The Everett Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Collected Works 1955-1980 with Commentary

by Jeffrey Alan Barrett (Editor), Peter Byrne (Editor)

Hugh Everett III was an American physicist best known for his many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which formed the basis of his PhD thesis at Princeton University in 1957. Although counterintuitive, Everett's revolutionary formulation of quantum mechanics offers the most direct solution to the infamous quantum measurement problem--that is, how and why the singular world of our experience emerges from the multiplicities of alternatives available in the quantum world. The many-worlds interpretation postulates the existence of multiple universes. Whenever a measurement-like interaction occurs, the universe branches into relative states, one for each possible outcome of the measurement, and the world in which we find ourselves is but one of these many, but equally real, possibilities. Everett's challenge to the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics was met with scorn from Niels Bohr and other leading physicists, and Everett subsequently abandoned academia to conduct military operations research. Today, however, Everett's formulation of quantum mechanics is widely recognized as one of the most controversial but promising physical theories of the last century.



In this book, Jeffrey Barrett and Peter Byrne present the long and short versions of Everett's thesis along with a collection of his explanatory writings and correspondence. These primary source documents, many of them newly discovered and most unpublished until now, reveal how Everett's thinking evolved from his days as a graduate student to his untimely death in 1982. This definitive volume also features Barrett and Byrne's introductory essays, notes, and commentary that put Everett's extraordinary theory into historical and scientific perspective and discuss the puzzles that still remain.

Genres: Physics, Science, Philosophy, Nonfiction

392 pages, Hardcover

First published May 20, 2012

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume collects many - perhaps all - of the extant primary documents concerning Hugh Everett's relative-state formulation of quantum mechanics, which would later, thanks largely to Bryce DeWitt, become popularly known as the "many worlds" interpretation. Included are two versions of his doctoral thesis, his correspondence with contemporaries in the field, and transcripts of his few public discussions of his theory. Through these documents and the editors' helpful summaries of relevant historical and theoretical background, Everett's basic contention, that quantum mechanical processes can be understood purely in terms of a continuous wave function without any "collapse" or ontological difference between microscopic and macroscopic systems, is - in the opinion of this lay reader - made fairly clear. It is rather interesting, then, that what also emerges from the discussions among many of his peers included herein is their obstinate refusal to countenance, or at least failure to comprehend, even the theoretical applicability of Everett's interpretation, to say nothing of its metaphysical implications. In this way, the book's background narrative serves as a rather trenchant case-study in intellectual inertia and politics in the sciences.