“Wheeler’s Abomination (1956-2026): Unifying the Copenhagen and Everett Interpretations” (MCQST) (Prof. Alyssa Ney)

Datum: 10.03.2026
Uhrzeit: 14:00
Vortragende(r): Prof. Alyssa Ney
LMU München
Ort: Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Hans-Kopferman-Straße 1, 85748 Garching
Raum: Herbert Walther Lecture Hall
Gastgeber: MCQST

Seventy years ago, John Wheeler’s student Hugh Everett wrote a dissertation proposing his theory of the universal wave function, a novel interpretation of quantum mechanics that would eventually evolve into today’s many worlds interpretation. Although no one else seemed to agree, Wheeler thought that the ideas in Everett’s dissertation could be made compatible with the Copenhagen interpretation of Wheeler’s postdoctoral mentor Niels Bohr.

He provided an initial sketch of how this unification might work in the 1950s, however, the idea never took off. This talk will consider the history and scientific merits of Wheeler’s proposed abominable unification. I will argue that the scientific merits of such an approach could not have been seen clearly in 1957, when the consequences of the Everett and Copenhagen interpretations were not as well understood as they are today. But given what we now know, there is good reason to consider such a unification. The argument in short is that both the Copenhagen and Everett interpretations have defects on their own that are removed when they are taken together. The last section of this paper compares and contrasts the proposed unification with other frameworks that also build on ideas from both Copenhagen and Everett, including Carlo Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics and Časlav Brukner’s relative facts interpretation.