Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken G
Moreover, these fundamental issues are not limited to our ability to know various things, say due to technological limitations, they have physical ramifications, like diffraction. The Bohmian picture that you favor does nothing to change that situation-- it allows one to imagine, with no predictive benefit whatsoever, that certain things are knowable but never actually known. To even entertain that notion is to have left objective science, obviously. Bohmian mechanics is not only pure philosophy, it's not particularly useful philosophy either. All it does is allow people to use classical pictures behind the quantum mechanics, while others use quantum mechanical pictures behind classical mechanics. In my opinion, either way that represents a simple loss of contact with what science actually is.
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There is actually a nice little book,
Quantum Mechanics and Experience, that discusses the difficulties in quantum mechanics related to measurement. It gets to the gist of the issues without being very mathematically demanding of the reader. It was recommended by Richard Muller to his class Physics for Future Presidents.
Moreover, the author of the book is a (gasp) philosopher, David Z. Albert. Apparently Albert had a lucid moment, and setting aside the penchant of some philosophers for obfuscation, wrote a fairly clear little book. Neither "noumena" nor its modern father, Kant, seem to play a role in the book. Albert seems to have maintained contact with science and with reality.