Quantum theory and the schism in physics (The Postscript to The logic of scientific discovery)

8vo (24 cm), xx, 229 pp. Publisher's cloth and dust jacket (dust jacket slightly sunned and rubbed at extremities). First British edition. The third and concluding volume of Karl Popper's long-delayed Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery, presenting his mature philosophy of quantum mechanics and completing the extensive revision and expansion of the ideas first advanced in Logik der Forschung (1934). Although composed principally between 1951 and 1956, the work remained unpublished for more than twenty-five years after production was interrupted during the 1956–57 proof stage by Popper's operations for detached retinas. Eventually edited for publication by W. W. Bartley III, the original single manuscript was divided into three complementary volumes, of which the present is the final instalment. The volume opens with Popper's 1982 preface, "On a Realistic and Commonsense Interpretation of Quantum Theory," followed by the substantial introductory essay, "Quantum Mechanics without 'the Observer'," in which he critiques the Copenhagen interpretation and examines the role of observation, the collapse of the wave packet, Everett's many-worlds interpretation, and the significance of configuration space. The main text is arranged in four chapters: "Understanding Quantum Theory and Its Interpretations"; "The Objectivity of Quantum Theory," developing Popper's propensity interpretation of probability and discussing wave-packet reduction; "Towards a Resolution of the Paradoxes of Quantum Theory," including extended analyses of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument, the two-slit experiment, and related conceptual problems; and a concluding "Metaphysical Epilogue," placing quantum theory within the broader history of scientific research programmes and the evolution of physical theory. Bartley's editorial foreword recounts the remarkable history of the Postscript, tracing its origin as a projected series of appendices to The Logic of Scientific Discovery, its expansion into the independent work Postscript: After Twenty Years, its long interruption following Popper's eye surgery, and its eventual publication in three separately titled but closely connected volumes: Realism and the Aim of Science, The Open Universe, and the present work. Representing Popper's most sustained engagement with the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics, the volume remains one of the classic twentieth-century critiques of instrumentalist and subjectivist interpretations of modern physics and an essential text for the study of the philosophy of science and quantum theory.…