David Z. Albert: How to Teach Quantum Mechanics

Oxford Philosophy of Physics Seminar, Trinity Term 2021

10 June: David Z. Albert (Columbia)

Title: How to Teach Quantum Mechanics

Abstract:  Presentations of Quantum Mechanics traditionally start out by pointing to various empirical phenomena – the emission spectrum of hydrogen, electron diffraction, the double-slit experiment, and what have you – which suggest that something is profoundly wrong with the classical picture of the world.  I want to come at it from another angle here.  I want to start out by pointing to a certain ambiguity in the classical conception of space – and to show how the business of merely dragging that ambiguity out into the open makes quantum mechanics look like something more natural, and more understandable, and more to be expected, than has usually been thought.