Hello reader. I owe you some explanations before we start. I did not plan to write these books, well, until I started writing them. When I started, I thought I would just write one amusing book as an experiment. The style I am using is totally experimental. Not only that, it changes in subtle ways as I write, with some jumps in style as i start a new volume. I also need to tell you that I'm an 'ex-physicist' whatever the term implies. I am in my 'early 70s', the physics I studied more than half a century ago has evolved significantly. Writer tools have evolved too. The typewriter I had a long long time ago is lost, and I couldn't type very fast on it (despite taking touch typing class in high school). I now use a MacBook Air, and compose everything using LaTex with styling I could only dream about back then.
The nice thing about where I'm at now, in life, is that I can write about anything I like in any style I like. It turns out I really enjoy writing about stuff I was curious and passionate about as a young college student. Yes, I majored in physics, took a lot math and philosophy courses, really really enjoyed studying and thinking about quantum mechanics. Yes, I did actually meet and chat with Dirac while in college. I did get a Ph.D. in some obscure area of physics half a century ago. But, this is not a physics book, this is speculative fiction book that has dabs of serious physics and open questions, and a few imaginary cats.
The conversations in the book are between me and my imaginary cat Essie (named after -E.S.- Erwin Schrödinger', the guy who came up with that equation that carries his name). The conversations also include other characters (usually ones that did exist, the words you read are those I ascribed to them)
As I read and proofread the book, I smile and chuckle at how it's turning out. Maybe you or another reader will be both amused and inspired to explore something or another. It turns out that I actually followed up on some of the unsolved cases I mentioned and found out, especially with the case of Kurt Gödel, some surprising information I wasn't aware of. Since I am writing this after the book was essentially completed, I won't reveal my findings here. They deserve a separate book, or perhaps an actual paper discussing them.
I decided to include actual citations in this book for those who really want to follow up. You don't need to. But if you are reading about quantum cats, you might be the kind of reader that wants to. I also include after the references, glossaries and discussion of some terms that might sound normal but physicists and philosophers overload with other meanings.
The main idea is, have fun reading the book, and with that we start with a more formal note and then the book.
This book began as a continuation of conversations with Essie, the imagined quantum cat who first appeared in earlier reflections on Schrödinger, his cat, and mine. In those earlier volumes, Essie served as interlocutor, skeptic, comic pressure point, philosophical foil, and occasional superior intelligence. In this volume, she receives a promotion.
Essie becomes a Quantum Cat Detective.
The promotion is not merely decorative. Quantum mechanics is full of mysteries, but many of them are difficult to examine directly because they have become too familiar. Measurement, probability, the wave function, nonlocality, decoherence, and quantum gravity are recognized as foundational problems. But beneath those famous mysteries lie quieter ones: the idealization of isolation, the status of the apparatus, the meaning of preparation, the role of phase, the need for classical language, the physical cost of records, and the silence created by successful calculation.
A detective is useful precisely where familiarity has become dangerous. Essie asks where the boundary was drawn, what the apparatus did, which record survived, which word misled us, which counterfactual was smuggled into the argument, and what was omitted because the calculation worked too well.
The book is organized as a series of case files. The first catalogue treats famous quantum mysteries. The second catalogue examines hidden or undernoticed assumptions that make the famous mysteries possible. A third, orthogonal sequence examines mysteries not wholly inside quantum theory itself, but around its history and transmission: why Schrödinger's steel chamber became a box, why Wittgenstein and Gödel are strangely absent from canonical quantum-foundations narratives, and why Ettore Majorana's disappearance remains one of the unresolved human mysteries at the edge of quantum history.
These pages do not claim to solve quantum mechanics. That would be an implausible claim, and Essie would object. Their aim is different: to clarify the structure of the mysteries, distinguish false trails from fruitful ones, and show how quantum theory remains profound not because it is vague, but because it is precise in ways that expose unfinished questions about reality, knowledge, measurement, language, and explanation.
The intended reader need not be a specialist, though specialists may recognize many of the deeper tensions. The book assumes curiosity, patience, and a willingness to let a cat interrupt premature closure. Equations are kept minimal. The emphasis is conceptual, historical, philosophical, and investigative.
Sub specie aeternitatis.