The roads not taken: empty waves , wavefunction collapse and protective measurement in quantum theory

In this contribution we shall be concerned with two classes of interpretations of quantum mechanicsm: the epistemological (the historically dominant view)and the ontological. The first views the wavefunction as justa repository of(statistical) information on a physical system.The other treats the wavefunction primarily as an element of physical reality, whilst generally retaining the statistical interpretation as a secondary property.There is as yet only theoretical justification for the programme of modelling quantum matter in terms of an objective spacetime process; that some way of imagining how the quantum world works between measurements is surely better than none. Indeed, a benefit of such an approach can be that ‘measurements’ lose their talismanic aspect and become just typical processes described by the theory.