“Quantum mechanics is what you would inevitably come up with if you started from probability theory, and then said, let's try to generalize it so that the numbe

“Quantum mechanics is what you would inevitably come up with if you started from probability theory, and then said, let's try to generalize it so that the numbers we used to call "probabilities" can be negative numbers. As such, the theory could have been invented by mathematicians in the 19th century without any input from experiment. It wasn't, but it could have been.”[1] Still a bit too late for Leibniz by that argument, but within the ballpark. [1]: http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html