The Conference entitled The Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Historical
Analysis and Open Questions - Cesena 2004 was held in Cesena
(Italy) from October 4 to October 9, 2004, and was the fourth of a series
that began with a Conference in Camerino (October 31-November 3, 1988)
and continued with two Conferences in Lecce (October 5-8,1993, and October
13-16, 1998). All Conferences had the same title, in order to underline
their ideal continuity. Indeed, they all were conceived as interdisciplinary
meetings among Italian researchers (physicists, logicians, mathematicians,
historians and epistemologists) concerned with the history, the structures
and the foundational problems of quantum mechanics (QM). As we have already
stressed in the Introductions to the previous Conferences, the idea of
grouping together scholars coming from different disciplines was suggested
by the huge number of open mathematical, philosophical, historical and
epistemological questions in QM, which have raised the interest of many
researchers having unlike cultural backgrounds. The main aim of the Conference
was then comparing the various perspectives, favouring reciprocal
understanding and setting up a common language that could help crossed
fertilization of ideas. Of course, this aim has been only partially achieved,
but every issue of the Conference has registered some significant progress.
New proposals for the solution of old and more recent problems have been
forwarded, and the propensity to compare different disciplinary perspectives
has become more widespread. This is witnessed also by the papers
collected in the present volume, some of which clearly have an interdisciplinary
character.