Book Review
The 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.

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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)ψ=c1a1b1+c2a2b2,with c1c2; so that the reduced density matrix attached to spin a isc12a1a1+c22a2a2,the idea in question is that spin a then actually possesses either property a1a1 or property a2a2, with probabilities that are c12 and c22 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...

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