Contemporary Perspectivism as a Framework of Scientific Inquiry in Quantum Mechanics and Beyond

Abstract

Contemporary perspectivism is viewed as a framework of scientific inquiry concerning the origin, generation and systematization of scientific knowledge of nature by focusing on the conditions under which such knowledge may arise in perspectivist terms and investigating the essential ramifications of these conditions. To this end, we develop the conceptual, methodological and semantic framework of contemporary perspectivism according to the norms of the proposed endo-theoretic approach. Implementation of the preceding three-fold scheme in quantum mechanics implies that the global structure of a quantum algebra of events can be consistently comprehended through a multilevel structure of locally variable Boolean perspectives, interconnected in a category-theoretic environment, yielding jointly all the information encoded in the former. In this respect, the proposed approach validates the perspectivist/contextual nature of quantum mechanics at a fundamental level of discourse. Furthermore, due to its general character, it may acquire the form of a theoretical pattern of scientific inquiry in the natural sciences, especially when dealing with complex trans-perspectival phenomena, the analysis of which requires the use of information resulting from more than one perspective. Finally, in the appendix, we provide a concise comparative assessment between our perspectivist framework of quantum theory and Rovelli's relational interpretation of quantum mechanics.