Paradox Lost: Images of the Quantum

by Philip R. Wallace

Book Overview

"Medical scientists use the word iatrogenic' to refer to disabilities that are the consequence of medical treatment. We believe that some such word might be coined to refer to philosophical difficulties for which philosophers themselves are responsible" Sir Peter Medawar Arguing that quantum theory as it stands is perhaps the most comprehensive, well-verified, and successful theory in the history of science, the author clears away the impression...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1461284686
• ISBN13: 9781461284680
• Release Date: September 2011
• Publisher: Springer
• Length: 166 Pages
• Weight: 0.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

free your mind from Copenhagen prison

The human mind has been in a mental prison for about 70 years. People have lost their relation to objective reality and live in a state of intellectual schizophrenia. People who don't understand a bit of Quantum mechanics are speculating on the nonsense of "role of observer" the "loss of objective reality" etc. Physics-students whose brains are already conditioned by established interpretation (Copenhagen interpretation) don't realize the contradictions inherent to it and accept the nonsense as the "new way of thinking". Some who have not lost their minds try to take refuge in Bohm's theory or Everett's/David Deutsch's Many world interpretations that are both unfortunately dead ends.This book is an important step to free the minds from this mental prison. I agree with almost everything that is written in it. The only reservations I have about the book are about the quantum nonlocality. He is correct that the two photons emitted in EPR type experiment in opposite directions overlap throughout the space because "both" are spherical waves. But this alone doesn't explain how a change in wave function that occurs in a measurement at some point can influence a change of the wave function at a very far point almost instantaneously as the experimental evidence indicates. Thus I suspect nnonlocality is a fact we cannot circumvent. The only possible reconciliation of an EPR event with special relativity may be that there are no superluminal quantummechanical currents associated with an EPR event. However this is a minor technical disagreement.I recommend the book strongly to anyone who is interested in quantum mechanics and specially to professionals working in the field of physics. ....

Debunking and Demystifying

Not for the novice, this is a very dense book with little breathing room. But what a great antidote for all the popular books that purport to explain quantum by (paradoxically) perpuating the beauty of paradox! As a Zen paradoxes hinge on semantic ambiguity, incongruities in quantum theory arise when they (or experimental results) are described in inappropriate terms. The problem is not with the theory, the problem is that the theory is expected to explain every detail of "reality". The author argues that this is not scientifically possible, so when science is expected to fill the role of philosophy or religion, is it any wonder that people can make up thought experiments that make no logical sense?Still, just what ARE the correct interpretations of those wierd quantum properties?

Don't try to talk about QM without reading this book!

What a breath of fresh air this book is! Finally, a clear and cogent explanation that all the supposed paradoxes of Quantum Mechanics are the result of our attempts to translate airtight mathematical concepts into flawed natural language - while trying deperately to maintain outdated ideas about the subatomic world (such as the idea that electrons are little tennis balls). The observer creates the phenomenon? Don't be ridiculous. Faster than light communication? Nonsense. Every New-Age guru and all their followers should study this book - do you hear me, Deepak Chopra? I've said it before and I'll say it again - if you want to use the words 'Quantum Mechanics' in a sentence, read this book first. You might learn something.