Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics: Collected Papers on Quantum Philosophy

Can and should be read by all physics undergraduates. Why? So they can truly discover for themselves what's really going on. And what's really going on is that local causality as advanced by some of the greatest physicists of all time must now be relegated to the proverbial "back shelf". How did this come about? The author of this book takes us step-by-step through a veritable minefield of reasons why and reasons why not. He leaves "no stone unturned" and takes great pains to examine the various opinions, prejudices, feelings and historical events surrounding the now-famous "Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen" paper of 1935 and the arguments for and against that paper that ensued. Almost with superhuman effort. The book which is actually a collection of more than twenty research papers that the author has written over about a twenty five year period beginning with his first seminal work dated 1964.(It would take several years from that time on to experimentally verify the predictions of that paper but eventually they were realized and thus established Quantum Mechanics as a complete theory without any hidden varaibles whatsoever) What makes some of these papers even more interesting to read is that they were presented to symposia and from these one can get a sense of the tension in the meetings in which they were presented and hence can better understand the controversial nature of this subject. Each paper contains numerous references to the original "players" in the field. These alone make an exciting and substantial contribution to the book. Contrary to what Einstein and others had hoped there are no "hidden variables" left to find in order to "save" local cauaslity. Quantum Mechanics as we know it is complete. And we humans are stuck "not knowing" certain things even though they may exist. But perhaps there is a silver lining with some of the "gifts" that "Entanglement" has to offer. Southern Jameson West

Just to counter an earlier review that states "... he describes a thought experiment of two spaceships joined by a thread and accelerating identically. Like the earlier authors, Bell wrongly believed the thread would break ..." Actually, the string would break... * From the launch pad frame the distance between space-ships stays the same, but the string is Lorentz contracted * From the space-ship point of view (not a wise choice), they are accelerating and so their clocks do not run at the same rate... the front space ship pulls away... (I find it easier to think of them at differing depth in a 'gravitational' field)

After reading lots of commentaries on Bell's Theorem, this book is where you finally get to read the actual paper. Worth it.

You can see from the other reviews here that this is a fascinating book. Many of the essays discuss 'unorthodox' interpretations of QM like Bohmian mechanics and wave-collapse models. The introduction by Alain Aspect was very interesting as well, and discussed the experimental advances in what he calls the "second quantum revolution." If you are buying an older edition of this book you may not get this introduction. The previous review "Small Caveat" is a little misleading. Bell does explain that if the spaceships are accelerating slowly enough, the tension in the string will cause the system to contract as a whole, and the string will not break. But if the spaceships maintain a constant distance apart in the frame of the observer, the string will most certainly break. If you don't accept Bell's main argument that the electric fields between the atoms contract, transform to the accelerated frame of one of the ships and you will find the other ship receding away. But don't listen to me, read the essays yourself! Even if you don't agree with the arguments, you will not be sorry for the thought provoking experience.

I am SO glad to see that this book has been given a second printing!!! Bravo, Cambridge University Press! This book is not destined to become a classic-- because It IS a classic ALREADY!! It is just one that hasn't been widely recognized yet. That's only a matter of time. Nowadays everyone and their uncle seems to be talking about Quantum Communication this and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen that-- and I guess with good reason, for we are now starting to see practical applications of this most esoteric of physics subfields. However, it seems that the more non-intuitve and interesting a topic is, the more obfuscation (both intended and accidental) is written about it. (I'm not just talking about laymen and mystics, but physicists too!) Or, said another way, the more people talk, the less they really understand. Forget all the rest of the junk out there. Cut to chase. Read about the ESSENTIALS of what QUANTUM MECAHNICS really MEANS from one of the Masters of the field in about 15 short, lucid, crystal-clear essays. There is some math here, but not much. That is the beauty and the danger of Quantum Mechanics-- because calculations are not that difficult in this field, people are lulled into thinking they really understand what it is they are calculating. Well, most don't. If you really want to get a grasp as to what it all MEANS-- forgetting the calculations for a moment--- you must read this book. Feynman said that nobody really understood Quantum Mechanics. That may be so... But John Stuart Bell came the closest. You can't meet him at a conference anymore (he died in 1990,) but you CAN have him tutor you personally in this short, brilliant masterpiece.