From a Lost History to a New Future: Is a Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Physics Viable?

In 1939 London and Bauer published a short pamphlet on the measurement problem in quantum mechanics (London and Bauer. La Théorie de L’Observation en Mécanique Quantique, Hermann. In: Wheeler JA & Zurek WH (eds) Quantum theory and measurement, Princeton University Press, Princeton, p 252, 1939). For many years, physicists and philosophers took this to be merely a re-statement of von Neumann’s view that it is the intervention of consciousness that somehow leads to the wave function collapsing into some definite state. This view was robustly criticised by Putnam and Shimony in the early 1960s and has been generally abandoned ever since. However, before he became a physicist, London studied phenomenology and his work with Bauer is infused with a phenomenological sensibility. In (French, Stud Hist Philos Mod Phys 33:467–491, 2002) I tried to excavate this ‘lost history’ and articulate the details of London’s approach. Here I want to further consider the extent to which this history might be said to have been ‘effaced’, to use Ryckman’s term (Ryckman, 2005) but also indicate how this phenomenological approach might be further articulated in the broader context of recent interpretations of quantum theory and thereby be regarded as a viable alternative.