I would like to describe an attitude toward quantum mechanics which, whether or not it clarifies the interpretational problems that continue to plagu… - Nathaniel David Mermin
" "I would like to describe an attitude toward quantum mechanics which, whether or not it clarifies the interpretational problems that continue to plague the subject, at least sets them in a rather different perspective. This point of view alters somewhat the language used to address these issues—a glossary is provided in Appendix C—and it may offer a less perplexing basis for teaching quantum mechanics or explaining it to nonspecialists. It is based on one fundamental insight, perhaps best introduced by an analogy.
My complete answer to the late 19th century question "what is electrodynamics trying to tell us" would simply be this:<p>Fields in empty space have physical reality; the medium that supports them does not.<p>Having thus removed the mystery from electrodynamics, let me immediately do the same for quantum mechanics:<p>Correlations have physical reality; that which they correlate does not.
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About Nathaniel David Mermin
N. David Mermin (born March 30, 1935, in New Haven, Connecticut, USA) is Horace White Professor of Physics Emeritus at Cornell University
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N.D. Mermin
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Additional quotes by Nathaniel David Mermin
… coincident with the explosive growth of research, the art of writing science suffered a grave setback, and the stultifying convention descended that the best scientific prose should sound like a non-human author addressing a mechanical reader. … We injure ourselves when we fail to make our discipline as clear and vibrant as we can to students - prospective scientists - and to the public who pay the taxes.
It once made sense to exclude the scientist from scientific explanations of the physical world. This warded off superstitious, animistic, or religious explanations. But without endorsing superstition, animism, or religion, today it makes sense to insist that the scientist should not be excluded from a philosophical understanding of the nature of scientific explanation. Why shouldn't such an understanding involve the explainer, as well as the explained?
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