Partitions, Objective Indefiniteness, and Quantum Reality

This book presents a new ‘partitional' approach to understanding or interpreting the math of standard quantum mechanics (QM). The thesis is that the mathematics (not the physics) of QM is the Hilbert space version of the math of partitions on a set and, conversely, the math of partitions is a skeletonized set level version of the math of QM. Since at the set level, partitions are the mathematical tool to represent distinctions and indistinctions (or definiteness and indefiniteness), this approach shows how to interpret the key non-classical QM notion of superposition in terms of (objective) indefiniteness between definite alternatives (as opposed to seeing it as the sum of ‘waves'). Thus, the book develops a new mathematical, or indeed, logical, approach to the century-old problem of interpreting quantum mechanics, ensure it is of interest to philosophers of science as well as mathematicians and physicists.