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CLARENDO Quantum Mechanics An Empiricist View n ,ie, . V-s Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press, New York © Bas C. van Fraassen 1991 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Van Fraassen, Bas. C., 1941- Quantum mechanics: an empiricist view/Bas C. van Fraassen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Quantum theory 2. Science-Philosophy. I. Title. QC174.12.V34 1991 530.1'2-dc20 ' 90-26302 ISBN 0-19-824861-X ISBN 0-19-823980-7 (pbk) Typeset by Keytec Typesetting Ltd, Bridport, Dorset Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford & King's Lynn Que, touchant les choses que nos sens n’aperfoivent point, il suffit d’expliquer comment elles peuvent etre . . . Rene Descartes, Principes, iv. 204 PREFACE Quantum theory grew up, from Planck to Heisenberg and Schroedinger, in response to a welter of new experimental phenomena: measurements of the heat radiation spectrum, the photoelectric effect, specific heats of solids, radioactive decay, the hydrogen spectrum, and confusingly much more. Yet this theory, emerging from the mire and blood of empirical research, radically affected the scientific world-picture. If it did describe a world ‘behind the phenomena', that world was so esoteric as to be literally unimaginable. The very language it used was broken: an analogical extension of the classical language that it discre¬ dits, and redeemed at best by the mathematics that it tries to gloss. Interpretation of quantum theory became genuinely feasible only after von Neumann’s theoretical unification in 1932. Von Neumann himself, in that work, attempted to codify what he took to be the common understanding. Astonishingly, the attempt led him to assert that in measurement something happens which violates Schroedinger’s equation, the theory’s cornerstone. As he saw very clearly, interpretation enters a circle when its main principle is Born’s Rule for measurement outcome probabilities, while at the same time measurements are processes in the domain of the theory itself. Behold the en¬ chanted forest: every road leads into it, and none leads out—or does the hero’s sword cleave the wood by magic? An empiricist bias will be evident throughout this book, but my own interpretation of quantum mechanics does not begin until Chapter 9. The first three chapters provide philosophical background; though they overlap my Laws and Symmetry, I have tried to make them interesting in their own right. The next four chapters mainly outline the achievements of foundational research, though with an eye to the philosophical issues to come. The negative part is to show that the phenomena themselves, and not theoretical motives, can suffice to eliminate Common Cause models of the observable world. The positive part is the conclusion that there are adequate descriptions of Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/quantummechanicsOOOOvanf