How Alice, long before her time, derived the principles of quantum mechanics
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2601.02419 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 3 Jan 2026] Title:How Alice, long before her time, derived the principles of quantum mechanics Authors:Marcello Poletti View a PDF of the paper titled How Alice, long before her time, derived the principles of quantum mechanics, by Marcello Poletti View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:This philosophical dialogue explores the idea that the foundational principles of quantum mechanics need not be interpreted as describing a new physics, but may instead arise from the logical necessity of formalising the act of measurement within a coherent algebraic framework. By pushing this perspective to its extreme, the dialogue argues that the core structures of quantum mechanics can be derived independently of any specifically quantum properties of atomic particles, and can be formulated within an otherwise classical theory once limitations of observability and measurement context are taken seriously. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2601.02419 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2601.02419v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.02419 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Marcello Poletti [view email] [v1] Sat, 3 Jan 2026 13:11:40 UTC (19 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled How Alice, long before her time, derived the principles of quantum mechanics, by Marcello PolettiView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-01 Change to browse by: physics physics.hist-ph References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)