EPR: what has it taught us

This symposium commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the paper of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen is a fitting place to review what that work and its sequels have taught us. Prima facie, the EPR paper appears to have been exceedingly counter-productive for the following reasons: (1) The work was quickly rebutted by Bohr, and this rebuttal was apparently accepted by most workers in the field. (2) Scientists who adopted the position advocated by Bohr have produced, in the intervening fifty years, a marvelous body of useful theory, whereas those following the course suggested by EPR have produced nothing of any certified practical value. (3) It has been shown by Bell that the conclusion reached by EPR is incompatible with their assumptions. Chemists and physicists have recently begun to examine the behavior of quantum mechanical systems that are very small, yet large enough to influence their environment in ways that appreciably modify their own behavior, vis-a-vis the behavior they would have if isolated. Because these systems are neither small enough to be treated as isolated (or as residing in a classically described environment) between preparation and detection, nor large enough to be treated classically, they do not conform to the format demanded by the Copenhagen interpretation. Indeed, the behavior of these systems depends on ontological considerations that were irrelevant in the situations covered by the Copenhagen interpretation, and that were systematically ignored in that interpretation. Scientists now face the task of enlarging the scope of quantum theory to cover these new situations, and comparing the empirical consequences of various ontological assumptions. 17 refs