Wave Function - Ontology

Ontology

Whether the wave function really exists, and what it represents, are major questions in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Many famous physicists of a previous generation puzzled over this problem, such as Schrödinger, Einstein and Bohr. Some advocate formulations or variants of the Copenhagen interpretation (e.g. Bohr, Wigner and von Neumann) while others, such as Wheeler or Jaynes, take the more classical approach and regard the wave function as representing information in the mind of the observer, i.e. a measure of our knowledge of reality. Some, ranging from Schrödinger, Einstein, Bohm and Everett and others, argued that the wave function must have an objective, physical existence. The latter argument is consistent with the fact that whenever two observers both think that a system is in a pure quantum state, they will always agree on exactly what state it is in (but this may not be true if one or both of them thinks the system is in a mixed state). For more on this topic, see Interpretations of quantum mechanics.