Book ReviewThe Modal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Dennis Dieks and Pieter E. Vermaas (eds), The Modal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1998), viii+377 pp., ISBN 0-7923-5207-6.
Section snippets
Content of the Book
Viewed in the spirit just hinted at, the book is most interesting and exciting. Being composed of the papers of a discussion meeting held between experts in the field, it is, of course, no easy reading. And its introduction (by Dieks and Vermaas) is too general and qualitative to make it directly readable by theorists not previously acquainted with the subject (needless to say such an acquaintance can be gained: detailed references are provided by every contributor). On the other hand, the book
Analysis and Comment of Ideas
The main idea of the modal interpretation may be briefly sketched using a simple two spin-1/2 example. If the state of the pair is (with obvious notations)with c1≠c2; so that the reduced density matrix attached to spin a isthe idea in question is that spin a then actually possesses either property or property , with probabilities that are and respectively; so that, if we consider an ensemble of such pairs, the a spins in it constitute a proper
References (1)
- d'Espagnat, B. (1976) Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley), 2nd...