Epperson, Michael Gordon (Author)
University of Chicago
Tracy, David
Edition Details: Advisor: Tracy, David
Physical Details: 238 pp.
Language: English
Of the great many works attending to the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics, most have been driven by the paradoxical consequences of the quantum theory when accommodated by the conventional classical, mechanistic-materialistic worldview. Recent work in theoretical physics by Roland Omns, Wojciech urek, and Murray Gell-Mann, among others, however, has yielded a new family of interpretations of quantum mechanics which successfully mitigates these paradoxical incompatibilities---although not by way of a proposed modification of the Copenhagen quantum formalism; instead, these new interpretations based on the decoherence effect demonstrate the compatibility of classical and quantum mechanics by way of a novel ontological framework wherein the classical mechanical description quantum mechanical description. Since these decoherence-effect-based interpretations do not propose any sort of novel mathematical or mechanical formalism, their chief benefit lies in the philosophical coherence they afford quantum theory, such that the interpretation's most fundamental concepts become mutually implicative. This is, for many physicists, a welcome antithesis to Bohr's Principle of Complementarity which for decades has almost dogmatically proscribed such coherence in quantum theory. But as the decoherence-based interpretations were constructed in the realm of theoretical physics rather than that of philosophy, the novel ontological implications of these interpretations have not yet been thoroughly examined. This dissertation demonstrates that these philosophical innovations correlate precisely with those proposed by Alfred North Whitehead in Process and Reality (Macmillan, 1929: The Free Press, 1978). The correlation proposed is a phase-by-phase, concept-by- concept analysis, such that quantum mechanics can be seen as a fundamental physical exemplification of Whitehead's cosmological scheme. The mathematical formalism is thus presented as a heuristically useful representation of the mechanics of Whitehead's cosmological scheme, and likewise the latter is presented as a heuristically useful explication of quantum mechanics.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 64 (2003): 169. UMI order no. 3077054.
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