"QUANTUM MECHANICS AND REALITY: a challenge to common sense" Angelo Bassi, University of Trieste e Federico Laudisa, University of Trento
F. Laudisa and A. Bassi will discuss the relationship between Quantum Mechanics and representations of reality from a scientific and philosophical perspective: Quantum Mechanics describes matter in terms of waves. Quantum waves, like all waves, can scatter and give rise to superposition and interference phenomena. However, when observed, the waves disappear, and matter appears solid and compact as we commonly know it. Even more mysteriously, quantum waves manifest distant correlations that defy common sense: these are the correlations related to the phenomenon of entanglement, which have no counterpart in classical physics. For these reasons, Quantum Mechanics poses a challenge to the image of the world we have constructed for ourselves, based on common sense. The conceptual foundations of the theory will be presented and the disruptive effects it has also had from a philosophical point of view will be analysed.
Angelo Bassi
Full Professor of Physics at the University of Trieste
Angelo Bassi graduated in Physics at the University of Trieste. In 2001 he received his PhD in Physics. Subsequently he was Post-Doctoral Fellow and Visiting Scientist at the ICTP of Trieste, and Marie-Curie Fellow at the Ludwig-Maximillian University of Munich. He is now full professor at the Physics Department of the University of Trieste. His research concerns the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. He is the author of over 150 publications in international journals, invited speaker at over 70 international conferences, organizer of 30 conferences. He has been invited to present his research in the most important institutes in the world (including MIT, Harvard, Columbia University, NYU, Princeton). He is the winner and coordinator of numerous national and international research projects. He was Chair of COST Shares “Fundamental Problems in Quantum Physics” and “Quantum Technologies in Space”. He was interviewed by New York Time Magazine with a dedicated profile (June 2020), by “Le Scienze” (April 2021), and several other international scientific magazines. The newspaper “La Repubblica” dedicated a longform (October 2021). Now he is collaborator of Repubblica, for which he writes about Quantum Physics and Quantum Technologies.
Federico Laudisa
Assistant Professor at the University of Trento, Department of Humanities and Philosophy
Federico Laudisa is a professor who teaches courses in Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of Trento. In 1989, he graduated in Philosophy with honours, presenting a thesis in logic entitled "Representation Theorems for Hilbert Spaces." Subsequently, he obtained an Erasmus postgraduate scholarship at the Department of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland from January to September 1991. He continued his studies with a PhD in Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Florence, with his thesis discussed in November 1996. Currently, he holds the position of Associate Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the Department of Humanities and Philosophy of the University of Trento and has obtained the national scientific qualification for the first band in the competitive sector 11/C2 - Logic, History and Philosophy of Science.
His research focuses mainly on the philosophy of natural sciences, especially in relation to modern physics. His writings include works such as "Hume" in 2009, "Causality" in 2010, "Naturalism. Philosophy, Science, Mythology' in 2014 and 'Albert Einstein and the Scientific Image of the World' in 2015. In addition, he has contributed numerous articles on the history and philosophy of science to national and international journals. In 2019, he published the book 'Reality in Quantum Time. Einstein, Bohr and the New World Image' for Bollati Boringhieri.