A Guess at the Riddle: Essays on the Physical Underpinnings of Quantum Mechanics

David Z. Albert argues that the wave function, vibrating and evolving in high-dimensional space, is the concrete, fundamental physical "stuff" of the universe and that the strange features of quantum mechanics begin to make sense once we conceive of it as such. He constructs the defining features of quantum mechanics from scratch, showing how the entire history of our familiar, three-dimensional universe can be discerned in its intricate pattern of ripples and whorls.

Format: Hardback
Length: 144 pages
Publication date: 19 September 2023
Publisher: Harvard University Press

From the celebrated author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience comes an original and exhilarating attempt at making sense of the strange laws of quantum mechanics.

A century ago, a brilliant circle of physicists around Niels Bohr argued that the search for an objective, realistic, and mechanical picture of the inner workings of the atom, the kind of picture that had previously been an ideal of classical physics, was doomed to fail. Today, there is widespread agreement among philosophers and physicists that those arguments were wrong. However, the question of what that picture might look like, and how it might fit into a comprehensive picture of physical reality, remains unsettled.

In A Guess at the Riddle, philosopher David Z. Albert argues that the distinctively strange features of quantum mechanics begin to make sense once we conceive of the wave function, vibrating and evolving in high-dimensional space, as the concrete, fundamental physical "stuff" of the universe. Starting with simple mechanical models, Albert methodically constructs the defining features of quantum mechanics from scratch. He shows how the entire history of our familiar, three-dimensional universe can be discerned in the wave functions intricate pattern of ripples and whorls. A major new work in the foundations of physics, A Guess at the Riddle is poised to transform our understanding of the basic architecture of the universe.

Weight: 298g
Dimension: 147 x 219 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780674291263