Foundations of Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity

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A setting for quantum mechanics will be sought that avoids the notorious problems that beset the foundations of the subject. Such a formulation would rely on no prior concept of measurement or observer, would describe individual systems and not just ensembles, would make sense for small systems uncoupled to an environment, and would satisfy an appropriate locality condition. Two elementary but insufficiently noticed recent theorems raise the possibility that it may be possible to satisfy all these requirements in an interpretation of quantum mechanics based on the view that the physics of an isolated system is nothing more or less than the study of all the correlations that exist among its subsystems. The goal is to arrive at an elementary, unmysterious, unambiguous, paradox-free, and pedagogically useful interpretive framework for the quantum theory, as a natural language for describing an inherently probabilistic world. In an independent study the origins of certain misconceptions about special relativity held by physicists and/or sociologists will be traced to some lapses in the traditional pedagogical approaches to the subject. Alternative routes to the special theory will be developed that avoid these pitfalls.