Abstract
Sacramento State Professor Michael Epperson describes the philosophical implications of recent innovations in quantum mechanics, and the resulting challenges for the conventional classical worldview.
In classical mechanics, nature’s fundamental constituents are units of material substance; in quantum mechanics, they are units of relation—i.e., ‘events’ rather than ‘things.’ “In the classical worldview, things have histories; in the quantum worldview, things are histories,” he says. Epperson will explore how ‘classical reality’ is modeled as emergent from a more fundamental quantum mechanical description of nature.
Epperson (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2003) is the founder and director of the Center for Philosophy and the Natural Sciences. He is author of Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (Fordham University Press, 2004).