Customer Reviews

Quantum Philosophy: Understanding and Interpreting Contemporary Science

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2 star:		(1)
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This books provides a great survey of the movement from classical to formal mathematics, physics, and logic in the twentieth century, as well as giving a good overview of the major players in the drama and their ideas. Definitely go into this with a little bit of background, though - towards the end, it's not what i would call for the faint of heart, but if you really want to know about the subject, you're manage to plow through. And while I don't necessarily agree with Omnes's conclusions, he definitely provides some good food for thought.

Professor Omnes (University of Paris XI) is one of France's noted experimental physicists today. "Quantum Philosophy" is a poetic narrative of science from Ancient Greece to contemporary Quantum Mechanics is written with literary elegance which Arturo Sangalli's translation has preserved.

Although there are no equations, this book is not for the beginner. Omnes alludes to people, theories, events and ideas, which if not already known would remain quite mysterious. For the informed philosopher of science it is an insightful account of the main developments leading up to 20th Century formalism and the triumph of mathematics which was necessary to heal the fracture brought about by the post-intuitive sciences of Einstein, Bohr, Godel, Cantor and Hilbert.

There are many books that aim to explain quantum mechanics to the general public, but Omnes takes a different tack. His goal is nothing less than to provide a scientific foundation for a new philosophy of knowledge (epistemology). This is a big job, and Omnes, a French physicist who has contributed to the theory of quantum decoherence, deserves a gentleman's "C" for making the attempt. Potential readers must be warned, however, that Omnes - quite astonishingly as a physicist writing for a (presumably) non-technical audience - does not take time to explain the concepts of quantum mechanics (wave function, superposition, decoherence, etc.) which are essential to understanding his discussion. Because of this, it is highly recommended that before tackling Omnes, readers should at least have read a serious popular treatment such as Gribbin or Nick Herbert (to name only two of many).

The book under review is the 1999 hardcover translation of Roland Omnes' "Philosophie de la science contemporaine" ("Philosophy of Contemporary Science"), which was written in 1994. A 2002 paperback edition is also available. The book is about 290 pages long. It contains a glossary and index, but does not contain footnotes or a bibliography.

The first half of the book tells a well-known story of the rise of empirical physics and mathematics (other sciences are not considered) from the Pre-Socratics through the 18th century in Europe, followed by the triumph of formalism in the 19th century and the first startling developments in 20th century physics. While perceptively and gracefully told, such a rapid review of the history of science has to suffer by the speed with which the author covers 2,000 years of scientific developments.

The second half of the book moves to the present in discussing the implications of quantum mechanics towards the foundations of a new theory of knowledge. These chapters read like a series of interconnected essays, which circle around some rather big ideas: (1) it is possible to recover common-sense knowledge about ordinary objects from the formalism of quantum mechanics, (2) the theory of quantum decoherence is sufficient to dispose of certain well-known problems, such as Schroedinger's Cat, that result from naively applying quantum superposition to classical objects, and (3) there are two kinds of metaphysical entity: a Logos, as represented by mathematics and logic, and a Reality, as represented by physics.

Omnes' key point in all of this, is that the future theory of knowledge will be solidly grounded on a firm scientific basis; but he himself admits that the presentation in this book is only the start of a sketch of such a grand plan.

In summary, while I found some things of interest in the book, and appreciated its graceful and literate writing style, I was put off by a general superficiality and incompleteness of treatment, an inadequate explanation of concepts, and especially by the author's unfortunate and all too frequent resort to bald "proof by assertion" instead of the discussion, give-and-take, and scholarly references which are expected even in a popular or semi-popular work.

Omnes gives a systematic account of the philosophy, physics, and mathematics, as they relate to understanding quantum mechanics. This book is only slightly more advanced than mainstream popular physics books. It provides a nice challenge to readers of book by Hawking, Penrose, Smolin, etc. Omnes skillfully guides his readers through a few basic symbols and gives a great exposition on logic, and how it pertains to quantum mechanics.

For students of physics who have studied philosophy, this book will be entertaining, but it will not provide any knew information. Omnes' concerns are the fleshing out, in some detail, the necessary information to understand the quantum world, qua phenomena and, also, interpretations of that phenomena. His reservations are well taken, and a few of his comments are gems.

My complaints are few. First, I wished that Omnes gave a few more citations. Second, I wish that he went just a bit deeper on a few topics. I think he was really holding back a little, trying to make the book accessible to the layman, but I think he was overly concerned with this matter. I think the book suffered a miniscule loss, but, to me, the book would have been ideal with a bit greater depth in some areas.

Great book. I wish there were more like it.

Quite simply, this may be one of the best books in recent history,
on quantum theory and its role in the philosophy of science. The
author, admirably, does not insult his reader by leaving out the
important mathematics needed to make quantum theory comprehensible.
Neither are mathematical models left to speak for themselves; rather,
the meaning of the theory is carefully and skillfully guided through
the abstract symbols.

Honors should also go to translator. One never feels that this easy
to read book was ever written in any language but English.

This is the most sane explanation of quantum physics that I have ever seen. The Schrodinger's Cat problem is dismissed. Not easily mind you. You ARE going to have to go to school. But although this book is a bit long in the tooth for a physics book, it will rival Einstein's explanation of relativity. Hell, Einstein could have taken lessons from this book. It is a very clear explanation of how you get reality out of this damn difficult description of the world.

Omnes tries to recreate philosophy on the basis of the fuzzy notions of Quantum mechanics. Others try to force traditional philosopy on Quantum mechanics.

What we really need is to rework a new philosophy into Quantum mechanics! Quantum mechanics is a very good mathematical theory with no real philosophy to back it up except as a demonstration of the fragile state of our most fundamental concepts (space, time, fields etc.).

In 1905 Einstein came up with the new revolutionary theory of special relativity that resulted in a set of equations devised several years before by Lorenz. The equations were the same but with a new revolutionary meaning to explain it. We're still waiting for someone to do the same for Quantum mechanics...

All throughout the book there is chronic references to the founding fathers of the physics, mathematics and philosophy - no doubt a good coverage - however no original thought. The author rebelliously (only apparent towards the end of the book) tries to refute the most accepted *candidates* for interpretation of quantum mechanics. And tries to offer the rebuttal to the founding fathers of Quantum Mechanic like Bohr, to put forward his naive interpretation. It is not his caliber to attempt this. In all there is no substance to this book, but only a historical log of advances in mathematics, philosophy and physics. Worst of all, again towards the end, one will see the author has an agenda - and yes certainly influenced by his religion.