I left academia many years ago, but after spending 13 years studying, teaching, and conducting research in five different universities across the world, I guess certain habits became ingrained and they really do die hard. Wherever I can, I try to get academic specialists to read my stuff and provide comments on it, to reassure me when I’ve got it right, and to chastise me when I’ve got it wrong.
Consequently, I’m indebted once again to Carlo Rovelli at Aix-Marseille University for reading the draft manuscript, engaging in extensive correspondence on relational quantum mechanics via email, and for accepting some responsibility for undermining my faith in Einstein’s realism. I have also benefited from comments on consistent histories from Robert Griffiths at Carnegie Mellon University; on QBism from Christopher Fuchs at the University of Massachusetts Boston; on the philosophy of science (and my grand metaphor for scientific theorizing) from Massimo Pigliucci at the City College of New York and Michela Massimi at Edinburgh University; on the problem of the preferred basis in the many worlds interpretation from Michael Cuffaro at the University of Western Ontario; on the Everett interpretation from both Harvey Brown at Oxford University and David Wallace at the University of Southern California; and on naturalized metaphysics from James Ladyman at Bristol University. Please understand that my acknowledgement of debt here should not lead you to assume that these good folks agree with or are even sympathetic to anything I’ve written on these subjects in this book. Those errors of confusion and misinterpretation that remain are all my own work.
And, of course, none of this would have been possible without Latha Menon, my long-suffering editor, Jenny Nugee, Lucia Perez, Charles Lauder, and the production team at Oxford University Press, Argentinian artist Eugenia Nobati, who provided the beautifully drawn versions of my metaphor for scientific theorizing (Figure 7) and Wheeler’s great smoky dragon (Figure 10), and my son Tim, who provided the pictograms. I will remain eternally grateful for all their efforts.
Jim Baggott
October 2019