Related papers: A Quantum Story
After the development of a self-consistent quantum formalism nearly a century ago, there ensued a quest to understand the often counterintuitive predictions of the theory. These endeavors invariably begin with the assumption of the "truth"…
It is the matter of fact that quantum mechanics operates with notions that are not determined in the frame of the mechanics' formalism. Among them we can call the notion of "wave-particle" (that, however, does not appear in both classical…
Quantum mechanics, one of the most successful theories in the history of science, was created to account for physical systems not describable by classical physics. Though it is consistent with all experiments conducted thus far, many of its…
After some historical remarks concerning Schroedinger's discovery of wave mechanics, we present a unified formalism for the mathematical description of classical and quantum-mechanical systems, utilizing elements of the theory of operator…
The quantum formalism is a ``measurement'' formalism--a phenomenological formalism describing certain macroscopic regularities. We argue that it can be regarded, and best be understood, as arising from Bohmian mechanics, which is what…
We begin by discussing ``What exists?'', i.e. ontology, in Classical Physics which provided a description of physical phenomena at the macroscopic level. The microworld however necessitates a introduction of Quantum ideas for its…
Is quantum mechanics about 'states'? Or is it basically another kind of probability theory? It is argued that the elementary formalism of quantum mechanics operates as a well-justified alternative to 'classical' instantiations of a…
Quantum mechanics is usually presented starting from a series of postulates about the mathematical framework. In this work we show that those same postulates can be derived by assuming that measurements are discrete interactions: that is,…
Historically, appearance of the quantum theory led to a prevailing view that Nature is indeterministic. The arguments for the indeterminism and proposals for indeterministic and deterministic approaches are reviewed. These include collapse…
The question of what ontological message (if any) is encoded in the formalism of contemporary physics is, to say the least, controversial. The reasons for this state of affairs are psychological and neurobiological. The processes by which…
Quantum mechanics is a fundamentally probabilistic theory (at least so far as the empirical predictions are concerned). It follows that, if one wants to properly understand quantum mechanics, it is essential to clearly understand the…
One hundred years after the creation of quantum theory, there is no consensus on the kind of reality that is described by the theory. Here, I attribute the lack of progress to the prevailing interpretative methodology, which invariably…
In this article we present a possible way to make usual quantum mechanics fully compatible with physical realism, defined as the statement that the goal of physics is to study entities of the natural world, existing independently from any…
To understand the foundations of quantum mechanics, we have to think carefully about how theoretical concepts are rooted in -- and limited by -- the nature of experience, as Bohr attempted to show. Geometrical pictures of physical phenomena…
The one particle quantum mechanics is considered in the frame of a N-body classical kinetics in the phase space. Within this framework, the scenario of a subquantum structure for the quantum particle, emerges naturally, providing an…
The (consistent or decoherent) histories interpretation provides a consistent realistic ontology for quantum mechanics, based on two main ideas. First, a logic (system of reasoning) is employed which is compatible with the Hilbert-space…
Recent developments in the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics have brought the theory closer to that of classical probability and statistics. On the other hand, the unique character of quantum physics sets many of the questions…
The author's opinion on the interpretation of quantum mechanics is further elucidated. Not only may quantum mechanics be a description of the sub-microscopic world that is profoundly different from what is often asserted, particularly…
Precise rules are developed in order to formalize the reasoning processes involved in standard non-relativistic quantum mechanics, with the help of analogies from classical physics. A classical or quantum description of a mechanical system…
There are good motivations for considering some type of quantum histories formalism. Several possible formalisms are known, defined by different definitions of event and by different selection criteria for sets of histories. These…