Commentary on "can we consider quantum mechanics to be a description of reality?", by Hervé Zwirn

Soazig Le Bihan

pp. 219-222

in: Lena Soler, Howard Sankey, Paul Hoyningen-Huene (eds), Rethinking scientific change and theory comparison, Berlin, Springer, 2008

Abstract

In this paper, Hervé Zwirn rightly reminds us that any attempt to recover a "classical" picture of the world through the interpretation of quantum mechanics is a dead end. The EPR-Bell adventure has taught us that no local theory, which assigns non-contextual determinate values to all observables of a system, can return all the (empirically well-confirmed) statistical predictions of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics cannot be interpreted as describing a "classical" world in that sense, i.e., a world constituted of independent systems that interact locally and which have determinate properties evolving deterministically in space and time.

Cited authors

Zwirn Hervé