Abstract
The idea of quantum logic first appears explicitly in the short Section 5 of Chapter III. in von Neumann’s 1932 book on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics [31]; however, the real birthplace of quantum logic is commonly identified with the 1936 seminal paper co-authored by G. Birkhoff and J. von Neumann [5]. The aim of this review is to recall the main idea of the Birkhoff-von Neumann concept1 of quantum logic as this was put forward in the 1936 paper. The review is motivated partly by two facts related to quantum logic: one, peculiar, is that the 1936 von Neumann concept is an almost totally neglected2 topic in the enormous quantum logic literature [17]; the other, not very well-known, is that von Neumann was never completely satisfied with how he had worked out quantum logic.
Work supported by AKP and OTKA (contract numbers T 025841, T 015606 and T 032771) and by the Dibner Institute MIT where I was staying as a Resident Fellow during the academic year 97/98.
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Rédei, M. (2001). Von Neumann’s Concept of Quantum Logic and Quantum Probability. In: Rédei, M., Stöltzner, M. (eds) John von Neumann and the Foundations of Quantum Physics. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook [2000], vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2012-0_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2012-0_10
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