Symposium On The Foundations Of Modern Physics 1987 The Copenhagen Interpretation 60 Years After The Como Lecture

Symposium on the Foundations of Modern Physics 1993 is the fourth in a series of conferences held in Joensuu, Finland, in the years 1985, 1987 and 1990 and is devoted to offering discussions on foundational problems of quantum mechanics and other fundamental physical theories, taking into account new experimental developments. The surveying of the progress with respect to fundamental questions of the quantum theory of measurement forms the guiding line of thought of the present Symposium, the main themes discussed being: the interrelation of quantum measurement and irreversibility; the physics of information (concerned with questions of information processing and quantum noise); quantum interference and mesoscopic quantum effects (searching for the micro-macro borderline); and the quantum-classical relationship (the need for classical pointer and their realisation).

INSTEAD OF A "FESTSCHRIFT" In June 1998 Hans Primas turned 70 years old. Although he himself is not fond of jubilees and although he likes to play the decimal system of numbers down as contingent, this is nevertheless a suitable occasion to reflect on the professional work of one of the rare distinguished contempo rary scientists who attach equal importance to experimental and theoretical and conceptual lines of research. Hans Primas' interests have covered an enormous range: methods and instruments for nuclear magnetic resonance, theoretical chemistry, C* - and W* -algebraic formulations of quantum me chanics, the measurement problem and its various implications, holism and realism in quantum theory, theory reduction, the work and personality of Wolfgang Pauli, as well as Jungian psychology. In many of these fields he provided important and original food for thought, in some cases going far beyond the everyday business in the scien tific world. As is the case with other scientists who are conceptually inno vative, Hans Primas is read more than he is quoted. His influence is due to his writings. Even with the current flood of publications, he still performs the miracle of having scientists eagerly awaiting his next publication.

Potentiality, Entanglement and Passion-at-a-Distance is a book for theoretical physicists and philosophers of modern physics. It treats a puzzling and provocative aspect of recent quantum physics: the apparent interaction of certain physical events that cannot share any causal connection. These are said to be `entangled' in some way, but an explanation remains elusive. Abner Shimony - to whom the book is dedicated - and others suggest the need to revive the category of what may be seen as a metaphysical potentiality. Abner has described these events without actions to link them as `passion at a distance': not active, but passive. The discussions gathered here are written by a truly remarkable cast of scientists and philosophers and shed new light on the most profound puzzles of our times.

The essays selected for this book comprise ideas presented in oral or written form between 1972 and 2000, some of them originally in German or French. They are preceded by a biographical and topical introduction.As the title suggests, attention is directed on the one hand toward the material world which is viewed in its extreme spatial extensions of the universe and of the elementary particles. In particular, the fascinating notion of the void and its fluctuating energy is the subject of various discussions, as is the subdivision of material bodies and its limits. The latter as well as the limit of gravitational stability are depicted in a diagram leading to the ultimate point of the Planck mass and length.The other topic of the title is the spiritual realm which, as in the Introduction, is based on reflections and quotations from religious texts. This rather personal aspect is also apparent in the frequent mention of the author's teacher Wolfgang Pauli, who on the psychological side is associated with C G Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz and on the physical side with Albert Einstein and the author's colleague Ernest Stueckelberg.

Observability and Scientific Realism It is commonly thought that the birth of modern natural science was made possible by an intellectual shift from a mainly abstract and specuJative conception of the world to a carefully elaborated image based on observations. There is some grain of truth in this claim, but this grain depends very much on what one takes observation to be. In the philosophy of science of our century, observation has been practically equated with sense perception. This is understandable if we think of the attitude of radical empiricism that inspired Ernst Mach and the philosophers of the Vienna Circle, who powerfully influenced our century's philosophy of science. However, this was not the atti tude of the f ounders of modern science: Galileo, f or example, expressed in a f amous passage of the Assayer the conviction that perceptual features of the world are merely subjective, and are produced in the 'anima!' by the motion and impacts of unobservable particles that are endowed uniquely with mathematically expressible properties, and which are therefore the real features of the world. Moreover, on other occasions, when defending the Copernican theory, he explicitly remarked that in admitting that the Sun is static and the Earth turns on its own axis, 'reason must do violence to the sense' , and that it is thanks to this violence that one can know the tme constitution of the universe.