Jim Baggott - Quantum Reality: The Quest for the Real Meaning of Quantum Mechanics - a Game of Theories

Jim Baggott is an award-winning science writer. A former academic scientist, he now works as an independent business consultant but maintains a broad interest in science, philosophy, and history and continues to write on these subjects in his spare time. His previous books have been widely acclaimed and include the following:

I know why youre here.

You know that quantum mechanics is an extraordinarily successful scientific theory, on which much of our modern, tech-obsessed lifestyles depend, from smartphones to streaming to satellites. You also know that it is completely mad. Its discovery forced open the window on all those comfortable notions we had gathered about physical reality from our nave interpretation of Isaac Newtons laws of motion, and unceremoniously shoved them out. Although quantum mechanics quite obviously works, it appears to leave us chasing ghosts and phantoms, particles that are waves and waves that are particles, cats that are at once both alive and dead, lots of seemingly spooky goings-on, and a desperate desire to lie down quietly in a darkened room.

But, hold on. If were prepared to be a little more specific about what we mean when we talk about reality and a little more circumspect about how we think a scientific theory might represent such a reality, then all the mystery goes away.

Im not kidding. I have a bit of a reputation as the kind of guy you might find in the kitchen at parties; the kind who spoils all the fun, bursting the bubbles of excitable mystery and urban myth (what Americans sometimes call woo) with a cold scepticism and a calculating rationality. Spock, not Kirk (or McCoy). One commentator recently called me depressingly sane. This is a badge Im happy to wear with pride. There are many popular books you can buy about the weirdness and the woo of quantum mechanics. This isnt one of them.

And in any case thats not why youre here.

Butlets be absolutely cleara book that says, Honestly, there is no mystery would not only be a bit dull and uninteresting (no matter how well it was written), it would also be completely untrue. For sure we can rid ourselves of all the mystery in quantum mechanics but only by abandoning any hope of deepening our understanding of nature. We must become content to use the quantum representation simply as a way to perform calculations and make predictions, and we must resist the temptation to ask: But how does nature actually do that? And there lies the rub: for what is the purpose of a scientific theory if not to aid our understanding of the physical world?

Lets be under no illusions. The choice we face is a philosophical one. There is absolutely nothing scientifically wrong with a depressingly sane interpretation of quantum mechanics in which there is no mystery. If we choose instead to pull on the loose thread we are inevitably obliged to take the quantum representation at face value, and interpret its concepts rather more literally. Surprise, surprise. The fabric unravels to give us all those things about the quantum world that we find utterly baffling, and were right back where we started.