The MCQST Colloquium Series features interdisciplinary talks given by visiting international speakers. The monthly colloquium covers topics spanning all MCQST research units and will be broadcast live via Zoom for audiences worldwide. The main goal of the series is to create the framework for idea exchange, to strengthen links with QST leading groups worldwide, as well as to act as an integral part of the local educational environment.

MCQST Colloquium: Alyssa Ney

We are excited to invite you to the colloquium talk by Alyssa Ney (LMU, München).

Agenda

14:00 | Teaser talk by TBA on "TBA"

14:15 | Coffee break

14:30 | Colloquium talk by Alyssa Ney on “Wheeler’s Abomination (1956-2026): Unifying the Copenhagen and Everett Interpretations”

Wheeler’s Abomination (1956-2026): Unifying the Copenhagen and Everett Interpretations

Seventy years ago, John Wheeler’s student Hugh Everett wrote a dissertation proposing his theory of the universal wave function, a novel interpretation of quantum mechanics that would eventually evolve into today’s many worlds interpretation. Although no one else seemed to agree, Wheeler thought that the ideas in Everett’s dissertation could be made compatible with the Copenhagen interpretation of Wheeler’s postdoctoral mentor Niels Bohr. He provided an initial sketch of how this unification might work in the 1950s, however, the idea never took off. This talk will consider the history and scientific merits of Wheeler’s proposed abominable unification. I will argue that the scientific merits of such an approach could not have been seen clearly in 1957, when the consequences of the Everett and Copenhagen interpretations were not as well understood as they are today. But given what we now know, there is good reason to consider such a unification. The argument in short is that both the Copenhagen and Everett interpretations have defects on their own that are removed when they are taken together. The last section of this paper compares and contrasts the proposed unification with other frameworks that also build on ideas from both Copenhagen and Everett, including Carlo Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics and Časlav Brukner’s relative facts interpretation.

About Alyssa Ney

Alyssa Ney is Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, and Religious Studies at LMU Munich. She hold degrees in both physics and philosophy, and is the author of The Fundamentality of Physics, The World in the Wave Function (winner of the Patrick Suppes Prize from the American Philosophical Society), and Metaphysics: An Introduction, as well as numerous articles in metaphysics and the philosophy of physics. She is also editor of Local Quantum Mechanics: Everett, Many Worlds, and Reality and The Wave Function: Essays in the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics, both from Oxford University Press. She came to LMU from previous appointment as Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis.

Join in-person or via Zoom

https://lmu-munich.zoom.us/j/69761439704
Meeting ID: 697 6143 9704, Passcode: mcqst2526