Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics with Ruth E. Kastner

Ruth Kastner, PhD, is a philosopher exploring the foundations of physics. She is on the faculty of the physics department at the State University of New York at Albany. She is also a research associate at the University of Maryland. She is author of The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: The Reality of Possibility and also Understanding Our Unseen World: Solving Quantum Riddles.

Here she points out that there are several interpretations of quantum mechanics that are very different from each other. She notes that there are many disagreements about the interpretation of the interpretations. She reviews the perspectives of great physicists such as Neils Bohr, Max Born, Ludwig Boltzmann, and David Bohm. She briefly describes the lesser known “transactional interpretation”. Then she focuses on the philosophical status of the crucial distinction between empirical and sub-empirical reality.

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is a past vice-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology; and is the recipient of the Pathfinder Award from that Association for his contributions to the field of human consciousness. He is also past-president of the non-profit Intuition Network, an organization dedicated to creating a world in which all people are encouraged to cultivate and apply their inner, intuitive abilities.

(Recorded on August 23, 2016)