Volume 1, Issue 2, pages 56-64
Ruth E. Kastner [Show Biography]
I earned my B.S. and M.S. in Physics from the University of Maryland (College Park), and then my Ph.D. in Philosophy through the History and Philosophy of Science program at UMCP. My dissertation supervisor was Jeffrey Bub. I am currently a Research Associate and member of the Foundations of Physics Group at UMCP. My book on the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics was published in 2012 by Cambridge University Press. My latest book on the Possibilist Transactional Interpretation, for the general reader, has just been released by Imperial College Press. I am also a musician, having a particular interest in the Elizabethan composer William Byrd, and have written a screenplay about his life (together with my sister, poet Judith Skillman). I served as director of the Byrd Singers (a community group in Greenbelt, MD). I currently sing with the Sweet Adelines chorus, Saratoga Soundtrack, in Saratoga Springs, NY.
It is argued that the severe consequences of Haag’s inconsistency theorem for relativistic quantum field theories can be successfully evaded in the direct-action approach. Some recent favorable comments of John Wheeler, often mistakenly presumed to have abandoned his own (and Feynman’s) direct-action theory, together with the remarkable immunity of direct-action quantum electrodynamics to Haag’s theorem, suggest that it may well be a good time to rehabilitate direct action theories. It is also noted that, as extra dividends, direct-action QED is immune to the self-energy problem of standard gauge field QED, and can also provide a solution to the problem of gauge arbitrariness.
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