What classicality? Decoherence and Bohr's classical concepts

Speaker:
Maximillian Schlosshauer.
Date:
Thursday 14th October 2010

Niels Bohr famously insisted on the indispensability of what he termed "classical concepts." In the context of the decoherence program, on the other hand, it has become fashionable to talk about the "dynamical emergence of classicality" from the quantum formalism alone. Does this mean that decoherence challenges Bohr's dictum -- for example, that classical concepts do not need to be assumed but can be derived? In this talk I'll try to shine some light down the murky waters where formalism and philosophy cohabitate. To begin, I'll give a brief introduction to decoherence and clarify the notion of classicality in this picture. I'll then discuss Bohr's and Heisenberg's take on the quantum-classical problem and reflect on different meanings of the terms "classicality" and "classical concepts" in the writings of Bohr and his followers. I'll close by putting forward some tentative suggestions for how we may better understand the relation between decoherence-induced classicality and Bohr's classical concepts.


Last updated: Tuesday, 28-Sep-2010 12:57:00 CEST