Against Measurement Against Copenhagen: For Rationality and Reality by Computation

John Bell's Against Measurement is a direct attack onto the heart of quantum mechanics as expressed in the Copenhagen Interpretation according to Bohr:

• It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature…

Bell poses the following questions:

• What exactly qualifies some physical systems to play the role of "measurer"?
• Was the wavefunction of the world waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared?
• Or did it have to wait a little longer, for some better qualified system…with a Ph D? 

Physicists of today have no answers, with far-reaching consequences for all of science: If there is no rationality and reality in physics as the most rational and real of all sciences, then there can be no rationality and reality anywhere…If real physics is not about what is, then real physics is irrational and irreal…and then…any bubble can inflate to any size...

The story is well described by 1969 Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann:

• Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of theorists into thinking that the job of interpreting quantum theory was done 50 years ago.

But there is hope today, in digital simulation which offers observation without interference. Solving Schrödinger's equation by computation gives information about physical states without touching the physics. It opens a road to bring physics back to the rationality of 19th century physics in the quantum nano-world of today…without quantum computing...