Quantum Philosophy : Understanding and Interpreting Contemporary Science.
Title:
Quantum Philosophy : Understanding and Interpreting Contemporary Science.
Author:
Omnès, Roland.
ISBN:
9781400822867
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (275 pages)
Contents:
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Prelude -- PART ONE: THE LEGACY -- CHAPTER I: Classical Logic -- Pythagoras and the Pariah -- Plato and the Logos -- The Logic of Aristotle and of Chrysippus -- The Paradoxes -- Two Useful Notions -- The Universals -- CHAPTER II: Classical Physics -- Astronomy, from Hipparchus to Kepler -- The Dawn of Mechanics -- Newton's Dynamics -- Waves in the Ether -- The Beginning of Electromagnetism -- A Turning Point: Maxwell's Equations -- CHAPTER III: Classical Mathematics -- Classical Mathematics -- Rigor and Profusion in the Nineteenth Century -- Mathematics and Infinity -- CHAPTER IV: Classical Philosophy of Knowledge -- Francis Bacon and Experience -- Descartes and Reason -- Locke and Empiricism -- Digression: Cognition Sciences -- Hume's Pragmatism -- Kant -- PART TWO: THE FRACTURE -- CHAPTER V: Formal Mathematics -- The Age of Formalism -- Formal Logic -- Symbols and Sets -- Propositions -- Some Remarks Regarding Truth -- Taming Infinity -- Today's Mathematics -- The Crisis in the Foundations of Set Theory -- Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem -- A Tentative Conclusion -- CHAPTER VI: The Philosophy of Mathematics -- What Is Mathematics? -- Mathematical Realism -- Nominalism -- Mathematical Sociologism -- Mathematics and Physical Reality -- CHAPTER VII: Formal Physics -- The Century of Formal Physics -- Relativity -- The Relativistic Theory of Gravitation -- The Prehistory of the Atom -- Classical Physics in a Straitjacket -- The Assassination of Classical Physics -- The Harvest of Results -- CHAPTER VIII: The Epistemology of Physics -- Why Do We Need Interpretation? -- Uncertainties -- The Principle of Complementarity -- The Reduction of the Wave Function -- PART THREE: FROM FORMAL BACK TO VISUAL: THE QUANTUM CASE -- CHAPTER IX: Between Logic and Physics.
The Outline of a Program -- The Logic of Common Sense -- Classical Dynamics and Determinism -- With the Help of an Angel -- Observables -- Rudiments of a Quantum Dialect -- Histories -- The Role of Probabilities -- The Logic of the Quantum World -- Complementarity -- A Logical Law of Physics -- CHAPTER X: Rediscovering Common Sense -- The World on a Large Scale -- The Logic of Common Sense -- Determinism -- A First Philosophical Survey -- CHAPTER XI: From the Measurable to the Unmeasurable -- The Poignant Problem of Interferences -- The Decoherence Effect -- The Wonders of Decoherence: Physical -- The Wonders of Decoherence: Logical -- Last Wonders: The Direction of Time -- Measurement Theory -- Wave Function Reduction Revisited -- The Chasm -- Addendum -- CHAPTER XII: On Realism -- A Brief History of Realism -- Quantum Physics and Realism -- Ordinary Reality -- Rationality versus Realism -- The "EPR" Experiment -- Bell and Aspect -- Controversies about Histories -- Toward a Wider Realism -- PART FOUR: STATE OF THE QUESTION AND PERSPECTIVES -- CHAPTER XIII: A New Beginning -- A Preliminary Report -- The Beginnings of a Philosophy -- The Religious Temptation and the Sacred -- CHAPTER XIV: What Is Science? -- Science as Representation -- On Certain Types of Laws -- The Transformations of Science -- Thomas Kuhn -- CHAPTER XV: Method -- A Method for Judging, Not for Building -- Which Method? -- A Four-Stage Method -- The Nature of the Four Stages -- The Lesson of the Failed Attempts -- Method and the Social Sciences -- Consistency and Beauty -- The Flexibility of Principles -- The Thing in the World Most Evenly Distributed -- CHAPTER XVI: Vanishing Perspectives -- The Theory of Knowledge -- Logos -- The Instauration -- Founding Science -- Glossary -- Name Index -- Subject Index.
Abstract:
In this magisterial work, Roland Omnès takes us from the academies of ancient Greece to the laboratories of modern science as he seeks to do no less than rebuild the foundations of the philosophy of knowledge. One of the world's leading quantum physicists, Omnès reviews the history and recent development of mathematics, logic, and the physical sciences to show that current work in quantum theory offers new answers to questions that have puzzled philosophers for centuries: Is the world ultimately intelligible? Are all events caused? Do objects have definitive locations? Omnès addresses these profound questions with vigorous arguments and clear, colorful writing, aiming not just to advance scholarship but to enlighten readers with no background in science or philosophy. The book opens with an insightful and sweeping account of the main developments in science and the philosophy of knowledge from the pre-Socratic era to the nineteenth century. Omnès then traces the emergence in modern thought of a fracture between our intuitive, commonsense views of the world and the abstract and--for most people--incomprehensible world portrayed by advanced physics, math, and logic. He argues that the fracture appeared because the insights of Einstein and Bohr, the logical advances of Frege, Russell, and Gödel, and the necessary mathematics of infinity of Cantor and Hilbert cannot be fully expressed by words or images only. Quantum mechanics played an important role in this development, as it seemed to undermine intuitive notions of intelligibility, locality, and causality. However, Omnès argues that common sense and quantum mechanics are not as incompatible as many have thought. In fact, he makes the provocative argument that the "consistent-histories" approach to quantum mechanics, developed over the past fifteen years, places common sense (slightly reappraised
and circumscribed) on a firm scientific and philosophical footing for the first time. In doing so, it provides what philosophers have sought through the ages: a sure foundation for human knowledge. Quantum Philosophy is a profound work of contemporary science and philosophy and an eloquent history of the long struggle to understand the nature of the world and of knowledge itself.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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