What is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics

by Adam Becker

That being said, the story of quantum foundations does seem to call into question how science works. We’ve seen how it doesn’t work—it’s not about verification or purely empirical statements, as the positivists thought; it’s not about falsifiability, as Popper thought; nor is it about being completely independent from the complex historical forces that have buffeted and buoyed the characters we’ve met over the course of this book. So how does science work? Echoing the end of Chapter 11, that’s a fabulously complex question. The long answer would take another book. But the short answer is that science involves a combination of experiment, mathematical and logical reasoning, unifying explanations, and biases that scientists bring to the table from their own lives and the cultures they live in. We work to reduce those biases; we don’t always succeed, but the explicit attempt to account for and reduce those biases is an important part of the process, properly conducted.

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