Assessment of Everett's "Relative State" Formulation of Quantum Theory. J. A. Wheeler in Rev. Mod. Phys. 29:463 (1957). What the paper says?
«As Bohr so clearly emphasizes...»
This is the famous paper with which Wheeler tried to legitimate and make acceptable his PhD student H. G. Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (the tension between Wheeler's admiration for Everett and urge of acceptation from Bohr is recounted in Ref. [1]).
The text enjoys the clarify of style and depth of understanding of Wheeler:
Although commenters stressed the efforts of Wheeler to show that Everett's formulation was not opposing or confronting the Copenhagen interpretation, here Wheeler stresses a conceptual difference:
although, indeed, he also later also emphasizes this comes with no contradiction:
Wheeler's description of the derivation of the complementary principle from inside:
Our vocabulary is not compulsorily adequate to describe the theory:
The conclusion of the paper shows the immense importance that Wheeler attached to the theory. It makes it even more surprising that he would later (in the 1980s') distance himself from the interpretation.
