Microphysical Reality and Quantum Formalism: Proceedings of the Conference ‘Microphysical Reality and Quantum Formalism’ Urbino, Italy, September 25th – October 3rd, 1985 Volume 1(25-26 Fundamental Theories of Physics)

Quantum mechanics has reached maturity as an a wesome scientific theory, and undeniably no experiment has so far produced any result conflic­ ting with its predictions. Nevertheless, an increasing number of scholars are seriously questioning the limits of this discipline's validity, a fact that is eloquently attested to by the four international conferences devoted to the foundations of quantum theory which were held in 1987 alone - in Joensuu, Vienna, Gdansk, and Delphi, respectively. There is an increa~ing awareness that the founding fathers of quantum mechanics have left behind a theory which, though spectacularly successful in its applications, severely limits our intuitive understanding of the microworld, and that their reasons for doing so were at least partly arbitrary and open to question. The problem of the relationship between the existing quantum theory and objective reality at the atomic and subatomic levels can be tackled in essentially two ways: (i) One may focus attention on the formalism of the theory and attempt to deduce from it a coherent description of our measuring processes and a deeper understanding of the microworld. Oi) Alternatively, one may start from the experimental evidence and/or from models of the objective reality compatible with it and go on to inves­ tigate whether or not formalization of this knowledge can be accomodated within the broad confines of existing quantum theory.

Table of Contents:
Quantum Measurements.- Quantum mechanics of macroscopic systems and measurement processes.- The haunted measurement in quantum theory.- A quantum-statistical model of quantum measurement.- Potential and real states in quantum mechanics.- Wave function collapse in the ensemble interpretation.- Nonlinear models for quantum-mechanical measurements.- Meaning and measurability of nonlocal quantum states.- New Developments of Quantum Theory.- The mathematical expression of the uncertainty principle.- Quantization of Hamiltonian theories based on a probability operator.- Classical to quantum: A generalized phase transition.- Quantum description of microscopic and microscopic systems: Old problems and recent investigations.- Towards a process formalism in quantum physics.- A generalized Schroedinger formalism from a Hamiltonian flow in a higher dimensional space.- How the nonlinear phenomena impose the reinterpretation of quantum mechanics.- On the equivalence between the superposition principle and a global gauge invariance.- Meanings of Quantum Theory.- The 2-photon elementary quantum phenomenon and spacetime structure.- Causality as indentified with conditional probability and the quantal nonseparability.- Realism versus positivism: An attempt at reconcilement in the Einstein-Bohr debate.- Four-dimensional realism and waves carrying physical data codedly as keys to understandable models.- Testing interpretations of quantum mechanics.- On the relation between the recent new statistical prediction of quantum mechanics by Albert, Aharonov, and D’Amato, the EPR reasoning, and Bell’s Inequality.- Beyond quantum theory: A realist psycho-biological interpretation of physical reality.- Locality, causality, quantum events, and all that.- The Einstein-Bohr debate: I. The background.- Contingency and lawfulness: Conditions for encounter.- Epr Paradox: Critical Examinations.- Towards a realist theory of measurement.- The tacit postulate on single events and the comparison of classical and quantum spin correlation experiments.- Weak realism for pairs of correlated systems.- Comments on EPR, locality and reality.- The EPR and the proposal of action at a distance.- The discription of separated systems and quantum mechanics and a possible explanation for the probabilities of quantum mehanics.- Against dualism: An observation concerning non-locality.- Bell’s theorem: A note on locality.- EPR paradox considered as a criticism of the statevector reduction in the quantum mechanical description of correlated separated systems.- EPR and the strange nature of the quantum state or why I can live with EPR.- Why the EPR paradox has been resolved in favor of Einstein.- Probability and the way out of the great quantum muddle.- Where lies the mistake in the clauser and Home proof of Bell’s theorem?.