Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
The concept of an operational logic has been developed by Randall and Foulis ([l]-[4], [10], [11]) as a part of a larger effort to obtain a formalism suitable for expressing, comparing, and evaluating various approaches to empirical science, statistics, and in particular, quantum mechanics. The structure of these logics is similar to that of an orthomodular partially ordered set which is often used as a model for quantum logics. However, the operational logic is a more general structure which, among other features, allows for the creation of a tensor product of logics to represent the coupling of physical systems. Randall and Foulis have shown that, given certain reasonable physical constraints, such a product is not possible within the category of orthomodular posets [12].