Related papers: Complementarity and Scientific Rationality
Quantum mechanics (QM) has attracted a considerable amount of mysticism, in public opinion and even among academic researches, due to some of its conceptually puzzling features, such as the modification of reality by the observer and…
The foundations of quantum mechanics have been plagued by controversy throughout the 85 year history of the field. It is argued that lack of clarity in the formulation of basic philosophical questions leads to unnecessary obscurity and…
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…
It is a widespread belief that results like G\"odel's incompleteness theorems or the intrinsic randomness of quantum mechanics represent fundamental limitations to humanity's strive for scientific knowledge. As the argument goes, there are…
This paper examines the incommensurability thesis - one of the most important and controversial ideas to emerge from the simultaneous work of Kuhn and Feyerabend. In the first half, I discuss three aspects of incommensurability -…
The long lasting discussion on the completeness of quantum theory (QT) has not yet come to an end. The discussion is impeded by the lack of a clear understanding of what makes up the contents of a theory of physics in general and of QT…
A test of quantum mechanics proposed by K. Popper and dealing with two-particle entangled states emitted from a fixed source has been criticized by several authors. Some of them claim that the test becomes inconclusive once all the quantum…
Einstein's philosophy of physics (as clarified by Fine, Howard, and Held) was predicated on his Trennungsprinzip, a combination of separability and locality, without which he believed objectification, and thereby "physical thought" and…
The quantum theory of decoherence plays an important role in a pragmatist interpretation of quantum theory. It governs the descriptive content of claims about values of physical magnitudes and offers advice on when to use quantum…
Difficulties and discomfort with the interpretation of quantum mechanics are due to differences in language between it and classical physics. Analogies to The Special Theory of Relativity, which also required changes in the basic worldview…
The interpretation of quantum mechanics has been discussed since this theme first was brought up by Einstein and Bohr. This article describes a proposal for a new foundation of quantum theory, partly drawing upon ideas from statistical…
Everett's interpretation of quantum mechanics was proposed to avoid problems inherent in the prevailing interpretational frame. It assumes that quantum mechanics can be applied to any system and that the state vector always evolves…
Afshar et al. claim that their experiment shows a violation of the complementarity inequality. In this work, we study their claim using a modified Mach-Zehnder setup that represents a simpler version of the Afshar experiment. We find that…
I distinguish two senses in which one can take a given physical theory to be `complete'. On the first, a complete physical theory is one that, in principle, completely describes physical reality. On the second, a complete physical theory is…
The concept of complementarity, originally defined for non-commuting observables of quantum systems with states of non-vanishing dispersion, is extended to classical dynamical systems with a partitioned phase space. Interpreting partitions…
On the seminal paper written by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen [1], a critique to the completeness of quantum mechanics was posed. Part of the critique consisted in the following argument: if quantum mechanics is complete, then, two physical…
Our interpretive conjecture is inspired by the epistemology due to Ferdinand Gonseth (1890-1975) who interpreted complementarity as the relationship between profound and apparent reality horizons. It consists, on the one hand, on enlarging…
I argue that the Oxford school Everett interpretation is internally incoherent, because we cannot claim that in an Everettian universe the kinds of reasoning we have used to arrive at our beliefs about quantum mechanics would lead us to…
A central feature in the Copenhagen interpretation is the use of classical concepts from the outset. Modern developments show, however, that the emergence of classical properties can be understood within the framework of quantum theory…
I make a review on the aplications of the Bohm-De Broglie interpretation of quantum mechanics to quantum cosmology. In the framework of minisuperspaces models, I show how quantum cosmological effects in Bohm's view can avoid the initial…