On Friday May 13th we will have a joint LogiCIC/LIRa session with Guido Bacciagaluppi. Everyone is cordially invited!
Speaker: Guido Bacciagaluppi (Utrecht University)
Date and Time: Friday, May 13th 2016, 13:00-14:30
Venue: ILLC Seminar Room F1.15, Science Park 107
Title: Von Neumann’s no-Hidden-Variables Theorem (and Hermann’s Critique).
Abstract. There has been some recent debate about what von Neumann intended with his famous no-hidden-variables theorem (from his 1932 book), and on whether Bell’s now equally famous criticism is really fair to von Neumann. I revisit von Neumann’s result, which was originally published in 1927 in a paper trying to give what one would now call a “reconstruction” of quantum mechanics, and suggest a more nuanced reading. I pay special attention also to the critique of von Neumann provided by Grete Hermann in her 1935 essay on the foundations of quantum mechanics (and in an unpublished manuscript from 1933).