|
|
| Program > Philosophy and Physics |
| Programme > Philosophie et Physique |
| Slobodan
Perovic
(York University) A Historical Reminder to the Proponents of the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Why did Schrödinger take Ill in 1926? |
|
Upon closer examination Hugh Everett’s compelling account of relative
state displays some remarkable
similarities on fundamental issues to the ideas of Schrödinger
proposed at the beginning of the quantum revolution, in 1926.
In his 1926 papers E. Schrödinger argued against N. Bohr’s
discontinuous and indeterministic account of quantum phenomena,
suggesting that the atomism of classical mechanics fails for very
small dimensions of the path and for very great curvatures. Rey optics
and classical mechanics fail in an analogous way. The true laws of
quantum mechanics show that the particle cannot be treated as a single
unit, but as a manifold of paths. Everett similarly started from the
idea of the completeness of the wave mechanical account, and argued
that the results of the quantum experiments obtained in classical
terms (as single values) are just appearances derivable from
the wave mechanical account. Feynman’s path integrals approach and
Gell-Man’s work in the 1950’s might prove to be critical steps
which encouraged Everett to pursue these ideas.
Schrödinger’s interpretation however was
confuted by Bohr. He agreed with Bohr’s experimental critique based
on the experiments with Compton’s effect and the experiments
performed by J. Franck, and Geiger and Bothe that described the
observed interactions in terms of ordinary classical particles. I will
examine whether Everett’s ideas and the ideas of his successors
can deal with the experimental evidence that Schrödinger found
to be so strong against the universal wave-mechanical account of the
physical world that it led him to acknowledge Bohr’s points.
Department
of Philosophy
|
|
|
