Karl Popper and the Copenhagen Interpretation
نویسنده
چکیده
Popper conceived an experiment whose analysis led to a result that he deemed absurd. Popper wrote that his reasoning was based on the Copenhagen interpretation and therefore invalidated the latter. Actually, Popper’s argument involves counterfactual reasoning and violates Bohr’s complementarity principle. The absurdity of Popper’s result only confirms Bohr’s approach. I called thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast altogether blessed them. Numbers 24:10 The emergence of quantum mechanics led to considerable progress in our understanding of physical phenomena. However, it also led to serious misconceptions. In my current work as a theoretical physicist, I recently examined a conceptual experiment that was proposed some time ago by Karl Popper (1982). Its feasibility was challenged by Collett and Loudon (1987) who claimed that such an experiment would be inconclusive. Nevertheless, an actual experiment is currently under way (Kim and Shih, 1999). The rigorous theoretical analysis of these experiments is quite intricate and I shall only briefly outline it here. Most of the present article is an attempt to analyze the meaning of what Popper wrote and to understand his way of reasoning. I found it most surprising when I read the original argument in his book. Popper’s experiment is a variant of the one considered long ago by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (1935): a source S emits pairs of particles having a broad angular distribution but precisely opposite momenta,
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