John S. Bell on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics 1st Edition by K. Gottfried (PDF)

Description

This book is the most complete collection of John S Bell’s research papers, review articles and lecture notes on the foundations of quantum mechanics. Some of this material has hitherto been difficult to access. The book also appears in a paperback edition, aimed at students and young researchers.This volume will be very useful to researchers in the foundations and applications of quantum mechanics.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐John Stuart Bell is one of the most powerful contributors to the foundation of quantum mechanics since Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg. These writing are not easy to follow without the appropriate training, but the are uniformly insightful.

⭐Worth reading ! Clearly written articles.

⭐John Bell is shown to be much more than a deep thinker with keen insights who is able to assume a jocular tone–he is a raconteur par excellence! I particularly enjoyed his essay “Quantum Mechanics for Cosmologists” (pp.99-125). In considering the interaction between the quantum and macroscopic worlds, he compares the more conventional Copenhagen conception of quantum theory with that of de Broglie/Bohm and Hugh Everett. He makes explicit important points that have eluded me in the past concerning the similarities between the Bohm and Everett scenarios. He states that while Bohm explicitly traces the paths of moving particles, Everett’s ever-branching universes only provide snapshots of the particle parameters at each isolated instant. He further observes that Everett differs from Bohm in that to each sentient being, in each universe, the past only exists in the mind of each such being. This belief, that state of the universe depends explicitly on the state of one’s mind, is defined as solipsism. At this point Bell sees fit to direct his incisive wit at problems that result from the choices made by Everett and his adherents. He observes that:”Everett’s replacement of the past by memories is a radical solipsism . . . Solipsism cannot be refuted. But if such a theory were taken seriously, it would hardly be possible to take anything else seriously.”Bell goes on to draw a parallel between the purely imagined past favored by Everettians and that implied by Usher’s Biblical chronology (published in 1660) that traced the creation of the world to the auspicious date of October 22, 4004 BC (6 O’clock in the evening to be exact!). By the nineteenth century it began to occur to religious scholars that the newly established sciences might challenge Usher’s chronology; as a result, those such as Gosse sprang to Usher’s defense, penning a rationalization of these rising deficiencies in 1857. Indeed, the world described by Gosse and inspired by Usher saw that Biblical day of creation as witnessing fully formed, rocks, trees, and human beings (complete with tree rings and navels, respectively).In an even more amusing aside, Bell calls on his wide-ranging and impressive knowledge to quote Chateaubriand from his defense of Roman Catholicism in 1802 (The Genius of Christianity). Bell apparently considered those without knowledge of French to be Philistines not worth addressing, and therefore provides Chateaubriand’s words only in that language. Allow me to attempt a translation:”If the world was not at one time both young and old, the great, the serious, and the moral would disappear from nature, because these sentiments depend on ancient entities. Man the King would be born with an age of thirty years, so as to endow him with the majesty corresponding to the greatness of his new empire. Furthermore, his companion would undoubtedly be sixteen years old, such that she would have hardly experienced life, and would be in harmony with the flowers, birds, innocence, love, and all the young parts of the universe.”Certainly, this is a fascinating justification for Biblical authority–and one which is, quite naturally, explicitly patriarchal! It may also throw some light on the problem of original sin, as Eve was apparently an impetuous teenage Lolita, and Adam the older man who was willing to commit fraud to maintain her favor! It is not difficult to find accounts of men driven to all manner of malfeasance in order to provide their young second wife or mistress with the lifestyle that she deems appropriate!Getting back to actual physics, I should also point out another excellent criticism leveled by Bell against Everett–that of the problem of maintaining Lorentz invariance in the multiple universe system. Indeed, one might wonder if each different inertial frame might be considered a separate universe.There are many more wonderful essays written by Bell in this volume, some which criticize von Neumann’s criticism of hidden variable theories–and observe that von Neumann’s analysis may need to be updated in wake of the advent of Bohmian mechanics.I should also mention that the contents of the present volume are substantially the same as an earlier version:

⭐. The present volume has 23 papers, the earlier volume has 22. 20 papers are common to both volumes. The three papers in the present volume that are not found in the earlier one are entitled “Against measurement,” “La Nouvelle Cuisine,” and “In memory of George Francis FitzGerald.”Bell’s tribute to fellow Irish physicist George Francis FitzGerld discusses his work as one of the precursors to special relativity. “La Nouvelle Cuisine” takes its title from an observation of H.B.G. Casimir regarding the method for boiling an egg, which Bell takes as a jumping off point for a discussion of quantum causality and the limitations on signaling imposed by the speed of light. “Against measurement” touches on the vexing question of quantum measurement, and how the essence of this conundrum is confronted by textbooks written by Dirac, Gottfried, and Landau and Lifshitz. Bell lauds Landau and Lifschitz as the book that best expresses Bohr’s point of view, while at the same time warning the reader that he served as technical adviser to J.B. Sykes as he translated its Russian into English–and is therefore entitled to 1% of the proceeds from the sales of that translation!It is also worth observing that this earlier volume, particularly the hardback version with which I am acquainted, has a much more legible text that is free of smudges (unlike the present volume) and benefits from a larger typeface,

⭐I spent a long time reading people who quoted what John Bell proved.Strangely, those people had diametrically opposed view points.So I read the original work from John Bell.If you have an interest in the interpretations of quantum theory, this book is essential.

⭐This hardcover version of “ John S Bell On The Foundations Of Quantum Mechanics” looks like a pirate book. It’s way different from the hardback book that a friend of mine has from abroad. The quality of the binding, paper everything looks different & in a cheap way. Don’t buy it from this ‘Amazon fulfilled’ seller. But it from other seller. You will be surprised to know that even the paperback edition of this is far more superior in terms of quality than the hardback. DON’T BUY !

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