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Cambridge University Press eBooks

Epilogue

Ruth E. Kastner

Published Apr 22, 2022• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this epilogue, key points of the book are summarized, highlighting the transactional account of the measurement transition and thus TI’s resolution of the measurement problem. Reasons for historical neglect of the Wheeler–Feynman theory and the transactional formulation are discussed. It is noted that certain metaphysical and even cultural preconceptions such as the yang-heavy emphasis of Western thought may have inhibited open consideration of the direct-action theory of fields, which involves the yin element of response/reception/dissolution, just as the same preconceptions inhibited scientific understanding of the active role of the female ovum in reproductive biology.

DOI
10.1017/9781108907538.010

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The basic thesis of this book is that there is no quantum measurement problem. I do not mean by this that the apparent paradoxes of quantum mechanics arise because we fail to recognize ‘that quantum theory does not describe physical reality’ (Fuchs and Peres 2000a). Quantum theory describes reality just fine, like any other scientific theory worth taking seriously: describing (and explaining) reality is what the scientific enterprise is about. Nor do I mean that we have found solutions to the problem, ways to modify or supplement quantum mechanics so that the paradoxes are removed. I don’t actually think that we have found any very satisfactory solutions in this sense (at least not in the relativistic domain) but that isn’t my theme: even if we did have these modifications, they would be ways of changing from quantum physics, which supposedly does have a measurement problem, to some other theory, which supposedly doesn’t.

Oxford University Press eBooks•May 24, 2012•3 citations
In this epilogue, key points of the book are summarized, highlighting the transactional account of the measurement transition and thus TI’s resolution of the measurement problem. Reasons for historical neglect of the Wheeler–Feynman theory and the transactional formulation are discussed. It is noted that certain metaphysical and even cultural preconceptions such as the yang-heavy emphasis of Western thought may have inhibited open consideration of the direct-action theory of fields, which involves the yin element of response/reception/dissolution, just as the same preconceptions inhibited scientific understanding of the active role of the female ovum in reproductive biology.
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book presents with two different accounts of quantity: the class nominalist ‘neo-Ellisonian’ account and the ‘quasi-realist’ BP. It shows what was involved in making such a move and the class nominalist position was contrasted with realism. The book discusses the various positions and proposals have been restricted by qualifiers like “in the classical domain”. The application of mathematics crucially depends on this - hence the emphasis throughout the book on measurement and what this presupposes. The whole idea of ‘new directions’ in the theory of explanation is to allow for different styles and dimensions of explanations. What is then necessary for the instance view to apply to explanation in quantum mechanics is to incorporate the quantum state into the laws that also feature quantities.
The background for this book was a shift of interest among experimental physicists that began approximately 20 years ago. The shift was from quantum measurements on large ensembles of microscopic quantum objects, to experiments of very high precision on single, macroscopic objects. This shift was accompanied by developments in the “culture” of such measurements and the invention and elaboration of new experimental methods. In parallel with these experimental developments, there was a noticeable increase of theoretical interest in the foundations and interpretation of quantum theory, and even in attempts to revise its foundational principles. Although these efforts have not produced any significant changes in the fundamental structure of quantum theory, they have revealed a rather large number of “blank spots” and unsolved problems, to which the founders of quantum physics had paid no attention. A reasonable number of the blank spots have been filled in during the past decade. The reader has probably noticed that this book can be divided into two parts. In the first (chapters I―VII and XI), the authors have tried to present the modern approach to the quantum theory of measurement. This part can be regarded as a tutorial appendix to textbooks for advanced undergraduate or graduate-level courses in quantum mechanics, where little attention is usually paid to measurement theory.
This chapter reviews the original transactional interpretation as based on the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of radiation and demonstrates how the Born Rule for the probabilities of outcomes is a direct physical consequence of the transactional formulation. The chapter also accounts for the nature of “null measurements” and applies the transactional picture to the famous two-slit experiment to gain a better understanding of what it means for the experiment to be “finished” and how transactions illuminate the appearance and disappearance of interference based on the type of measurement being performed.
Bohr is said to have remarked that anybody who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it. No physicist, however, challenges its practical usefulness in predicting experimental results and providing an explanatory framework for an enormous range of study. Nevertheless, more thoughtful physicists have been astonished and disturbed by what is implied when attempts are made to interpret its meaning. As a result a variety of ingenious, and sometimes bizarre, schemes have been devised since its inception in order to make these implications more acceptable to the scientific mind. Some of these schemes have resulted in proposals which appear stranger than the problems they have been designed to resolve. After some sixty years there is no consensus of opinion upon the solution of the epistemological problems posed. Indeed the debate keeps on resurfacing in the scientific literature and continues to generate library shelves of books. Some progress, however, has been made and the late John Bell himself and the experimental work of Alain Aspect have demonstrated that some epistemological positions cannot be sustained.
Quantum field theory is a powerful language for the description of the subatomic constituents of the physical world and the laws and principles that govern them. This book contains up-to-date in-depth analyses, by a group of eminent physicists and philosophers of science, of our present understanding of its conceptual foundations, of the reasons why this understanding has to be revised so that the theory can go further, and of possible directions in which revisions may be promising and productive. These analyses will be of interest to graduate students and research workers in physics who want to know about the foundational problems of their subject. The book will also be of interest to professional philosophers, historians and sociologists of science, because it contains much material for metaphysical and methodological reflections, for historical and cultural analyses, and for sociological analyses of the way in which various factors contribute to the way the foundations are revised.
The basic thesis of this book is that there is no quantum measurement problem. I do not mean by this that the apparent paradoxes of quantum mechanics arise because we fail to recognize ‘that quantum theory does not describe physical reality’ (Fuchs and Peres 2000a). Quantum theory describes reality just fine, like any other scientific theory worth taking seriously: describing (and explaining) reality is what the scientific enterprise is about. Nor do I mean that we have found solutions to the problem, ways to modify or supplement quantum mechanics so that the paradoxes are removed. I don’t actually think that we have found any very satisfactory solutions in this sense (at least not in the relativistic domain) but that isn’t my theme: even if we did have these modifications, they would be ways of changing from quantum physics, which supposedly does have a measurement problem, to some other theory, which supposedly doesn’t.