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Book Symposium: David Albert, After Physics

Wayne C. Myrvold, David Z. Albert, Craig Callender, Jenann Ismael

Published Apr 1, 2016• 1 citation
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Abstract

On April 1, 2016, at the Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association, a book symposium, organized by Alyssa Ney, was held in honor of David Albert’s After Physics (Harvard University Press, 2015). All participants agreed that it was a valuable and enlightening session. We have decided that it would be useful, for those who weren’t present, to make our remarks publicly available. Please bear in mind that what follows are remarks prepared for the session, and that on some points participants may have changed their minds in light of the ensuing discussion.

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On April 1, 2016, at the Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association, a book symposium, organized by Alyssa Ney, was held in honor of David Albert’s After Physics (Harvard University Press, 2015). All participants agreed that it was a valuable and enlightening session. We have decided that it would be useful, for those who weren’t present, to make our remarks publicly available. Please bear in mind that what follows are remarks prepared for the session, and that on some points participants may have changed their minds in light of the ensuing discussion.
David Albert has proved an important theorem, a surprising one, which certainly has relevance to the way we will understand quantum mechanics in the future. Whether its moral is really the “non-narratibility” of the history of the quantum world is, however, dependent on interpretative questions about which philosophers and physicists – even philosophers and physicists who, like David Albert and myself, are looking for what the late, great, J. S. Bell called an “unromantic” interpretation of quantum mechanics – are sure to disagree. In this brief comment I want to say what Albert has certainly shown , and what depends on those interpretative questions (and, of course, what those questions are). By an “unromantic” interpretation, what Bell meant is an intelligible and mathematically precise interpretation in which there is no talk about “consciousness” reducing the wave packet, “measurements” are simply described as a subclass of physical interactions, and, of course, there is no loose talk about the world consisting of “information.”
This book is the result of the third Erasmus Ascension Symposium organized by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation in Amsterdam. The Praemium Erasmianum is known primarily for the Erasmus Prize which, since 1958, has been awarded annually to individuals or organizations in Europe that have exceptionally distinguished themselves in the field of European culture. In addition to this activity, every two years the Foundation also organizes a symposium in the Netherlands concerning a specially chosen multi-disciplinary topic of current interest. In 1992, in conjunction with a day that was open to the public, a select group of 40 young Dutch scholars once again had the opportunity to engage in a penetrating and in-depth discussion on the chosen topic with a number of specialists during the three-day symposium. The choice of the theme for the 1992 symposium, Physics and Our View of the World, was prompted by the great interest that exists for this topic, as is evident from the appearance of so many semi-popular publications in this field. In this way, the Foundation hoped to provide a forum for the useful exchange of views and ideas about the philosophical and religious implications of recent developments in modern physics. We thus hoped to help bridge the gap between the realms of the exact and the spiritual sciences, a division which is still so apparent in our time.
David R Griffin (ed) 1986 New York: State University of New York Press xv + 322 pp price $44.50 ($14.95 paperback) ISBN 0 88706 113 3 Hdbk, 0 88706 115 XPbk This book is based on the proceedings of a conference held in Claremont, California, in 1984 and it includes subsequent comments on contributions from participants, together with authors' replies, submitted to and collated by the editor (himself a substantial contributor) at a later date. Participants at this conference included philosophers and theologians; Bohm, Prigogine and Stapp were among the principal contributors.