About

It seems that there are about 500 blogs that are called “Quantum somethingorother”, but so far not much reliable discussion on the foundations and interpretation of the theory. This site is designed to fill that gap and should be of interest to physicists, philosophers and mathematicians interested in this topic. This is a guaranteed crank free zone!

Since I frequently get comments from people looking to learn more about the foundations of quantum theory, here is a collection of resources. The books mentioned below can be purchased from the Quantum Quandaries Amazon Store. Buying books from Amazon using this link helps to support this blog.

Webpages

Quantum Foundations at Perimeter Institute – Short Version, Long Version.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (search on almost any topic in quantum foundations. Generally a balanced source).

Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics at Wikipedia (not the most reliable source, but a good place to go looking for links).

The Skeptical Enquirer debunks the quantum mystics.

New Scientist’s Quantum World.

Erich Joos Decoherence website (note – I do not subscribe to the view presented here).

Collaboration Bohmian Mechanics (ditto).

The Many-Worlds FAQ (ditto).

Popular Talks

Undergraduate-level Talks

The Course: Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics organized by Joseph Emerson and Raymond Laflamme.

Popular Magazines (in order of reliability)

Discover (has quickly become the best source of popular articles in my opinion)

Scientific American (is usually reliable and gets a bit more technical than discover)

Seed (about the relationship between science and culture. A good source for opinion pieces.)

New Scientist (but be warned about it’s current reliability on physics)

Popular Books Focussed on Quantum Theory

Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction by John Polkinghorne.

In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat and Schrödinger’s Kittens by John Gribbin.

The Ghost in the Atom edited by Paul Davies and Julian Brown.

Quantum Mechanics and Experience by David Albert.

The New Quantum Universe by Tony Hey and Patrick Walters.

Popular Books with a section on Quantum Theory

The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch.

The Road to Reality and The Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose.

Undergraduate-level Books

Beyond Measure by Jim Baggott.

Technical Papers

Most of the papers mentioned on this blog can be found on the quant-ph preprint arXiv or the PhilSci archive.

Technical Books by Physicists and Mathematicians

Quantum Theory and Measurement edited by John Wheeler and Wojciech Zurek.

The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics by John von Neumann.

Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics by John Bell.

Technical Books by Philosophers

Quantum Chance and Nonlocality by Michael Dickson.

Quantum Non-locality and Relativity by Tim Maudlin.

Incompleteness, Nonlocality and Realism by Michael Redhead.