: The short story is a condensed and modified version of a novel of ideas that will be part of my dissertation. The protagonist, an experimental particle physicist, is sent on a mission to recover a hidden notebook supposedly belonging to Schrödinger (a ‘what-if’ fictive element) that will reveal how the latter had discovered the way for quantum behaviour to be inserted into the macroscopic world of lived-reality, therefore making probable conditions that are impossible under classical laws. Concepts and ideas within quantum physics are used to explore ethical and philosophical questions situated within a macro-human social rubric to instigate an investigation into the hermeneutics of realism. I hope to demonstrate, via the story, that knowledge production in scientific practices is about the exploration of different permutations of reality, and that play, a form of ludic methodology, is ritually performed in scientific work, such as in thought-experiments and ‘fictional’ modeling to reconstruct multiple worlds (extending beyond straightforward simulation).
The 10th Quantum Mathematics International Conference (Qmath10) gave an opportunity to bring together specialists interested in that part of mathematical physics which is in close connection with various aspects of quantum theory. It was also meant to introduce young scientists and new tendencies in the field.This collection of carefully selected papers aims to reflect recent techniques and results on Schroedinger operators with magnetic fields, random Schroedinger operators, condensed matter and open systems, pseudo-differential operators and semiclassical analysis, quantum field theory and relativistic quantum mechanics, quantum information, and much more. The book serves as a concise and well-documented tool for the more experimented scientists, as well as a research guide for postgraduate students.
If You feel that scientific theories should reveal facts about the world, you will, of course, be profoundly dissatisfied with quantum mechanics! For, as it is generally interpreted, the formalism is a tool for making predictions about outcomes of possible experiments and nothing more. Quantum mechanics has nothing to say about the nature of the physical processes that bring about the very experimental results that it predicts, yet it is supposed to be the whole story of the phenomena it speaks of (i.e. it is supposed to be "complete").