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Prologue

Emily Adlam

Published Jun 12, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract This chapter puts forward the suggestion that the measurement problem must be understood as a problem of epistemology, and briefly summarizes the main arguments that will be made in the book.
DOI
10.1093/9780197808887.003.0001

Related papers

Conclusion

Emily Adlam

Abstract This chapter summarizes some of the lessons for scientific epistemology that can be drawn from the exploration of the measurement problem throughout the book, and expresses optimism about the possibility of using epistemic constraints as a way to break out of the long-standing impasse over the measurement problem.

•Jun 12, 2025•0 citations

Problems with “measurement”

Walter Whitham

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.

Physics World•May 1, 1991•0 citations

What is the Measurement Problem?

Emily Adlam

Abstract Although much has been written about the measurement problem, there is still significant disagreement about what the problem really is and what a solution should look like. In this chapter I present a brief introduction to quantum mechanics and the measurement problem, and then I argue that the measurement problem should be understood in part a problem of epistemology: solving the problem requires telling a consistent story about how the reality underlying quantum mechanics could allow us to reliably come to know about that reality via the medium of our empirical evidence for quantum mechanics, and an interpretation of quantum mechanics which fails to achieve this is self-undermining.

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Saving Science from Quantum Mechanics

Emily Adlam

Abstract This book aims to reconceptualize the quantum measurement problem as a problem of epistemology, and to explore the epistemic problems faced by a number of popular interpretations of quantum mechanics. It argues that a number of well-known solutions to the measurement problem, including the many-worlds interpretation and the observer-relative interpretations, face potentially fatal epistemic problems. It also delves into the relationship between physics and epistemology, using the measurement problem to motivate an account of scneitifc epistemology which highlights the role of coherence in justifying the use we make of measurements and observations in the scientific process.

•Jun 12, 2025•3 citations

Probability and measurement

Kenichi Konishi, Giampiero Paffuti

Abstract In this chapter we shall discuss these and related questions. We shall summarize what is well established and what has been clarified in the last several decades concerning these issues, trying to distinguish as clearly as possible different issues which are all called the “measurement problem”, and in each case, making an effort to clarify as sharply as possible the nature of the problem.

•Mar 5, 2009•0 citations

Where to from Here?

Emily Adlam

Abstract This chapter discusses our options for solving the measurement problem in a way which avoids the epistemic difficulties discussed in previous chapters but also works for quantum field theory. I offer a forward-looking summary of outstanding problems and suggests some routes for further research. Finally, I comment on further epistemic problems that may arise in quantum gravity and consider whether epistemic considerations could help understand how to formulate a theory of quantum gravity.

•Jun 12, 2025•0 citations
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.
Abstract Although much has been written about the measurement problem, there is still significant disagreement about what the problem really is and what a solution should look like. In this chapter I present a brief introduction to quantum mechanics and the measurement problem, and then I argue that the measurement problem should be understood in part a problem of epistemology: solving the problem requires telling a consistent story about how the reality underlying quantum mechanics could allow us to reliably come to know about that reality via the medium of our empirical evidence for quantum mechanics, and an interpretation of quantum mechanics which fails to achieve this is self-undermining.
Abstract This book aims to reconceptualize the quantum measurement problem as a problem of epistemology, and to explore the epistemic problems faced by a number of popular interpretations of quantum mechanics. It argues that a number of well-known solutions to the measurement problem, including the many-worlds interpretation and the observer-relative interpretations, face potentially fatal epistemic problems. It also delves into the relationship between physics and epistemology, using the measurement problem to motivate an account of scneitifc epistemology which highlights the role of coherence in justifying the use we make of measurements and observations in the scientific process.
Abstract This chapter discusses our options for solving the measurement problem in a way which avoids the epistemic difficulties discussed in previous chapters but also works for quantum field theory. I offer a forward-looking summary of outstanding problems and suggests some routes for further research. Finally, I comment on further epistemic problems that may arise in quantum gravity and consider whether epistemic considerations could help understand how to formulate a theory of quantum gravity.