© 2003 by British Society for the Philosophy of Science
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Discussion |
The Von Neumann Entropy: A Reply to Shenker
1 Department of History and Philosophy of Science, P.O. Box 80.000, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands. l.hendersonnz{at}yahoo.com
Shenker has claimed that Von Neumann's argument for identifying the quantum mechanical entropy with the Von Neumann entropy, S(
) = ktr(
log
), is invalid. Her claim rests on a misunderstanding of the idea of a quantum mechanical pure state. I demonstrate this, and provide a further explanation of Von Neumann's argument.