Download or read book The Epistemology of Quantum Physics written by Taha Sochi and published by Taha Sochi. This book was released on 2022-08-07 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the epistemology of quantum physics and its interpretation as a scientific theory in its technical form. The contents of the book are essentially of non-formal nature although the formalism of quantum mechanics is also investigated (rather briefly) inline with the needs and requirements of the epistemological investigation and considerations. The reader should note that a general scientific and mathematical background (at the undergraduate level) is required to understand the book properly and appreciate its contents. The book is like my previous books in style and favorable characteristics (such as clarity, graduality and intensive cross referencing with hyperlinks in the electronic versions). However, the book, unlike my previous books, does not contain questions or exercises or solved problems. The book is particularly useful to those who have special interest in the interpretative aspects of quantum theory and the philosophy of science although it should be useful even to those who are interested in the purely-scientific and technical aspects of the quantum theory since the contents of the book should broaden the understanding of these aspects and provide them with qualitative and interpretative dimensions (as well as the added benefit of the brief investigation of the formalism of quantum mechanics).
Download or read book Epistemological and Experimental Perspectives on Quantum Physics written by Daniel Greenberger and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the very beginning it was realised that quantum physics involves radically new interpretative and epistemological consequences. While hitherto there has been no satisfactory philosophical analysis of these consequences, recent years have witnessed the accomplishment of many experiments to test the foundations of quantum physics, opening up vistas to a completely novel technology: quantum technology. The contributions in the present volume review the interpretative situation, analyze recent fundamental experiments, and discuss the implications of possible future technological applications. Readership: Analytic philosophers (logical empiricists), scientists (especially physicists), historians of logic, mathematics and physics, philosophers of science, and advanced students and researchers in these fields. Can be used for seminars on theoretical and experimental physics and philosophy of science, and as supplementary reading at advanced undergraduate and graduate levels.
Download or read book Quantum Mechanics Between Ontology and Epistemology written by Florian J. Boge and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-24 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the prospects of rivaling ontological and epistemic interpretations of quantum mechanics (QM). It concludes with a suggestion for how to interpret QM from an epistemological point of view and with a Kantian touch. It thus refines, extends, and combines existing approaches in a similar direction. The author first looks at current, hotly debated ontological interpretations. These include hidden variables-approaches, Bohmian mechanics, collapse interpretations, and the many worlds interpretation. He demonstrates why none of these ontological interpretations can claim to be the clear winner amongst its rivals. Next, coverage explores the possibility of interpreting QM in terms of knowledge but without the assumption of hidden variables. It examines QBism as well as Healey’s pragmatist view. The author finds both interpretations or programs appealing, but still wanting in certain respects. As a result, he then goes on to advance a genuine proposal as to how to interpret QM from the perspective of an internal realism in the sense of Putnam and Kant. The book also includes two philosophical interludes. One details the notions of probability and realism. The other highlights the connections between the notions of locality, causality, and reality in the context of violations of Bell-type inequalities.
Download or read book Epistemology and Probability written by Arkady Plotnitsky and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-10-20 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an exploration of the relationships between epistemology and probability in the work of Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schro- ̈ dinger, and in quantum mechanics and in modern physics as a whole. It also considers the implications of these relationships and of quantum theory itself for our understanding of the nature of human thinking and knowledge in general, or the ‘‘epistemological lesson of quantum mechanics,’’ as Bohr liked 1 to say. These implications are radical and controversial. While they have been seen as scientifically productive and intellectually liberating to some, Bohr and Heisenberg among them, they have been troublesome to many others, such as Schro ̈ dinger and, most prominently, Albert Einstein. Einstein famously refused to believe that God would resort to playing dice or rather to playing with nature in the way quantum mechanics appeared to suggest, which is indeed quite different from playing dice. According to his later (sometime around 1953) remark, a lesser known or commented upon but arguably more important one: ‘‘That the Lord should play [dice], all right; but that He should gamble according to definite rules [i. e. , according to the rules of quantum mechanics, rather than 2 by merely throwing dice], that is beyond me. ’’ Although Einstein’s invocation of God is taken literally sometimes, he was not talking about God but about the way nature works. Bohr’s reply on an earlier occasion to Einstein’s question 1 Cf.
Download or read book On Physics and Philosophy written by Bernard d'Espagnat and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the great ironies of quantum mechanics is not only that its conceptual foundations seem strange even to the physicists who use it, but that philosophers have largely ignored it. Here, Bernard d'Espagnat argues that quantum physics--by casting doubts on once hallowed concepts such as space, material objects, and causality-demands serious reconsideration of most of traditional philosophy. On Physics and Philosophy is an accessible, mathematics-free reflection on the philosophical meaning of the quantum revolution, by one of the world's leading authorities on the subject. D'Espagnat presents an objective account of the main guiding principles of contemporary physics-in particular, quantum mechanics-followed by a look at just what consequences these should imply for philosophical thinking. The author begins by describing recent discoveries in quantum physics such as nonseparability, and explicating the significance of contemporary developments such as decoherence. Then he proceeds to set various philosophical theories of knowledge--such as materialism, realism, Kantism, and neo-Kantism--against the conceptual problems quantum theory raises. His overall conclusion is that while the physical implications of quantum theory suggest that scientific knowledge will never truly describe mind-independent reality, the notion of such an ultimate reality--one we can never access directly or rationally and which he calls "veiled reality"--remains conceptually necessary nonetheless.
Download or read book The Quantum Principle Its Interpretation and Epistemology written by Jagdish Mehra and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study deals with the development of, and the current discussion about, the interpretation of quantum mechanics. The following topics are discussed: 1. The Copenhagen In terpretation; 2. Formal Problems of Quantum Mechanics; 3. Process of Measurement and the Equation of Motion; 4. Macroscopic Level of Description; 5. Search for Hidden Variables; 6. The Notion of 'Reality' and the Epistemology of Quantum Mechanics; and 7. Quantum Mechanics and the Explanation of Life. The Bohr-Einstein dialogue on the validity of the quan tum mechanical description of physical reality lasted over two decades. Since the early nineteen-fifties, Eugene Wigner has provided much of the point and counterpoint of the continuing discussion on the interpretation and epistemolo gy of quantum mechanics. We have explored Wigner's views in some detail against the background of historical develop ment and current debate. Professor Eugene Wigner has sustained me over many years in my work on the conceptual development of mod ern physics by his kindness and encouragement. This study owes its existence to his direct inspiration, and to his suggestion to me in April 1971 that it would be of interest to write an account of the interpretation of quantum me chanics and the current discussion about it. XII PREFACE This study was completed in September 1972. Signifi cant new developments have occurred since then in the dis cussion of questions related to the epistemology of quan tum mechanics.
Download or read book Quantum Physics Meets the Philosophy of Mind written by Antonella Corradini and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-08-19 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quantum physics, in contrast to classical physics, allows non-locality and indeterminism in nature. Moreover, the role of the observer seems indispensable in quantum physics. In fact, quantum physics, unlike classical physics, suggests a metaphysics that is not physicalism (which is today’s official metaphysical doctrine). As is well known, physicalism implies a reductive position in the philosophy of mind, specifically in its two core areas, the philosophy of consciousness and the philosophy of action. Quantum physics, in contrast, is compatible with psychological non-reductionism, and actually seems to support it. The essays in this book explore, from various points of view, the possibilities of basing a non-reductive philosophy of mind on quantum physics. In doing so, they not only engage with the ontological and epistemological aspects of the question but also with the neurophysiological ones.
Download or read book Quantum Information Theory and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics written by Christopher G. Timpson and published by Oxford Philosophical Monograph. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher G. Timpson provides the first full-length philosophical treatment of quantum information theory and the questions it raises for our understanding of the quantum world. He argues for an ontologically deflationary account of the nature of quantum information, which is grounded in a revisionary analysis of the concepts of information.
Download or read book The Philosophy Behind Physics written by Thomas A. Brody and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Brody had one of the most powerful and wide-ranging intellects of his generation. Although primarily a physicist who worked on statistical prob lems in nuclear physics, on probability theory and on computational physics he had an extensive knowledge of the philosophy of science and of philosophy, and was fluent in many languages. He is well-known among physicists for the Brody-Moshinsky transformation but his extensive work on probability and on the philosophy of science remained almost unknown. This was because the originality of his ideas entailed many lengthy battles with uncomprehending referees, and he frequently published in Mexican journals of limited circula tion. In addition, his strongly critical spirit inhibited his willingness to publish his ideas. He was always most concerned by the very unsatisfactory situation in the philosophy of physics, that is largely due to the generally poor knowledge that physicists and philosophers have of each other's disciplines. Philosophers of science write at length about physics without any detailed first-hand knowl edge of how research is actually carried out. Physicists, for their part, often implicitly assume naive or erroneous philosophical ideas, and this often hinders their scientific work, besides spreading further confusion if they try to give an account of what they are doing.
Download or read book Schr dinger s Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics written by Michael Bitbol and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the final outcome of two projects. My first project was to publish a set of texts written by Schrodinger at the beginning of the 1950's for his seminars and lectures at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. These almost completely forgotten texts contained important insights into the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and they provided several ideas which were missing or elusively expressed in SchrOdinger's published papers and books of the same period. However, they were likely to be misinterpreted out of their context. The problem was that current scholarship could not help very much the reader of these writings to figure out their significance. The few available studies about SchrOdinger's interpretation of quantum mechanics are generally excellent, but almost entirely restricted to the initial period 1925-1927. Very little work has been done on Schrodinger's late views on the theory he contributed to create and develop. The generally accepted view is that he never really recovered from his interpretative failure of 1926-1927, and that his late reflections (during the 1950's) are little more than an expression of his rising nostalgia for the lost ideal of picturing the world, not to say for some favourite traditional picture. But the content and style of Schrodinger's texts of the 1950's do not agree at all with this melancholic appraisal; they rather set the stage for a thorough renewal of accepted representations. In order to elucidate this paradox, I adopted several strategies.
Download or read book Quantum Philosophy written by Roland Omnès and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2002-02-25 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this magisterial work, Roland Omnès takes us from the academies of ancient Greece to the laboratories of modern science as he seeks to do no less than rebuild the foundations of the philosophy of knowledge. One of the world's leading quantum physicists, Omnès reviews the history and recent development of mathematics, logic, and the physical sciences to show that current work in quantum theory offers new answers to questions that have puzzled philosophers for centuries: Is the world ultimately intelligible? Are all events caused? Do objects have definitive locations? Omnès addresses these profound questions with vigorous arguments and clear, colorful writing, aiming not just to advance scholarship but to enlighten readers with no background in science or philosophy. The book opens with an insightful and sweeping account of the main developments in science and the philosophy of knowledge from the pre-Socratic era to the nineteenth century. Omnès then traces the emergence in modern thought of a fracture between our intuitive, commonsense views of the world and the abstract and--for most people--incomprehensible world portrayed by advanced physics, math, and logic. He argues that the fracture appeared because the insights of Einstein and Bohr, the logical advances of Frege, Russell, and Gödel, and the necessary mathematics of infinity of Cantor and Hilbert cannot be fully expressed by words or images only. Quantum mechanics played an important role in this development, as it seemed to undermine intuitive notions of intelligibility, locality, and causality. However, Omnès argues that common sense and quantum mechanics are not as incompatible as many have thought. In fact, he makes the provocative argument that the "consistent-histories" approach to quantum mechanics, developed over the past fifteen years, places common sense (slightly reappraised and circumscribed) on a firm scientific and philosophical footing for the first time. In doing so, it provides what philosophers have sought through the ages: a sure foundation for human knowledge. Quantum Philosophy is a profound work of contemporary science and philosophy and an eloquent history of the long struggle to understand the nature of the world and of knowledge itself.
Download or read book Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses written by Eugene Paul Wigner and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the founding fathers of modern quantum physics few have contributed to our basic understanding of its concepts as much as E.P. Wigner. His articles on the epistemology of quantum mechanics and the measurement problem, and the basic role of symmetries were of fundamental importance for all subsequent work. He was also the first to discuss the concept of consciousness from the point of view of modern physics. G.G. Emch edited most of those papers and wrote a very helpful introduction into Wigner's contributions to Natural Philosophy. The book should be a gem for all those interested in the history and philosophy of science.
Download or read book Quantum Reality Relativistic Causality and Closing the Epistemic Circle written by Wayne C. Myrvold and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-01-29 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In July 2006, a major international conference was held at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada, to celebrate the career and work of a remarkable man of letters. Abner Shimony, who is well known for his pioneering contributions to foundations of quantum mechanics, is a physicist as well as a philosopher, and is highly respected among the intellectuals of both communities. In line with Shimony’s conviction that philosophical investigation is not to be divorced from theoretical and empirical work in the sciences, the conference brought together leading theoretical physicists, experimentalists, as well as philosophers. This book collects twenty-three original essays stemming from the conference, on topics including history and methodology of science, Bell's theorem, probability theory, the uncertainty principle, stochastic modifications of quantum mechanics, and relativity theory. It ends with a transcript of a fascinating discussion between Lee Smolin and Shimony, ranging over the entire spectrum of Shimony's wide-ranging contributions to philosophy, science, and philosophy of science.
Download or read book Understanding Quantum Mechanics written by Roland Omnès and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here Roland Omnès offers a clear, up-to-date guide to the conceptual framework of quantum mechanics. In an area that has provoked much philosophical debate, Omnès has achieved high recognition for his Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Princeton 1994), a book for specialists. Now the author has transformed his own theory into a short and readable text that enables beginning students and experienced physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers to form a comprehensive picture of the field while learning about the most recent advances. This new book presents a more streamlined version of the Copenhagen interpretation, showing its logical consistency and completeness. The problem of measurement is a major area of inquiry, with the author surveying its history from Planck to Heisenberg before describing the consistent-histories interpretation. He draws upon the most recent research on the decoherence effect (related to the modern resolution of the famous Schrödinger's cat problem) and an exact formulation of the correspondence between quantum and particle physics (implying a derivation of classical determinism from quantum probabilism). Interpretation is organized with the help of a universal and sound language using so-called consistent histories. As a language and a method, it can now be shown to be free of ambiguity and it makes interpretation much clearer and closer to common sense.
Download or read book Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics written by Shan Gao and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-24 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consciousness and quantum mechanics are two great mysteries of our time--and recently scholars have postulated a deeper connection between them. Exploring this possible connection can be fruitful: an analysis of the conscious mind and psychophysical connection can be indispensable in understanding quantum mechanics and solving the notorious measurement problem, and there is also likely some kind of intimate connection between quantum mechanics--the most fundamental theory of the physical world--and our efforts to explain, naturalistically, the phenomenon of consciousness. The seventeen newly written chapters in this volume are divided into three sections: Consciousness and the Wave Function Collapse, Consciousness in Quantum Theories, and Quantum Approaches to Consciousness. This is the first volume to provide a comprehensive review and thorough analysis of intriguing conjectures about the connection between consciousness and quantum mechanics. Written by leading experts in physics, philosophy, and cognitive science, Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics will be of value to students and researchers working on the foundations of quantum mechanics and the philosophy of mind.
Download or read book Holism in Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Physics written by M. Esfeld and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Scope of the Project The concept of holism is at the centre of far-reaching changes in various areas of philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. Holism in epistemology and the philosophy of mind is widespread among analytic philosophers subsequent to the work of the later Wittgenstein and to Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism". Roughly speaking, the claim is that (a) for a person to have beliefs, a social, linguistic community is required and that (b) single beliefs have a meaning only within a whole system of beliefs. Furthermore, holism is discussed in science, in particular in the interpretation of quantum physics. In fact, the term "holism" goes back to Smuts (1926), who introduces this term in a biological context. I Holism in any of these areas has considerable consequences for our philosophical view of the world and ourselves. Holism in quantum physics is said to refute atomism, which has been predominant in modem philosophy of nature. Holism in epistemology and the philosophy of mind is seen as an alternative to what is known as the Cartesian tradition, which dominated modem thought down to logical empiricism.
Download or read book Epistemology Methodology III Philosophy of Science and Technology Part I Formal and Physical Sciences written by M. Bunge and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aims of this Introduction are to characterize the philosophy of science and technology, henceforth PS & T, to locate it on the map ofiearning, and to propose criteria for evaluating work in this field. 1. THE CHASM BETWEEN S & T AND THE HUMANITIES It has become commonplace to note that contemporary culture is split into two unrelated fields: science and the rest, to deplore this split - and to do is some truth in the two cultures thesis, and even nothing about it. There greater truth in the statement that there are literally thousands of fields of knowledge, each of them cultivated by specialists who are in most cases indifferent to what happens in the other fields. But it is equally true that all fields of knowledge are united, though in some cases by weak links, forming the system of human knowledge. Because of these links, what advances, remains stagnant, or declines, is the entire system of S & T. Throughout this book we shall distinguish the main fields of scientific and technological knowledge while at the same time noting the links that unite them.
