The Epistemic Approach to Quantum Mechanics

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Despite all the badminton we've done at the Copenhagen interpretation, it's sort of comeback or at least versions of it have come back in the form of these epistemic approaches to quantum mechanics. Epistemic meaning that the wave function is about our knowledge about the world rather than a thing in the world. And that's certainly endemic. But I wouldn't say that the people who support these interpretations are all people who say, no,. quantum mechanics is really only about the outcomes of experiments and we shouldn't be doing more than that as physicists.

There are many mysteries surrounding quantum mechanics. To me, the biggest mysteries are why physicists haven’t yet agreed on a complete understanding of the theory, and even more why they mostly seem content not to try. This puzzling attitude has historical roots that go back to the Bohr-Einstein debates. Adam Becker, in his book What Is Real?, looks at this history, and discusses how physicists have shied away from the foundations of quantum mechanics in the subsequent years. We discuss why this has been the case, and talk about some of the stubborn iconoclasts who insisted on thinking about it anyway.

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Adam Becker received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan. He is currently a science writer and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society at UC Berkeley. His book What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics comes out in paperback on Sept. 3, 2019.

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