View Full Version : Anyone know a logical expression of Copenhagen Interpretation
danitaber
Aug20-04, 12:02 PM
hiya! Does anyone know of any logical expressions of the Copenhagen Interpretation. I've read about it, I can summarize it, but I've never really seen anything other than discussions of it in pop-science books.
I'd really like to break it down if I could.
vanesch
Aug21-04, 02:34 AM
hiya! Does anyone know of any logical expressions of the Copenhagen Interpretation. .
The Copenhagen Interpretation itself is very vague, based upon "complementarity" and "duality" of things and so on. I think it is more a process of understanding than a clear position. I don't know myself exactly what's meant with it.
However, what most people call the "Copenhagen interpretation" is in fact the von Neuman interpretation. That, he made extremely clear in his classic book "mathematical foundations of quantum theory" (or something like it).
Most of the book is an attempt to put the Dirac delta function on firm mathematical basis, but in the last part he explains what is meant with his interpretation.
It simply comes down to "two physics": one is "system evolution" and the other is "observation". System evolution is what is done with Schroedinger's equation and so on, and observation is a random process: the projection of the state onto one of the eigenstates of the measurement operator, with the probability given by the norm squared.
It is the rule EVERY EXPERIMENTALIST IN THE WORLD uses.
cheers,
Patrick.
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