The Relative-State Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics is as successful a scientific
theory as has ever been produced, but there is no
real agreement as to what it means. Much ink has
been spilled in efforts to give a workable
interpretation to the formalism, and there appears
to be no end in sight to this program. John von
Neumann''s "Catastrophe of Infinite Regress" drove
some of the philosophical work of Werner Heisenberg,
John Wheeler, and von Neumann himself, and concern
with the catastrophe manifested itself in each man''s
work as an attempt to find a mechanism of quantum
mechanical collapse. This work examines each man''s
solution to the problem and concludes that the way
out of the trap is to deny that the regress is
catastrophic -- the state of a quantum system is
seen as analogous to time intervals in that both are
relative to the reference frame of observers.

Autorentext

James Henderson studied philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he earned his Ph.D. He currently teaches at the University of Pittsburgh at Titusville.

Klappentext

Quantum mechanics is as successful a scientific theory as has ever been produced, but there is no real agreement as to what it means. Much ink has been spilled in efforts to give a workable interpretation to the formalism, and there appears to be no end in sight to this program. John von Neumann's "Catastrophe of Infinite Regress" drove some of the philosophical work of Werner Heisenberg, John Wheeler, and von Neumann himself, and concern with the catastrophe manifested itself in each man's work as an attempt to find a mechanism of quantum mechanical collapse. This work examines each man's solution to the problem and concludes that the way out of the trap is to deny that the regress is catastrophic -- the state of a quantum system is seen as analogous to time intervals in that both are relative to the reference frame of observers.