Quantum Reality, Relativistic Causality, and Closing the Epistemic Circle

In July 2006, a major international conference was held at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada, to celebrate the career and work of a remarkable man of letters. Abner Shimony, who is well known for his pioneering contributions to foundations of quantum mechanics, is a physicist as well as a philosopher, and is highly respected among the intellectuals of both communities. In line with Shimony's conviction that philosophical investigation is not to be divorced from theoretical and empirical work in the sciences, the conference brought together leading theoretical physicists, experimentalists, as well as philosophers. This book collects twenty-three original essays stemming from the conference, on topics including history and methodology of science, Bell's theorem, probability theory, the uncertainty principle, stochastic modifications of quantum mechanics, and relativity theory. It ends with a transcript of a fascinating discussion between Lee Smolin and Shimony, ranging over the entire spectrum of Shimony's wide-ranging contributions to philosophy, science, and philosophy of science.

Inhalt

Passion at a Distance.- Philosophy, Methodology and History.- Balancing Necessity and Fallibilism: Charles Sanders Peirce on the Status of Mathematics and its Intersection with the Inquiry into Nature.- Newton's Methodology.- Whitehead's Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics (QM).- Bohr and the Photon.- Bell's Theorem and Nonlocality.- Extending the Concept of an "Element of Reality" to Work with Inefficient Detectors.- A General Proof of Nonlocality without Inequalities for Bipartite States.- On the Separability of Physical Systems.- Bell Inequalities: Many Questions, a Few Answers.- Do Experimental Violations of Bell Inequalities Require a Nonlocal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics? II: Analysis à la Bell.- The Physics of 2 ? 1+1.- Probability, Uncertainty, and Stochastic Modifications of Quantum Mechanics.- Interpretations of Probability in Quantum Mechanics: A Case of "Experimental Metaphysics".- "No Information Without Disturbance": Quantum Limitations of Measurement.- How Stands Collapse II.- Is There a Relation Between the Breakdown of the Superposition Principle and an Indeterminacy in the Structure of the Einsteinian Space-Time?.- Indistinguishability or Stochastic Dependence?.- Relativity.- Plane Geometry in Spacetime.- The Transient nows.- Quantum in Gravity?.- A Proposed Test of the Local Causality of Spacetime.- Quantum Gravity Computers: On the Theory of Computation with Indefinite Causal Structure.- "Definability," "Conventionality," and Simultaneity in Einstein-Minkowski Space-Time.- Concluding Words.- Bistro Banter.- UnfinishedWork: A Bequest.