A detective story for quantum foundations.
Essie, Quantum Cat Detective: Case Files from the Unsolved Mysteries of Quantum Theory is the third volume in Quantum Cat Reflections.
Earlier volumes gave Essie a voice as an imagined black-cat interlocutor. In this book she becomes a detective, tracing the visible mysteries of quantum theory and the hidden infrastructure beneath them. The result is a reflective, serious, and lightly playful inquiry into how quantum mechanics actually hangs together.
What the investigation broadens into
The inquiry moves beyond the obvious puzzles and into the assumptions that make quantum calculation possible: preparation, isolation, the apparatus, phase, counterfactual outcomes, objectivity, and the limits of ordinary language.
It also turns sideways into the cultural history of quantum foundations, including the “box” metaphor, Wittgenstein’s absence, Gödel’s absence, and the place of Majorana’s disappearance in the story of modern physics.
Series page
Series context
Quantum Cat Reflections is the series home for Essie’s evolving role in the books.
Now available
Essie, Quantum Cat Detective is Book 3 of Quantum Cat Reflections, now available through Kindle, Books2Read, Leanpub, and Google Play.
A detective approach to quantum foundations, treating the field as a set of open cases rather than a set of closed slogans.