1996/10/22 by Huw Price, Price, Huw
Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Biofield Effects and Biophysics #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/9610036
10 pages, Latex. Draft of a paper for a symposium at the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Cleveland, Ohio, 1--3 November, 1996. Also available in html and rtf at http://plato.stanford.edu/price/preprints/PSA96.html
arxiv created 1996/10/22 · openalex publication_date 1996/10/22 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Physics takes for granted that interacting physical systems with no common history are independent, before their interaction. This principle is time-asymmetric, for no such restriction applies to systems with no common future, after an interaction. The time-asymmetry is normally attributed to boundary conditions. I argue that there are two distinct independence principles of this kind at work in contemporary physics, one of which cannot be attributed to boundary conditions, and therefore conflicts with the assumed T (or CPT) symmetry of microphysics. I note that this may have interesting ramifications in quantum mechanics.