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Rovelli’s World

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Abstract

Carlo Rovelli’s inspiring “Relational Quantum Mechanics” serves several aims at once: it provides a new vision of what the world of quantum mechanics is like, and it offers a program to derive the theory’s formalism from a set of simple postulates pertaining to information processing. I propose here to concentrate entirely on the former, to explore the world of quantum mechanics as Rovelli depicts it. It is a fascinating world in part because of Rovelli’s reliance on the information-theory approach to the foundations of quantum mechanics, and in part because its presentation involves taking sides on a fundamental divide within philosophy itself.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94132, USA

    Bas C. van Fraassen

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  1. Bas C. van Fraassen
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Correspondence to Bas C. van Fraassen.

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I happily dedicate this paper to Jeffrey Bub, whose work has inspired me for a good quarter of a century.

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van Fraassen, B.C. Rovelli’s World. Found Phys 40, 390–417 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-009-9326-5

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