This book is worth while as there is some interesting history presented and is well written and researched. However, the author’s main underlying purpose is to argue for pilot-wave and/or many-worlds interpretations of quantum mechanics (QM), and to argue against the Copenhagen Interpretation (C.I.). Unfortunately, his obvious bias prevents him from articulating fairly what the C.I. actually was or why it existed,… even implying it was incoherent and adopted en masse due to some conspiracy of personalities, particularly Niels Bohr.
This is questionable to say the least as it's not actually confusing as to why the C.I. was adopted en masse; As pointed out to E. Schrodinger at the time, the wavefunction can not be an observable physical entity as he envisioned it, as it evolves in a tensor product space. Therefore, it is quite rational why one would adopt a Born Rule type interpretation of the wavefunction. Both the Born Rule component of the C.I. and the "shut up and calculate" component merely reflects how actual QM experiments must occur. The former on account of the fact that there is only one measurement result despite a possible superposition of states as described via the wavefuncion, and the latter on account of the fact that no one can actually have a wavefunction description of himself and the experimental apparatus. Another rational reason why the C.I. was adopted en masse, was that the standard Hilbert space mathematical foundation of QM with von Neumann's projection postulate (wavefunction collapse) was able to unify both the matrix mechanics of Heisenberg and the wave formulation of Schrodinger. Certainly a general scientific positivist mentality was a great influence in motivating C.I. at the time as well.... as it should have.
"I can well appreciate that, in the early days of quantum mechanics, something of the nature of Niels Bohr's perspective on the subject was almost a necessity, so that the theory could actually be used, and progress in quantum physics could be made" - Roger Penrose
The author briefly mentions twice that Bohr was influenced by Kant, but remarkably never attempts to explain Kant’s epistemology.
Considering Bohr’s interpretational contributions to quantum theory, Abraham Pais, nuclear physicist and renowned biographer and physics historian, stated that Bohr was “one of the most important twentieth century philosophers,…. As such he must be considered the successor to [Immanuel] Kant,…”.
Essentially, the C.I. argument was that the measurement problem is epistemic in nature, and therefore not a problem with the theory itself. In other words, the discontinuity between the deterministic evolution of the wavefunction via the Schrodinger equation, and the “collapse” to a measurement result, is on account of the conditions of observability given the nature of mind. Which is to say, we must supply a conceptual form in which the ‘underlying reality’ is to be observed in the first place. In the standard Hilbert space formulation of QM, the Operator and Basis are supplied by the physicist given the particular experimental arrangement and interpretation of results. So, if one is so inclined to imagine a de facto metaphysical ‘underlying reality’, one can see that this supposed reality is projected or conformed to, our a-priori conceptual framework, in order to meet the conditions of observability…. by a mind so constituted, given its evolution to synthesize experience on the macroscopic scale…. i.e. "it" is only a particle or a wave to the extent that those notions are defined by the experimental apparatus and interpretations thereof.
And no, an epistemic interpretation does not mean that consciousness ‘reaches out’ as it were and interacts physically with the quantum system to cause collapse of the supposed physical wavefunction. There was some historical confusion on this point. We’re talking about a biological system evolved at the macroscopic scale with it’s own emergent laws, processing experience to form a synthesis for the understanding, which since this mind is NOT omnipotent, must of necessity have conditions for observability to be at all possible. This precludes knowledge of ‘independent reality’ because intellectual artifacts or 'conceptual forms of thought' are always implicit in the experimental arrangement, presumptions, and interpretations....
“There is no way to remove the observer — us — from our perception of the world, which is created through our sensory processing and through the way we think and reason. Our perception — and hence the observations upon which our theories are based — is not direct, but rather is shaped by a kind of lens, the interpretive structure of our brains.”- Stephen Hawking
“The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness [mind] turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment." - Bernard d'Espagnat
The author does not state that the pilot-wave for multiple particles, evolves in a tensor product space, which is to say not in our 3 dimensional space, and therefore is in principal unobservable. Likewise, the many-worlds are in principal unobservable. Despite suggestions to the contrary in the book, this is entirely different from Mach’s view that atoms are metaphysical on account of not observing them,… as in principal, atoms could be observed or rationally hypothesized given observable attributes. Metaphysical entities are precisely those that are intrinsically unobservable, like the pilot-wave or multiverse. In contrast, an epistemic interpretation does not propose unscientific metaphysics, but rather artifacts of thought, which IS in principal investigable as the field of epistemology. It’s just that the problem extends beyond physics, and into a field that is undeveloped. See “John von Neumann’s Cut” to substantiate this point.
Since all interpretations of QM are empirically indistinguishable, it becomes a Choice of the theoretician which is to be his guide,… and therefore are epistemic in any case.
I don’t feel that the author presents the interpretation of the Bell inequality tests entirely fairly; The empirical failure of the Bell inequalities refutes ‘local realism’, by which is meant that at least one of the following implicit assumptions are refuted,… locality, counterfactual definiteness [Stapp, Eberhard], or no conspiracy condition. The Copenhagen Interpretation was philosophically aligned with the rejection of counterfactual definiteness, …i.e. that elements of reality or attribute values exist independently of measurement,… or more properly, that for statistical purposes it is valid to presume measurements that could be, but have not been performed (this would have been rejected by C.I.). The author seems to imply that no such assumption is made in the Bell tests, despite that it is the very point of the Bell tests to presume this,…. resulting in the conclusion that no such classical presumptions of hidden variables can reproduce the results of quantum mechanics, given Einstein locality. The generalized Bell theorem, however, makes no assumptions with respect to the form of the quantum entity or attributes being measured (particle, wave, spin, polarization, position, momentum, etc).
The author is correct to say that philosophy is important in physics as at minimum a guide for theoretical research and interpretation of results. The author is also correct to point out Quine’s thesis that verification or falsification can not be done in isolation, free and clear of any presumptions and interpretations, thus refuting the extremism of logical positivism. However, Quine did not refute scientific positivism nor verification nor falsification as valid and essential guides for physicists,….. as if he managed to crack the door open such that it was then legitimate for metaphysics to infect science. The many-worlds formulation is itself an extremism of mathematical idealism, in that it essentially lets the mathematics of the wavefunction solutions of the Schrödinger equation supplant the work of the theoretician.
"As far as laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality" - A. Einstein
Not mentioned in the book as well is that the C.I. has since been revised with decoherence, in the consistent histories interpretation,… “Copenhagen done right”.
A few general-reader books by prominent physicists that speak out against metaphysical speculation in physics and cosmology are,...
-The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next - Lee Smolin
-Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe - Roger Penrose
An excellent and fairly unbiased exposition of the various interpretations of QM....
Beyond Measure - Jim Baggott
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Great book but printing had 30 pages of another book stuck in the middle of it...
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I loved the book, but my hard cover copy of the book is missing roughly 30 pages in the middle of the book, where it has been replaced by a book on Vietnam. Very strange!
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