Steven French proposes a revolutionary new way of interpreting quantum physics, based on the phenomenological philosophy of Husserl. In 1939, physicists Fritz London and Edmund Bauer presented a discussion of measurement in quantum mechanics. Despite being widely referenced, their ‘little book’ has been significantly misunderstood, shaping an important debate about the influence of consciousness in the measurement process. French contends that London, influenced by Husserlian phenomenology, approached measurement from a unique perspective. This fresh analysis sheds a new light on London’s collaboration with Bauer, offering a groundbreaking alternative understanding of quantum mechanics that still acknowledges the role of consciousness, but in a fundamentally different way from traditional views.
Most interpretations of the theory approach it on the basis of the so-called ‘analytic’ tradition in philosophy. However, there has recently been a surge of interest in ‘continental’ approaches and this book offers a significant new contribution to such developments. Intertwining history and philosophy, it presents London’s background in physics and phenomenology, together with an outline of the latter as developed by Husserl, Gurwitsch, Merleau-Ponty, and others, as well as a detailed analysis of the work on measurement with Bauer. The book concludes by comparing the London and Bauer understanding with that afforded by Fuch’s QBism, Everett’s ‘Many Worlds’ interpretation, and Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics. It is hoped that this exploratory work will open up new avenues of thought with regard to one of our most fundamental physical theories.
978-0198897958, 978-0198897996, 978-0198897989, 978-0191999154
NOTE: This sale only consists of the eBook A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics: Cutting the Chain of Correlations in PDF and ePub format. No access codes are included.
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