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Physics Bulletin

Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics: Collected Papers on Quantum Philosophy

Tony Leggett

Published Jun 1, 1988• 180 citations
Publisher

Abstract

John S Bell 1987 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press vii + 212 pp price £25 ISBN 0 521 33495 0 This book is a collection of John Bell's papers dealing explicitly with the foundations of quantum mechanics (or, as he puts it, ' quantum philosophy '), plus one paper on the pedagogy of special relativity. The first two are the classic papers of 1 966 and 1 964, which respectively demolished the 'impossibility proofs' concerning hidden variables and proved the famous theorem on the incompatibility of the predictions of local hidden-variable theories with those of quantum mechanics.

DOI
10.1088/0031-9112/39/6/033

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John S Bell 1987 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press vii + 212 pp price £25 ISBN 0 521 33495 0 This book is a collection of John Bell's papers dealing explicitly with the foundations of quantum mechanics (or, as he puts it, ' quantum philosophy '), plus one paper on the pedagogy of special relativity. The first two are the classic papers of 1 966 and 1 964, which respectively demolished the 'impossibility proofs' concerning hidden variables and proved the famous theorem on the incompatibility of the predictions of local hidden-variable theories with those of quantum mechanics.
John Bell, FRS was one of the leading expositors and interpreters of modern quantum theory. He is particularly famous for his discovery of the crucial difference between the predictions of conventional quantum mechanics and the implications of local causality, a concept insisted on by Einstein. John Bell's work played a major role in the development of our current understanding of the profound nature of quantum concepts and of the fundamental limitations they impose on the applicability of the classical ideas of space, time and locality. This book includes all of John Bell's published and unpublished papers on the conceptual and philosophical problems of quantum mechanics, including two papers that appeared after the first edition was published. The book includes a short Preface written by the author for the first edition, and also an introduction by Alain Aspect that puts into context John Bell's enormous contribution to the quantum philosophy debate.
This book is the most complete collection of John S Bell's research papers, review articles and lecture notes on the foundations of quantum mechanics. Some of this material has hitherto been difficult to access. The book also appears in a paperback edition, aimed at students and young researchers. This volume will be very useful to researchers in the foundations and applications of quantum mechanics. Contents: (1) On the Problem of Hidden Variables in Quantum Mechanics; (2) On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox; (3) The Moral Aspect of Quantum Mechanics; (4) Introduction to the Hidden-Variabl
This is a review-essay on ``Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics'' by John Bell and ``The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics'' by David Bohm and Basil Hiley. The views of these authors concerning the character of quantum theory and quantum reality---and, in particular, their approaches to the issues of nonlocality, the possibility of hidden variables, and the nature of and desiderata for a satisfactory scientific explanation of quantum phenomena---are contrasted, with each other and with the orthodox approach to these issues.
Prologue A memorial conference for John Bell, open to the public, was held at Rutgers University around 20 years ago. I gave a short talk there on Bell's views about David Bohm's “hidden variables” formulation of quantum mechanics, a version of quantum mechanics often called the de Broglie–Bohm theory or Bohmian mechanics. This theory was in fact discovered by Louis de Broglie in 1927. In 1952, it was rediscovered and developed by Bohm, who was the first to appreciate its connection to the predictions of standard quantum mechanics. I did not publish the talk. I have decided that it would be appropriate to publish a very lightly edited version of it here, in this volume devoted to the work of Bell on the foundation of quantum mechanics. One reason for doing so is that the connection between Bell and Bohm continues to be somewhat underplayed, with the strength of his advocacy of Bohmian mechanics not properly appreciated. For example, about half of the papers in Bell's collected works on the foundations of quantum mechanics deal with Bohmian mechanics. But in his fine introduction to the revised edition of this great book [1], Alain Aspect mentions this theory in only a single sentence, and parenthetically at that. For several decades after Bell proved his nonlocality theorem, based in part on Bell's inequality, it was widely claimed that Bell had shown that hidden variables – and Bohmian mechanics in particular – were impossible, that they were incompatible with the predictions of quantum mechanics. For example, the great physicist Eugene Wigner, who, unlike most of his contemporaries, was profoundly concerned with the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics and usually wrote on the subject with great clarity and insight, has written that This [hidden variables] is an interesting idea and even though few of us were ready to accept it, it must be admitted that the truly telling argument against it was produced as late as 1965, by J. S. Bell … This appears to give a convincing argument against the hidden variables theory.
Hans Reichenbach University of California Press (agents; London: Cambridge University Press) . 1965. Pp. x + 182. Price 12s. 6d. This is a welcome paperback edition of a book which originally appeared in 1944. Its aim is to analyse the new concepts and methods of physical reasoning which have been introduced into atomic physics as the result mainly of Schrodinger's proof of the physical equivalence of wave and quantum mechanics, of Born's probability interpretation of the wave equation, of Heisenberg's interpretationof the principle of indeterminacy and of Bohr's principle of complementarity.