Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of papers on quantum philosophy by J. S. Bell
- Preface to the first edition
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: John Bell and the second quantum revolution
- 1 On the problem of hidden variables in quantum mechanics
- 2 On the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox
- 3 The moral aspect of quantum mechanics
- 4 Introduction to the hidden-variable question
- 5 Subject and object
- 6 On wave packet reduction in the Coleman–Hepp model
- 7 The theory of local beables
- 8 Locality in quantum mechanics: reply to critics
- 9 How to teach special relativity
- 10 Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen experiments
- 11 The measurement theory of Everett and de Broglie's pilot wave
- 12 Free variables and local causality
- 13 Atomic-cascade photons and quantum-mechanical nonlocality
- 14 de Broglie–Bohm, delayed-choice double-slit experiment, and density matrix
- 15 Quantum mechanics for cosmologists
- 16 Bertlmann's socks and the nature of reality
- 17 On the impossible pilot wave
- 18 Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics
- 19 Beables for quantum field theory
- 20 Six possible worlds of quantum mechanics
- 21 EPR correlations and EPW distributions
- 22 Are there quantum jumps?
- 23 Against ‘measurement’
- 24 La nouvelle cuisine
11 - The measurement theory of Everett and de Broglie's pilot wave
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of papers on quantum philosophy by J. S. Bell
- Preface to the first edition
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: John Bell and the second quantum revolution
- 1 On the problem of hidden variables in quantum mechanics
- 2 On the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox
- 3 The moral aspect of quantum mechanics
- 4 Introduction to the hidden-variable question
- 5 Subject and object
- 6 On wave packet reduction in the Coleman–Hepp model
- 7 The theory of local beables
- 8 Locality in quantum mechanics: reply to critics
- 9 How to teach special relativity
- 10 Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen experiments
- 11 The measurement theory of Everett and de Broglie's pilot wave
- 12 Free variables and local causality
- 13 Atomic-cascade photons and quantum-mechanical nonlocality
- 14 de Broglie–Bohm, delayed-choice double-slit experiment, and density matrix
- 15 Quantum mechanics for cosmologists
- 16 Bertlmann's socks and the nature of reality
- 17 On the impossible pilot wave
- 18 Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics
- 19 Beables for quantum field theory
- 20 Six possible worlds of quantum mechanics
- 21 EPR correlations and EPW distributions
- 22 Are there quantum jumps?
- 23 Against ‘measurement’
- 24 La nouvelle cuisine
Summary
In 1957 H. Everett published a paper setting out what seemed to be a radically new interpretation of quantum mechanics. His approach has recently received increasing attention. He did not refer to the ideas of de Broglie of thirty years before nor to the intervening elaboration of those ideas by Bohm. Yet it will be argued here that the elimination of arbitrary and inessential elements from Everett's theory leads back to, and throws new light on, the concepts of de Broglie.
Everett was motivated by the notion of a quantum theory of gravitation and cosmology. In a thoroughly quantum cosmology, a quantum mechanics of the whole world, the wave function of the world could not be interpreted in the usual way. For this usual interpretation refers only to the statistics of measurement results for an observer intervening from outside the quantum system. When that system is the whole world, there is nothing outside. This situation presents no particular difficulty for the traditional (or ‘Copenhagen’) philosophy, which holds that a classical conception of the macroscopic world is logically prior to the quantum conception of the microscopic. The microscopic world is described by wave functions which are determined by and have implications for macroscopic phenomena in experimental set-ups.
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- Information
- Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum MechanicsCollected Papers on Quantum Philosophy, pp. 93 - 99Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004