Related papers: Laws, Symmetries, and Reality
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…
Since its emergence, quantum mechanics has been a challenge for an understanding of reality which is based on our intuition in a classical world. Nevertheless, it has often been tried to impose this understanding of reality on quantum…
We offer a fresh perspective on the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics as a way of thinking about the world described by quantum theory based on quantifiable notions of information. This allows us to provide a definition of a…
Quantum theory can be understood as pointing to an ontology of relations. I observe that this reading of quantum mechanics is supported by the ubiquity of relationality in contemporary fundamental physics, including in classical mechanics,…
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,…
A type of mechanics will be presented that possesses some distinctive properties. On the one hand, its physical description & rules of operation are readily comprehensible & intuitively clear. On the other, it fully satisfies all observable…
The fundamental physical theories that interpret and explain behaviour of matter in nature are dependent on several unobservables and insensibles in their construction. While a rigorous natural philosophy cannot take them for granted, there…
Quantum theory's irreducible empirical core is a probability calculus. While it presupposes the events to which (and on the basis of which) it serves to assign probabilities, and therefore cannot account for their occurrence, it has to be…
We consider the problem of quantum behavior in the finite background. Introduction of continuum or other infinities into physics leads only to technical complications without any need for them in description of empirical observations. The…
Results of measurements give legitimacy to a physical theory. What if acquiring these results in the first place necessitates what the same theory considers to be an interaction? In this note, we assume that theories account for…
I explore whether it is possible to make sense of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality by taking the proper subject of physics to be correlation and only correlation, and by separating the problem of understanding the…
In physical theories, boundary or initial conditions play the role of selecting special situations which can be described by a theory with its general laws. Cosmology has long been suspected to be different in that its fundamental theory…
Relational quantum mechanics (RQM) proposes an ontology of relations between physical systems, where any system can serve as an `observer' and any physical interaction between systems counts as a `measurement'. Quantities take unique values…
Quantum correlations and other phenomena characteristic to a quantum world can be understood as simply consequences of a principle derived from the postulates of Quantum Mechanics. This explanatory principle states that these phenomena…
A version of quantum theory is derived from a set of plausible assumptions related to the following general setting: For a given system there is a set of experiments that can be performed, and for each such experiment an ordinary…
Several new physics experiments in 1998 were performed and analyzed to show the subtlety of quantum theory, including the "wave-particle duality" and the non-separability of two-particle entangled state. Here it is shown that the…
Quantum mechanics marks a radical departure from the classical understanding of Nature, fostering an inherent randomness which forbids a deterministic description; yet the most fundamental departure arises from something different. As shown…
For a century, quantum theorists have been reading the mathematical entrails of quantum mechanics (QM) to divine the nature of quantum reality. But to little avail. In this paper a different approach is taken, namely to identify and explain…
The interaction between two parts in a compound quantum system may be reconsidered more completely than before and some new understandings and conclusions different from current quantum mechanics are obtained, including the conservation law…
Physical laws are a set of rules in the relationship between observations made by the experimenter. All these observations are made through a mechanism that links the external world to the experimenter's awareness, a mechanism which is not…