What belongs to quantum theory is no more than what is needed for its derivation. Keeping to this maxim, we record a paradigmatic shift in the foundations of quantum mechanics, where the focus has recently from interpreting to reconstructing quantum theory. Several historic and contemporary reconstructions are analyzed, including the ones due to Hardy, Rovelli, and Clifton, Bub and Halvorson. We conclude by discussing the importance of a novel concept of intentionally incomplete reconstruction.1 What is wrong with interpreting quantum mechanics?Ever since the first days of quantum mechanics physicists as well as philosophers tried to interpret it, understanding this task as a problem of giving to the new physical theory a clear meaning. One of the principal reasons why one has always felt the need for interpretations has to do with the puzzling aspect of the formalism of quantum mechanics, usually referred to as the measurement problem. Reversible unitary evolution of the wave function, according to standard quantum mechanics, at the moment of measurement is replaced by an irreversible transformation known as wavefunction collapse. First and foremost, interpretations of quantum mechanics aimed at making sense of this surprising change in the theory's dynamics, sometimes taking the collapse at face value and claiming its fundamental irreducible role, or sometimes going to another extreme and denying the collapse altogether. However, looking globally, the enterprize of interpreting quantum mechanics failed: today we still have no consensus on what the meaning of quantum theory is. None of the proposed answers has won overall acceptance. Perhaps the most remarkable manifestation of the failure to interpret quantum mechanics is the attitude taught to most young physicists in 1 lecture rooms and research laboratories in the last half century, "Shut up and calculate!" [37] Why did attempts at a univocal interpretation fail? Many answers are possible, and among them we favor two, both showing that there is an intrinsic deficiency in the idea of interpreting a physical theory with the help of philosophical instruments only.The first answer is that to a physical theory one would naturally like to give a physical meaning in the Greek sense of ϕύσις, i.e. we-as part of the physicists' audience-expect to be told a true story about nature. This is because we casually tend to apply physical theory to the phenomenal world to learn something about the latter, and not the world to physical theory in order to invent a meaning of the theory. Physical theory is above all a tool for predicting the yet unobserved phenomena; so employing existing knowledge and experience of the world to interpret physics runs counter to its basic function as a scientific theory. However, notwithstanding such an against-the-grain direction in which a philosophical interpretation operates, the former does not necessarily lead to formal contradiction that would invalidate the interpretation program logically; more modestly but perhaps no less irr...
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