3.4.3 Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics
Although it has been mathematically well formulated, as we shall also describe in section 4.6, and its main concepts were tested and verified by many experiments, yet it is very hard to understand its mostly indeterministic description of the physical world, and the many apparent counter-intuitive aspects.
Therefore, since its inception in 1920s, Quantum Mechanics provoked strong public and philosophical debates that eventually led to different interrelating and disagreeing interpretations, none of them is fully satisfactory yet. As Steven Weinberg (b. 1933) said in his Lectures on Quantum Mechanics: “My own conclusion is that today there is no interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that does not have serious flaws. This view is not universally shared. Indeed, many physicists are satisfied with their own interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. But different physicists are satisfied with different interpretations. In my view, we ought to take seriously the possibility of finding some more satisfactory other theory, to which Quantum Mechanics is only a good approximation.“ Weinberg (2015)
The main issue in Quantum Mechanics is that, because of the wave nature of matter, the total state of a system is the superposition of several possible states, each with different probability, yet they keep interacting with each other and evolving in all possible ways as long as the system remains unobserved, while the final state to which the system will decohere is determined only after the actual measurement or observation. What makes this even more perplexing is that there seems to be nothing special in the physical nature of observation that could privilege one particular state over the others.
The Copenhagen interpretation stressed that the quantum superposition state should not be taken as a real description of the physical system, while the many-worlds interpretation argued that each possible state is a real description but each measurement produces a certain outcome, and so there are multiple measurement results occurring on different branches of reality that all exist together, but we happen to be in one particular history of all possible histories. According to hidden variable theories, the quantum state is a partial description of the system, where the missing information is given by the values of one or more hidden variables which pick out one of the physical states described by the quantum state as the actual one. On the other hand, in the spontaneous collapse interpretation, the quantum state is a complete description of the system, but the dynamical laws of Quantum Mechanics are incomplete, so they need to be supplemented with a collapse process that eliminates all but one of the possible states during the measurement process.
In this regard, the Duality of Time provides a realistic interpretation that will be discussed further in chapter VI, but for the subject of this matter here it is good to notice how the perpetual creation in the inner levels of time can explain these puzzling features, since at every instance of the real flow of time only one metaphysical point is completely indeterminate because it is described by the speed of light, while all other points have already collapsed. We will briefly summarize the main characteristics of the Duality of Time interpretation in section 4.5.16, so that we can compare it with the other interpretations, but it will be explained in more details after completing the introductory chapters that will outline the general aspects of the Single Monad Model.
The science of Time is a noble science, that reveals the secret of Eternity. Only the Elites of Sages may ever come to know this secret. It is called the First Age, or the Age of ages, from which time is emerging.
