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Cambridge University Press eBooks

Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?

Guido Bacciagaluppi, Elise Crull

Published Nov 14, 2024• 58 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This is a reprinting of Bohr’s response to the EPR paper, wherein Bohr relies on his principle of complementarity to demonstrate an ambiguity in the criterion of reality as described by EPR and to argue that quantum mechanics is in fact a complete description of reality given the bounds of complementarity.
DOI
10.1017/9781139028493.013

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Is the Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Complete?

Guido Bacciagaluppi, Elise Crull

This is a reprinting of Ruark’s response to the EPR paper. Ruark puts the EPR debate down to disagreement over the criterion of reality. Ruark states that the majority of physicists will, pace EPR, consider this criterion satisfied even when the elements of a theory correspond only to indirectly measured features of reality.

Cambridge University Press eBooks•Nov 14, 2024•1 citation

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This study posits that Bohr failed to defend the completeness of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality against Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen’s (EPR) paper. Although there are many papers in the literature that focus on Bohr’s argument in his reply to the EPR paper, the purpose of the current paper is not to clarify Bohr’s argument. Instead, I contend that regardless of which interpretation of Bohr’s argument is correct, his defense of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality remained incomplete. For example, a recent trend in studies of Bohr’s work is to suggest he considered the wave-function description to be epistemic. However, such an interpretation cannot be used to defend the completeness of the quantum mechanical description.

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The article offers a rereading of Bohr’s reply to the argument of A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen (EPR) concerning the incompleteness, or else nonlocality, of quantum mechanics. Bohr shows EPR’s argument to be deficient on their own terms, by virtue of an ambiguity found in their application of the criterion of reality they propose to the phenomena in question. He also offers an alternative interpretation of the EPR experiment itself, the thought experiment proposed by EPR, as part of his overall interpretation of quantum mechanics as complementarity.

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This is a reprinting of Flint’s response to EPR, originally signed only as ‘H.T.F.’ Flint begins with a fairly accurate outline of the argument in the EPR paper – with which he agrees – but then he expresses doubts as to the validity of the reality criterion. Without describing the nature of these doubts, he concludes by further agreeing with EPR in desiring a more direct description of reality than the one currently provided by quantum mechanics.

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1935. “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?”: The EPR Experiment and Complementarity

Arkady Plotnitsky

SpringerBriefs in physics•Sep 4, 2012•1 citation
This study posits that Bohr failed to defend the completeness of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality against Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen’s (EPR) paper. Although there are many papers in the literature that focus on Bohr’s argument in his reply to the EPR paper, the purpose of the current paper is not to clarify Bohr’s argument. Instead, I contend that regardless of which interpretation of Bohr’s argument is correct, his defense of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality remained incomplete. For example, a recent trend in studies of Bohr’s work is to suggest he considered the wave-function description to be epistemic. However, such an interpretation cannot be used to defend the completeness of the quantum mechanical description.
The article offers a rereading of Bohr’s reply to the argument of A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen (EPR) concerning the incompleteness, or else nonlocality, of quantum mechanics. Bohr shows EPR’s argument to be deficient on their own terms, by virtue of an ambiguity found in their application of the criterion of reality they propose to the phenomena in question. He also offers an alternative interpretation of the EPR experiment itself, the thought experiment proposed by EPR, as part of his overall interpretation of quantum mechanics as complementarity.