Albert has published four books—Quantum Mechanics and Experience (1992),[2]Time and Chance (2000),[3]After Physics (2015),[4] and A Guess at the Riddle (2023)[5]—as well as numerous articles on quantum mechanics. His books have been both praised and criticized for their informal, conversational style [citation needed].
His philosophical work has mostly been in the foundations of quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. His first book, Quantum Mechanics and Experience, is regarded to have set a key research agenda in the philosophy of quantum mechanics. [6] The agenda being to find an interpretation of quantum mechanics that is, in the traditional philosophical sense, realist.[7] In the book, he explicates the measurement problem, and discusses three interpretations of quantum mechanics (Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber theory, De Broglie–Bohm theory, Many-worlds interpretation) that have the potential of resolving it.
His second book, Time and Chance, develops an approach to the foundations of statistical mechanics, which later, alongside the work of Barry Loewer, have generated a significant amount of literature in the philosophy of statistical mechanics.[8] The project, at its core, contends that one can account for all the phenomena of statistical mechanics (and, thus, at least it is argued, all physical phenomena) by accepting (i) whatever dynamical laws our best physical theory end up postulating, (ii) the Past Hypothesis, and (iii) the Statistical Postulate. Roughly speaking, the Past Hypothesis is the claim that the universe started off in a low entropy state and the Statistical Postulate states that for any system in some macrostate M, each microstate compatible with M is equally likely of being the microstate of the system.
Public philosophy
Appearance in What the Bleep Do We Know!?
Albert appeared in the controversial movie What the Bleep Do We Know!? (2004). According to an article published in Popular Science, he was "outraged at the final product."[9] The article states that Albert granted the filmmakers a near-four hour interview about quantum mechanics being unrelated to consciousness or spirituality. His interview was then edited and incorporated into the film in a way that misrepresented his views. In the article, Albert also expresses his feelings of gullibility after having been "taken" by the filmmakers. Although Albert is listed as a scientist taking part in the sequel to What the Bleep, called "Down the Rabbit Hole",[10] this sequel is a "director's cut", composed of extra footage from the filming of the first movie.
Feud with Lawrence Krauss
In March 2012, Albert published an extremely negative review of Lawrence Krauss' book A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing in The New York Times book review.[11] Krauss claimed that his book counters religion and philosophy, and the book was cited by Richard Dawkins as comparable to Darwin’s Origin of Species, on the grounds that it upends the “last trump card of the theologian.” In his review, Albert lamented the way in which books like Krauss' forward critiques of religion that are "pale, small, silly, nerdy”, and expresses how "the whole business of approaching the struggle with religion as if it were a card game, or a horse race, or some kind of battle of wits, just feels all wrong".[11] Disagreeing with the central thesis of Krauss' book, Albert wrote:
The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields... they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.
Krauss reacted vehemently and responded in an interview published in The Atlantic, calling Albert “moronic” and dismissing the philosophy of science as worthless.[12] In March 2013, The New York Times reported that Albert, who had previously been invited to speak at the Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate at the American Museum of Natural History, at which Krauss was also an invited speaker, was later disinvited.[13] Albert claimed "It sparked a suspicion that Krauss must have demanded that I not be invited. But of course I’ve got no proof."
↑Doctoral thesis: Albert, David Z. (1982-04-01). "Behavior of the Borel resummations for the critical exponents of the n-vector model". Physical Review B. 25 (7). American Physical Society (APS): 4810–4814. doi:10.1103/physrevb.25.4810. ISSN0163-1829.
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