Decoherentism, as being developed by many outstanding contemporary physicists, and elaborated in a systematic form by French physicist Roland Omnčs, eliminates eventually the long-lasting quantum-classical dualism in physics. It proves that in consequence of decoherence effect, the laws of quantum mechanics (with their probabilistic character) turn into the deterministic laws of classical physics; it describes therewith a real process through which the phenomenal world as given immediately to our sensory perception arises from quantum fundamentals; accordingly, classical determinism is a direct and controlled consequence of quantum mechanics.At the same time, decoherentism elaborated quantum logic (which is based on Griffiths' notion of consistent histories and corresponds to quantum mechanics) and proves that when decoherence acts, classical logic becomes a special kind of quantum logic. Since classical logic is essentially a learned version of common sense, the decoherentistic approach shows that the validity of common sense has its foundation in the rules of quantum mechanics. Thus, decoherentism eliminates the conflicts between quantum theory and common sense (in doing so, it proves that the famous paradoxes of Schrödinger's cat and the wave function reduction as well as the EPR paradox came from the mistake of having no account of decoherence effect).Nevertheless, decoherentism admits that the logic of common sense and as well as determinism itself have some probability of error which can be estimated in principle. These probabilities are most often extremely small and the corresponding errors have no practical consequence.Contrary to both classical and pre-decoherentistic quantum dynamics, decoherentism implies that the logical structure of quantum mechanics must select a definite direction of time, which necessarily coincides with the one occurring in thermodynamics; this means that the 2. law of thermodynamics (together with the irreversibility of time finds its basis in the decoherentistic interpretation of quantum mechanics.Hence it follows that decoherentism is truly a scientific revolution because the former principles (such as the principle of quantum-classical correspondence) turns in its frame into ordinary laws whic are derived from more fundamental principles.Considering the fact that classical determinism is a necessary presupposition for all scientific experiments, decoherentism's ability to derive determinism from newly interpreted quantum mechanics enables us to characterise it with the metaphor of "serpent gnawing his own tail." This means that quantum mechanics (in its decoherentistic interpretation) is able to explain even its own basic presuppositions; or, in other words, the results of the development of physical science turns back in order to explain its starting point. This important advancement makes physics structurally analogous to Adam Smith's economics (and to its metaphysical transcriptions in Hegel's Logic), to evolutionary biology and other sciences dealing with spontaneous order and self-organisation.
Decoherentism, as being developed by many outstanding contemporary physicists, and elaborated in a systematic form by French physicist Roland Omnčs, eliminates eventually the long-lasting quantum-classical dualism in physics. It proves that in consequence of decoherence effect, the laws of quantum mechanics (with their probabilistic character) turn into the deterministic laws of classical physics; it describes therewith a real process through which the phenomenal world as given immediately to our sensory perception arises from quantum fundamentals; accordingly, classical determinism is a direct and controlled consequence of quantum mechanics.At the same time, decoherentism elaborated quantum logic (which is based on Griffiths' notion of consistent histories and corresponds to quantum mechanics) and proves that when decoherence acts, classical logic becomes a special kind of quantum logic. Since classical logic is essentially a learned version of common sense, the decoherentistic approach shows that the validity of common sense has its foundation in the rules of quantum mechanics. Thus, decoherentism eliminates the conflicts between quantum theory and common sense (in doing so, it proves that the famous paradoxes of Schrödinger's cat and the wave function reduction as well as the EPR paradox came from the mistake of having no account of decoherence effect).Nevertheless, decoherentism admits that the logic of common sense and as well as determinism itself have some probability of error which can be estimated in principle. These probabilities are most often extremely small and the corresponding errors have no practical consequence.Contrary to both classical and pre-decoherentistic quantum dynamics, decoherentism implies that the logical structure of quantum mechanics must select a definite direction of time, which necessarily coincides with the one occurring in thermodynamics; this means that the 2. law of thermodynamics (together with the irreversibility of time finds its basis in the decoherentistic interpretation of quantum mechanics.Hence it follows that decoherentism is truly a scientific revolution because the former principles (such as the principle of quantum-classical correspondence) turns in its frame into ordinary laws whic are derived from more fundamental principles.Considering the fact that classical determinism is a necessary presupposition for all scientific experiments, decoherentism's ability to derive determinism from newly interpreted quantum mechanics enables us to characterise it with the metaphor of "serpent gnawing his own tail." This means that quantum mechanics (in its decoherentistic interpretation) is able to explain even its own basic presuppositions; or, in other words, the results of the development of physical science turns back in order to explain its starting point. This important advancement makes physics structurally analogous to Adam Smith's economics (and to its metaphysical transcriptions in Hegel's Logic), to evolutionary biology and other sciences dealing with spontaneous order and self-organisation.
Some mostly recent theoretical and mathematical advances can be linked together to yield a new consistent interpretation of quantum mechanics. It relies upon a unique and universal interpretative rule of a logical character which is based upon Griffiths consistent historie. Some new results in semi-classical physics allow to derive classical physics from this rule, including its logical aspects, and to prove accordingly the existence of determinism within the quantum framework. Together with decoherence, this can be used to retrieve the existence of facts, despite the probabilistic character of the theory. Measurement theory can then be made entirely deductive. It is accordingly found that wave packet reduction is a logical property, whereas one can always choose to avoid using it. The practical consequences of this interpretation are most often in agreement with the Copenhagen formulation but they can be proved never to give rise to any logical inconsistency or paradox.
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.
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.
Doubts and misconceptions about the origin and justification of a physical theory\'s most fundamental concept are bound to spill over into doubts and misconceptions about the origin and foundation of the theory as a whole: such is the case, in point of fact, of the concept of quantum discontinuity of orthodox quantum mechanics. This work, which comprises three chapters, each of which is an independent paper, is a comprehensive investigation of the origin and nature of the concept of quantum discontinuity. The first paper, entitled \"Rewriting the Quantum \'Revolution\',\" gives a novel account of the origin of quantum theory. It refutes, by direct counter-example, Thomas Kuhn\'s well-known thesis that revolutions in science do not happen on the basis of theory and experiment alone; the quantum revolution happened exactly in this way. The second paper, \"On the Lawfulness of Quanta,\" is a sequel to \"Rewriting the Quantum \'Revolution\'.\" It evinces that and how the existence of the energy quanta is a principled result; it refutes the traditional viewthat the existence of the energy quantawas originally introduced in physics as an ad hoc hypothesis in a self-contradictory argument by showing that it is instead a necessary consequence of the laws of thermodynamics of black-bodies. This result affects our understanding of what is actually involved in the classical-to-quantum paradigm-shift, of scientific method, and of the specific nature of the quantum hypothesis which was carried over into contemporary physics in the course of the quantum revolution. The third paper, \"The Dual Dynamical Foundation of Orthodox Quantum Mechanics,\" was written in collaboration with the mathematical physicist Dr. Ricardo Correa da Silva. It is a detailed critical study of the dynamical foundations of orthodox quantum mechanics; it contains several original results of mathematical, historical, and theoretical interest. The most important of them is the discovery of a dual action functional from which both of the dynamical postulates of von Neumann\'s quantum mechanics, process 1 and process 2, necessarily follow. It also contains the following results that have interest on their own: (i) a derivation of the canonical commutation relations from Matrix Mechanics; (ii) an analysis of Schrödinger\'s first derivation of the wave equation that improves on the understanding of it that is now current in the literature; (iii) a demonstration of how the canonical commutation relations follow fromWave Mechanics; (iv) a discussion, that improves on F. A. Muller\'s work, about the theoretical equivalence of Matrix andWave Mechanics; (v) a revaluation of von Neumann\'s statement of the measurement problem. Broadly speaking, the three papers, taken together, drive home the lesson that the concept of quantum discontinuity stands on a more solid foundation than the scholarship on the foundations of quantum mechanics has hitherto acknowledged
In order to solve the problem of which is the real logic of Quantum Mechanics (QM), we suggest to study the mutual relationships between the physical theory (as a whole, that is both its experimental part and its theoretical part), its mathematics and its logic. That results to be a more general problem than what is considered by traditional studies on Quantum Logic (QL). These studies focus attention on the problem of the relationship between the experimental part of the physical theory and only its mathematics, from which logic is then derived. The new approach, that we suggest, generalises the interpretation that one of us (A. D.) successfully tested on the foundations of classical physical theories. The foundations of a theory are interpreted in terms of two options on the kind of mathematics, either classical one or constructive one, and the kind of logic, either classical logic or intuitionistic logic. It is remarkable that each theory making use of intuitionistic logic – i. e. L. Carnot’s classical mechanics, S. Carnot’s thermodynamics, Lobacevskij’s non-Euclidean geometry is organised in order to solve an universal problem (expressed by a double negated sentence), rather than in an entirely deductive way; hence, a non-classical logic does not belong exclusively to QM. From an historical and foundational analysis about QM, we conclude that in QM it is the law of double negation and not modular law (introduced by Birkhoff and von Neumann without giving physical evidence to it) which fails, i. e. which represents the true difference between Classical Logic (CL) and QL. We have looked for previous works on QL supporting our suggestion; in the past Destouches-Fevrier (1948), Fine (1974), Bell-Hallett (1981), Gauthier (1983), Adelman-Corbett (1995) already defended this thesis on the relevance of double negation law for QL. Under this light, QL results to have the same logic of a classical theory organised in a problematic manner. Hence, QM has to be referred to intuitionistic logic, in the same way every theory which is developed around a fundamental problem, expressed by a double negated sentence, does. In particular, by following the founder of intuitionism, Brouwer, we reject the identification of intuitionistic logic with an entirely deductive system; rather, the logical system of QL, as a theory, is organised in such a way to put a crucial problem to be solved. In agreement with this kind of organisation, among the several QM formulations we choose Heisenberg’s formulation, which was ignored by previous authors on QL. This formulation is aimed to solve the problem of quantum measurement, that originates the uncertainty methodological principle. Moreover, it is remarkable that it makes use of an operational mathematics (discrete matrices only). We interpret its characteristic arguing about its principal problem through double negated sentences; it results to be a moving from arguments belonging to non-classical logic expressed by a double negated sentence to the recognition of a suitable mathematics for QM formulation. In sum, QL shows how it is possible to state the relationship between QM and mathematics. This point has been almost ignored by the most traditional approaches to QL, which rather drew it from an a priori mathematics of QM (commonly, Hilbert space). As a verification of our approach, we show that even both Lobachevskij’s geometry and S. Carnot’s thermodynamics argued in order to achieve mathematical formulas expressing the content of the basic double negated sentences of respective theory. In the same way the recent book on QM by T. F. Jordan formalised his matrix mechanics. 1. Logic in classical physics and in Quantum Mechanics An historical analysis of Quantum Mechanics (QM) shows that there were at the origin of the theory two distinct formulations: Matrix Mechanics (Heisenberg, 1925) and Wave Mechanics (Schroedinger, 1926). Although Dirac subsumed these two formulations in a comprehensive mathematical framework (Hilbert space), we think that the organisation of the principles is different in Matrix Mechanics from that in Wave Mechanics, and this difference implies different logics. So we think that in order to characterise the logic of QM it is necessary to distinguish between this two formulations. In Matrix Mechanics, Heisenberg’s basic idea was to explain atomic spectra not in terms of atomic orbits (as Old Quantum Theory tried to make), but only by means of the study of experimental data; i. e., frequencies and intensities of light both emitted and absorbed by matter. Through a
The classical science considered itself as the standard-bearer of common sense. A no-classical science, on the contrary, underlined broke off with it. The modern post-no classical science dialectically comes back to common sense, owing to synergetic, and also – to new achievements in the quantum physics and cosmology. On this base are resolved paradoxes of sphere of the becoming, which have resulted XX-century physicists on a way of subjectivity. Including, a sensible explanation receive not local effects in various areas (a quantum entangled, universal gravitation), an invari-ance of speed of light in vacuum and many other things. Of quantum area the new physics explains uncertainty of a condition of quantum object and the raised role of the device as typical display of «super sensitivity» of any system to influence in «area of jokers». The origin of the Universe is understood now not as the «Big Bang» which has been not understood for common sense, but as the «Big Boiling» – natural process of phase transition primary vacuum environments in system of material structures. The sensible explanation receives an anthrop principle, which was mystified in a no-classical science.Excess of speed of light by light self at its movement through the non-equilibrium environment naturally speaks that: this environment does not spend an entering impulse, and itself radiates a similar impulse from the opposite party. Not local there is only a process of self-organizing of the active environment. Understood becomes also quantum non-locality, including teleportation. Not local character of universal gravitation speaks the same basic basis, and waves of gravitation have no to it the direct attitude. All these explanations are reached without the contradiction with the relativistic theory, quantum physics and other achievements of a science of the last, no-classical stage of its development.