Quantum Mechanics: An Empiricist View (Clarendon Paperbacks)

564 Pages·1992·20.487 MB·English

by  Bas C. van Fraassen

CLARENDO

Quantum Mechanics
An Empiricist View
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Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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© Bas C. van Fraassen 1991
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Van Fraassen, Bas. C., 1941-
Quantum mechanics: an empiricist view/Bas C. van Fraassen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Quantum theory 2. Science-Philosophy. I. Title.
QC174.12.V34 1991 530.1'2-dc20 ' 90-26302
ISBN 0-19-824861-X
ISBN 0-19-823980-7 (pbk)
Typeset by Keytec Typesetting Ltd, Bridport, Dorset
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Que, touchant les choses que nos sens n’aperfoivent point,
il suffit d’expliquer comment elles peuvent etre . . .
Rene Descartes, Principes, iv. 204

PREFACE
Quantum theory grew up, from Planck to Heisenberg and
Schroedinger, in response to a welter of new experimental
phenomena: measurements of the heat radiation spectrum, the
photoelectric effect, specific heats of solids, radioactive decay,
the hydrogen spectrum, and confusingly much more. Yet this
theory, emerging from the mire and blood of empirical research,
radically affected the scientific world-picture. If it did describe a
world ‘behind the phenomena', that world was so esoteric as to
be literally unimaginable. The very language it used was broken:
an analogical extension of the classical language that it discre¬
dits, and redeemed at best by the mathematics that it tries to
gloss.
Interpretation of quantum theory became genuinely feasible
only after von Neumann’s theoretical unification in 1932. Von
Neumann himself, in that work, attempted to codify what he
took to be the common understanding. Astonishingly, the
attempt led him to assert that in measurement something
happens which violates Schroedinger’s equation, the theory’s
cornerstone. As he saw very clearly, interpretation enters a
circle when its main principle is Born’s Rule for measurement
outcome probabilities, while at the same time measurements are
processes in the domain of the theory itself. Behold the en¬
chanted forest: every road leads into it, and none leads out—or
does the hero’s sword cleave the wood by magic?
An empiricist bias will be evident throughout this book, but
my own interpretation of quantum mechanics does not begin
until Chapter 9. The first three chapters provide philosophical
background; though they overlap my Laws and Symmetry, I
have tried to make them interesting in their own right. The next
four chapters mainly outline the achievements of foundational
research, though with an eye to the philosophical issues to
come. The negative part is to show that the phenomena
themselves, and not theoretical motives, can suffice to eliminate
Common Cause models of the observable world. The positive
part is the conclusion that there are adequate descriptions of
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