2018/10/10 by Hansen, Arne, Wolf, Stefan
#FOS: Physical sciences #History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph) #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1810.04573
The term "measurement" in quantum theory (as well as in other physical theories) is ambiguous: It is used to describe both an experience - e.g., an observation in an experiment - and an interaction with the system under scrutiny. If doing physics is regarded as a creative activity to develop a meaningful description of the world, then one has to carefully discriminate between the two notions: An observer's account of experience - consitutive to meaning - is hardly expressed exhaustively by the formal framework of an interaction within one particular theory. We develop a corresponding perspective onto central terms in quantum mechanics in general, and onto the measurement problem in particular.