Abstract
Professor Putnam’s comments [1] on David Sharp’s paper [2], claiming to have discovered grave inconsistencies in the conceptual structure of quantum mechanics, evidently were not meant to be accepted at face value. The author surely realized that a contradiction as obvious as he claims to have found it, if real, would have been noticed by scores of physicists. Rather, we understand Professor Putnam’s comments as a challenge to restate the theory of measurement in terms which do not use the mathematical formalism of quantum theory and to point to errors in his own argument.
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References
Putnam, Hilary, Phil. of Science, 28, 234 (1961).
Sharp, D. H., ibid., 28, 225 (1961).
Neumann, J. von, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (Princeton University Press, 1955); German original, Julius Springer, Berlin, 1932.
London, F., Bauer, E., La Theorie de l’Observation en Mecanique Quantique (Hermann and Co., Paris, 1939).
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Margenau, H., Wigner, E.P. (1995). Discussion: Comments on Professor Putnam’s Comments. In: Mehra, J. (eds) Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses. The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner, vol B / 6. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-78374-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-78374-6_2
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