources for a new systematic metaphysical framework encompassing possibility, necessity, actuality, chance, counterfactuals, and a host of related modal notions. Rationalist metaphysicians argue that the metaphysics of modality is strictly prior to any scientific investigation; metaphysics establishes which worlds are possible, and physics merely checks which of these worlds is actual. Naturalistic metaphysicians respond that science may discover new possibilities and new impossibilities. This book's quantum theory of contingency takes naturalistic metaphysics one step further, allowing that science may discover what it is to be possible. As electromagnetism revealed the nature of light, as acoustics revealed the nature of sound, as statistical mechanics revealed the nature of heat, so quantum physics reveals the nature of contingency.

Einstein's Unfinished Revolution

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Publisher : Knopf Canada
ISBN 13 : 0345809122
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (458 download)

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Book Synopsis Einstein's Unfinished Revolution by : Lee Smolin

Download or read book Einstein's Unfinished Revolution written by Lee Smolin and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Scientific Realism and the Quantum

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192546562
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis Scientific Realism and the Quantum by : Steven French

Download or read book Scientific Realism and the Quantum written by Steven French and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-13 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quantum theory is widely regarded as one of the most successful theories in the history of science. It explains a hugely diverse array of phenomena and is a natural candidate for our best representation of the world at the level of 'fundamental' physics. But how can the world be the way quantum theory says it is? It is famously unclear what the world is like according to quantum physics, which presents a serious problem for the scientific realist who is committed to regarding our best theories as more or less true. The present volume canvasses a variety of responses to this problem, from restricting or revising realism in different ways to exploring entirely new directions in the lively debate surrounding realist interpretations of quantum physics. Some urge us to focus on new formulations of the theory itself, while others examine the status of scientific realism in the further context of quantum field theory. Each chapter is written by a renowned specialist in the field and is aimed at graduate students and researchers in both physics and the philosophy of science. Together they offer a range of illuminating new perspectives on this fundamental debate and exemplify the fruitful interaction between physics and philosophy.

Realism and Quantum Physics

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Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004457542
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (44 download)

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Book Synopsis Realism and Quantum Physics by : Evandro Agazzi

Download or read book Realism and Quantum Physics written by Evandro Agazzi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-03-13 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030996425
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (39 download)

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Book Synopsis Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality by : Valia Allori

Download or read book Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality written by Valia Allori and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-07-27 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection provides new perspectives on some metaphysical questions arising in quantum mechanics. These questions have been long-standing and are of continued interest to researchers and graduate students working in physics, philosophy of physics, and metaphysics. It features contributions from a diverse set of researchers, ranging from senior scholars to junior academics, working in varied fields, from physics to philosophy of physics and metaphysics. The contributors reflect on issues about fundamentality (is quantum theory fundamental? If so, what is its fundamental ontology?), ontological dependence (how do ordinary objects exist even if they are not fundamental?), realism (what kind of realism is compatible with quantum theory?), indeterminacy (can the world itself exhibit ontological indeterminacy?). The book contains contributions from both physicists (including Nobel Prize winner Gerard 't Hooft), science communicators and philosophers.

Reality Without Realism

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030845788
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (38 download)

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Book Synopsis Reality Without Realism by : Arkady Plotnitsky

Download or read book Reality Without Realism written by Arkady Plotnitsky and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-01 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents quantum theory as a theory based on new relationships among matter, thought, and experimental technology, as against those previously found in physics, relationships that also redefine those between mathematics and physics in quantum theory. The argument of the book is based on its title concept, reality without realism (RWR), and in the corresponding view, the RWR view, of quantum theory. The book considers, from this perspective, the thinking of Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and Dirac, with the aim of bringing together the philosophy and history of quantum theory. With quantum theory, the book argues, the architecture of thought in theoretical physics was radically changed by the irreducible role of experimental technology in the constitution of physical phenomena, accordingly, no longer defined independently by matter alone, as they were in classical physics or relativity. Or so it appeared. For, quantum theory, the book further argues, made us realize that experimental technology, beginning with that of our bodies, irreducibly shapes all physical phenomena, and thus makes us rethink the relationships among matter, thought, and technology in all of physics.

Foundations of Relational Realism

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739180339
Total Pages : 441 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Foundations of Relational Realism by : Michael Epperson

Download or read book Foundations of Relational Realism written by Michael Epperson and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-06-20 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Scientific Realism and the Quantum

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198814976
Total Pages : 335 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis Scientific Realism and the Quantum by : Steven French

Download or read book Scientific Realism and the Quantum written by Steven French and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-02 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quantum theory is widely regarded as one of the most successful theories in the history of science. It explains a hugely diverse array of phenomena and is a natural candidate for our best representation of the world at the level of 'fundamental' physics. But how can the world be the way quantum theory says it is? It is famously unclear what the world is like according to quantum physics, which presents a serious problem for the scientific realist who is committed to regarding our best theories as more or less true. The present volume canvasses a variety of responses to this problem, from restricting or revising realism in different ways to exploring entirely new directions in the lively debate surrounding realist interpretations of quantum physics. Some urge us to focus on new formulations of the theory itself, while others examine the status of scientific realism in the further context of quantum field theory. Each chapter is written by a renowned specialist in the field and is aimed at graduate students and researchers in both physics and the philosophy of science. Together they offer a range of illuminating new perspectives on this fundamental debate and exemplify the fruitful interaction between physics and philosophy.

Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134595247
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (345 download)

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Book Synopsis Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism by : Christopher Norris

Download or read book Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism written by Christopher Norris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-11-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Scientific Realism in Particle Physics

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Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110383519
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Scientific Realism in Particle Physics by : Matthias Egg

Download or read book Scientific Realism in Particle Physics written by Matthias Egg and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-08-19 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Particle physics studies highly complex processes which cannot be directly observed. Scientific realism claims that we are nevertheless warranted in believing that these processes really occur and that the objects involved in them really exist. This book defends a version of scientific realism, called causal realism, in the context of particle physics. The first part of the book introduces the central theses and arguments in the recent philosophical debate on scientific realism and discusses entity realism, which is the most important precursor of causal realism. It also argues against the view that the very debate on scientific realism is not worth pursuing at all. In the second part, causal realism is developed and the key distinction between two kinds of warrant for scientific claims is clarified. This distinction proves its usefulness in a case study analyzing the discovery of the neutrino. It is also shown to be effective against an influential kind of pessimism, according to which even our best present theories are likely to be replaced some day by radically distinct alternatives. The final part discusses some specific challenges posed to realism by quantum physics, such as non-locality, delayed choice and the absence of particles in relativistic quantum theories.

The Emergent Multiverse

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Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191057398
Total Pages : 547 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Emergent Multiverse by : David Wallace

Download or read book The Emergent Multiverse written by David Wallace and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-05-24 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Emergent Multiverse presents a striking new account of the 'many worlds' approach to quantum theory. The point of science, it is generally accepted, is to tell us how the world works and what it is like. But quantum theory seems to fail to do this: taken literally as a theory of the world, it seems to make crazy claims: particles are in two places at once; cats are alive and dead at the same time. So physicists and philosophers have often been led either to give up on the idea that quantum theory describes reality, or to modify or augment the theory. The Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics takes the apparent craziness seriously, and asks, 'what would it be like if particles really were in two places at once, if cats really were alive and dead at the same time'? The answer, it turns out, is that if the world were like that—if it were as quantum theory claims—it would be a world that, at the macroscopic level, was constantly branching into copies—hence the more sensationalist name for the Everett interpretation, the 'many worlds theory'. But really, the interpretation is not sensationalist at all: it simply takes quantum theory seriously, literally, as a description of the world. Once dismissed as absurd, it is now accepted by many physicists as the best way to make coherent sense of quantum theory. David Wallace offers a clear and up-to-date survey of work on the Everett interpretation in physics and in philosophy of science, and at the same time provides a self-contained and thoroughly modern account of it—an account which is accessible to readers who have previously studied quantum theory at undergraduate level, and which will shape the future direction of research by leading experts in the field.

Quantum Mechanics’ Return to Local Realism

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Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 152751997X
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (275 download)

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Book Synopsis Quantum Mechanics’ Return to Local Realism by : Runsheng Tu

Download or read book Quantum Mechanics’ Return to Local Realism written by Runsheng Tu and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes a model of the light knot electronic structure and the theory of quantum inverse measurement, showing that diffraction experiments can be explained by directional quantization. It points out that there exists a logical loophole in the interpretation process of quantum entanglement, and proves that there is a paradox in the uncertainty relationship. As such, the book lays the foundation for the establishment of local-realism quantum mechanics and successfully establishes the quantum mechanics of localized realism and determinism is successfully established. It will appeal to university students, teachers, and scientists, as well as science lovers.

Realistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

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Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1527579808
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (275 download)

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Book Synopsis Realistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics by : Emilio Santos Corchero

Download or read book Realistic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics written by Emilio Santos Corchero and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-02 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Quantum Ontology

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190618795
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis Quantum Ontology by : Peter J. Lewis

Download or read book Quantum Ontology written by Peter J. Lewis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-13 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysicians should pay attention to quantum mechanics. Why? Not because it provides definitive answers to many metaphysical questions-the theory itself is remarkably silent on the nature of the physical world, and the various interpretations of the theory on offer present conflicting ontological pictures. Rather, quantum mechanics is essential to the metaphysician because it reshapes standard metaphysical debates and opens up unforeseen new metaphysical possibilities. Even if quantum mechanics provides few clear answers, there are good reasons to think that any adequate understanding of the quantum world will result in a radical reshaping of our classical world-view in some way or other. Whatever the world is like at the atomic scale, it is almost certainly not the swarm of particles pushed around by forces that is often presupposed. This book guides readers through the theory of quantum mechanics and its implications for metaphysics in a clear and accessible way. The theory and its various interpretations are presented with a minimum of technicality. The consequences of these interpretations for metaphysical debates concerning realism, indeterminacy, causation, determinism, holism, and individuality (among other topics) are explored in detail, stressing the novel form that the debates take given the empirical facts in the quantum domain. While quantum mechanics may not deliver unconditional pronouncements on these issues, the range of possibilities consistent with our knowledge of the empirical world is relatively small-and each possibility is metaphysically revisionary in some way. This book will appeal to researchers, students, and anybody else interested in how science informs our world-view.

Time and Chance

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674020138
Total Pages : 188 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Time and Chance by : David Z Albert

Download or read book Time and Chance written by David Z Albert and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2003-02-28 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students.

The Shaky Game

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226923266
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (269 download)

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Book Synopsis The Shaky Game by : Arthur Fine

Download or read book The Shaky Game written by Arthur Fine and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-02-25 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new edition, Arthur Fine looks at Einstein's philosophy of science and develops his own views on realism. A new Afterword discusses the reaction to Fine's own theory. "What really led Einstein . . . to renounce the new quantum order? For those interested in this question, this book is compulsory reading."—Harvey R. Brown, American Journal of Physics "Fine has successfully combined a historical account of Einstein's philosophical views on quantum mechanics and a discussion of some of the philosophical problems associated with the interpretation of quantum theory with a discussion of some of the contemporary questions concerning realism and antirealism. . . . Clear, thoughtful, [and] well-written."—Allan Franklin, Annals of Science "Attempts, from Einstein's published works and unpublished correspondence, to piece together a coherent picture of 'Einstein realism.' Especially illuminating are the letters between Einstein and fellow realist Schrödinger, as the latter was composing his famous 'Schrödinger-Cat' paper."—Nick Herbert, New Scientist "Beautifully clear. . . . Fine's analysis is penetrating, his own results original and important. . . . The book is a splendid combination of new ways to think about quantum mechanics, about realism, and about Einstein's views of both."—Nancy Cartwright, Isis

The Quantum World

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Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319554204
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (195 download)

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Book Synopsis The Quantum World by : Bernard d'Espagnat

Download or read book The Quantum World written by Bernard d'Espagnat and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-05-08 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this largely nontechnical book, eminent physicists and philosophers address the philosophical impact of recent advances in quantum physics. These are shown to shed new light on profound questions about realism, determinism, causality or locality. The participants contribute in the spirit of an open and honest discussion, reminiscent of the time when science and philosophy were inseparable. After the editors’ introduction, the next chapter reveals the strangeness of quantum mechanics and the subsequent discussions examine our notion of reality. The spotlight is then turned to the topic of decoherence. Bohm’s theory is critically examined in two chapters, and the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics is likewise described and discussed. The penultimate chapter presents a proposal for resolving the measurement problem, and finally the topic of loop quantum gravity is presented by one of its founding fathers, Carlo Rovelli. The original presentations and discussions on which this volume is based took place under the auspices of the French “Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques”. The book will appeal to everybody interested in knowing how our description of the world is impacted by the results of the most powerful and successful theory that physicists have ever built.