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Christoph
Lehner,
Max Planck Institute for the History
of Scence:
Reality in
Many Worlds? Einstein's Realism and Everett's Quantum Mechanics
Einstein's realism, long dismissed
as a naive prejudice out of touch with the sophistication of
contemporary physics and philosophy, has experienced a surprising
renaissance in the last decades. Many physicists, philosophers, and
historians have argued that Einstein's critique of quantum mechanics
has to be taken very seriously, but the exact meaning of
Einstein's concept of reality has been difficult to pin down. Going
back to Einstein's reflections on the meaning of relativity in his two
theories of relativity, I will offer a new analysis of Einstein's
concept of "physical reality" as a methodological requirement and not
an epistemological or metaphysical one, as it has been commonly
seen. Rather than being disproven by the developments of
twentieth century physics, I argue that Einstein's considerations throw
light on the theoretical apparatus of modern physics up to this day.
I will discuss Einstein's critique of the Copenhagen interpretation in
the light of this concept of physical reality and especially its role
in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper. Bell's inequalities and their
empirical confirmation show the impossibility of Einstein's preferred
conclusion that quantum mechanics is an incomplete representation of a
more fundamental field theory. So the question is where we need to part
ways with Einstein's analysis. I show that most current interpretations
of quantum mechanics give up either Einstein's methodological realism
or the principle of local interaction. Only Everett's relative state
interpretation is able to preserve both.
tirsdag, den 20.
oktober 2009, kl. 17.00
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