Download an abstract of this volume The Theory of Interacting Systems: Volume 4 QUANTUM THEORY Between the idea and the reality... The triumph of atomism in the late nineteenth century offered a comprehensive picture of worlds both large and small. The nineteenth century clouds that William Thomson saw on the horizon, reflecting some inconsistencies between the classical theory of heat and experimental results, were really an oncoming storm. In the space of thirty years this storm washed away classical theory and the comfortable notion of reality inherited from mechanical philosophy. It was Niels Bohr who understood best just how much had changed. Bohr subjected our deeply ingrained pictures of the world to epistemological analysis and showed that the necessity of separating ourselves from other objects has consequences for what we can observe and say about them. His analysis of the quantum state respects the shadow, as T.S. Eliot put it, between the idea and the reality. The quantum theory developed here within Bohr's framework is distinct from the versions presented by Schrödinger and von Neumann. © 2001, MicroAnalytix. Book covers, logo, and site design by Strongrrl.