John Bell and the Great Enterprise

Abstract

I outline Bell's vision of the "great enterprise" of science, and his view that conventional teachings about quantum mechanics constituted a betrayal of this enterprise. I describe a proposal of his to put the theory on a more satisfactory footing, and review the subsequent uses that have been made of one element of this proposal, namely Bell’s transition probabilities regarded as fundamental physical processes.

Quanta 2018; 7: 68–73.