Quotes


"Most undergraduate courses on quantum theory never touch on the theory's profound conceptual problems. This is because the theory brings us right back to some of the central questions of philosophy and. as we know, there is no room for philosophy in a modern science degree. I find this an absurd situation. It is my opinion, expressed in this book, that quantum theory is philosophy. Oh, we can dress it up in grand phrases littered with jargon - state vector, hermitian operator, Hilbert space, projection amplitude, and so on - we can make it all very mechanistic and mathematical and scientific, but this does not completely hide the truth. Beneath the formalism must be an interpretation, and the interpretation is pure philosophy."

Jim Baggott, The Meaning of Quantum Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) x


"During more than half a century, countless philosophers and physicists have reproached quantum physics for not explaining the existence of a unique state of events. It is true that quantum theory does not offer any mechanism or suggestion in that respect. This is, they say, the indelible sign of a flaw in the theory, implying that a better theory should replace it in the future. In my opinion, this attitude originates in an idolatry of theoretical explanations. Those critics wish at all costs to see the universe conform to a mathematical law, down to the minutest details, and they certainly have reason to be frustrated. For a long time everything seemed to be going their way, but listen to the chasm growl. Come, you mortals, and look at Reality, at what is, at what is flowing in a river where nothing is ever in the same place twice, at what is endlessly creating and changing; look at all that and now dare reduce it to a mere appendix in the Logos of your mathematics, from which time is barred and where stillness dwells forever!"

Roland Omnes, Quantum Philosophy: Understanding and Interpreting Contemporary Science (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999) 214