A Philosopher's Understanding of Quantum Mechanics: Possibilities and Impossibilities of a Modal Interpretation

Description

This book is about how to understand quantum mechanics by means of a modal interpretation. Modal interpretations provide a general framework within which quantum mechanics can be considered as a theory that describes reality in terms of physical systems possessing definite properties. Quantum mechanics is standardly understood to be a theory about probabilities with which measurements have outcomes. Modal interpretations are relatively new attempts to present quantum mechanics as a theory which, like other physical theories, describes an observer-independent reality. In this book, Pieter Vermaas summarises the results of this work. The book will be of great value to undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in philosophy of science, and physics departments with an interest in learning about modal interpretations of quantum mechanics.

'... the strengths of this book are its clear, detailed exposition of the quantum formalism, and the way in which issues of interpretation are related back to this formalism ... the book is very mathematical.' Rachel Wallace Garden, Zentralblatt fur Mathematik