300
M. Svrˇ cek
– and: “Wigner showed much courage in relating the then unresolved questions of
the measurement problem to the much deeper problem of consciousness. In view
of this very unorthodox proposal it is astonishing that Wigner was very reactionary
with respect of the dogmas of orthodox quantum mechanics. In contrast to von
Neumann himself, he took the old von-Neumann codification of quantum mechanics as authoritative and not to be questioned. Much of the efforts to interpret the
meaning of this codification and to prove no-go theorems, such as the insolubility
of the measurement problem or the impossibility of a quantum theory of individual
objects, are physically irrelevant since they are based on a codification of quantum
mechanics that is valid only for strictly closed systems with finitely many degrees
of freedom.”
– and: “It is hard to believe that Wigner did not recognize the importance of the
many possible physically inequivalent representations of the canonical commutation relations and the associated symmetry breakings for our understanding of
molecular, mesoscopic, and macroscopic phenomena.”
So where is the problem? Wigner knew of course what he was talking about.
However, his final challenge for a more “realistic” theory does not meet the above
mentioned counterarguments at all. Yet the incompleteness of the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation does not mean that it should be wrong, its incompleteness rather
imparts a possible incompleteness of the concepts it is dealing with. It will be shown
in this article that we must tackle the very incompleteness of our knowledge of (i)
time irreversibility, (ii) the symmetry breaking, and (iii) the role of the environment
and (iv) the quantum definition of individual objects. This means, that we cannot
confront the incomplete orthodox interpretation by means of a reasoning based on
incompletely defined concepts. In other words: these concepts must first be carefully
re-examined before we can even start to construct any proposal regarding how to
deal with an improved Copenhagen interpretation.
7 The Paradox of Quantum Decoherence
In 1980 a novel decoherence program started to emerge, based on Everett’s Ph.D.
thesis from 1957. Everett first summarised the Copenhagen interpretation in its final
von Neumann–Wigner form [17]: “We take the conventional or “external observation” formulation of quantum mechanics to be essentially the following: A physical
system is completely described by a state function ψ, which is an element of a Hilbert
space, and which furthermore gives information only to the extent of specifying the
probabilities of the results of various observations which can be made on the system
by external observers. There are two fundamentally different ways in which the state
function can change:
Process 1: The discontinuous change brought about by the observation of a quantity
with eigenstates ϕ 1 , ϕ 2 , …, in which the state ψ will be changed to the state ϕ j with
probability |(ψ, ϕ j )|
2 .
M. Svrˇ cek
– and: “Wigner showed much courage in relating the then unresolved questions of
the measurement problem to the much deeper problem of consciousness. In view
of this very unorthodox proposal it is astonishing that Wigner was very reactionary
with respect of the dogmas of orthodox quantum mechanics. In contrast to von
Neumann himself, he took the old von-Neumann codification of quantum mechanics as authoritative and not to be questioned. Much of the efforts to interpret the
meaning of this codification and to prove no-go theorems, such as the insolubility
of the measurement problem or the impossibility of a quantum theory of individual
objects, are physically irrelevant since they are based on a codification of quantum
mechanics that is valid only for strictly closed systems with finitely many degrees
of freedom.”
– and: “It is hard to believe that Wigner did not recognize the importance of the
many possible physically inequivalent representations of the canonical commutation relations and the associated symmetry breakings for our understanding of
molecular, mesoscopic, and macroscopic phenomena.”
So where is the problem? Wigner knew of course what he was talking about.
However, his final challenge for a more “realistic” theory does not meet the above
mentioned counterarguments at all. Yet the incompleteness of the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation does not mean that it should be wrong, its incompleteness rather
imparts a possible incompleteness of the concepts it is dealing with. It will be shown
in this article that we must tackle the very incompleteness of our knowledge of (i)
time irreversibility, (ii) the symmetry breaking, and (iii) the role of the environment
and (iv) the quantum definition of individual objects. This means, that we cannot
confront the incomplete orthodox interpretation by means of a reasoning based on
incompletely defined concepts. In other words: these concepts must first be carefully
re-examined before we can even start to construct any proposal regarding how to
deal with an improved Copenhagen interpretation.
7 The Paradox of Quantum Decoherence
In 1980 a novel decoherence program started to emerge, based on Everett’s Ph.D.
thesis from 1957. Everett first summarised the Copenhagen interpretation in its final
von Neumann–Wigner form [17]: “We take the conventional or “external observation” formulation of quantum mechanics to be essentially the following: A physical
system is completely described by a state function ψ, which is an element of a Hilbert
space, and which furthermore gives information only to the extent of specifying the
probabilities of the results of various observations which can be made on the system
by external observers. There are two fundamentally different ways in which the state
function can change:
Process 1: The discontinuous change brought about by the observation of a quantity
with eigenstates ϕ 1 , ϕ 2 , …, in which the state ψ will be changed to the state ϕ j with
probability |(ψ, ϕ j )|
2 .