Abstract
Emergent quantum mechanics (EmQM) explores the possibility of an ontology for quantum mechanics. The resurgence of interest in realist approaches to quantum mechanics challenges the standard textbook view, which represents an operationalist approach. The possibility of an ontological, i.e., realist, quantum mechanics was first introduced with the original de Broglie–Bohm theory, which has also been developed in another context as Bohmian mechanics. This Editorial introduces a Special Issue featuring contributions which were invited as part of the David Bohm Centennial symposium of the EmQM conference series (www.emqm17.org). Questions directing the EmQM research agenda are: Is reality intrinsically random or fundamentally interconnected? Is the universe local or nonlocal? Might a radically new conception of reality include a form of quantum causality or quantum ontology? What is the role of the experimenter agent in ontological quantum mechanics? The Special Issue also includes research examining ontological propositions that are not based on the Bohm-type nonlocality. These include, for example, local, yet time-symmetric, ontologies, such as quantum models based upon retrocausality. This Editorial provides topical overviews of thirty-one contributions which are organized into seven categories to provide orientation.
Highlights
Foundational principles and concepts are introduced to help guide thinking about the validity of ontological propositions for quantum mechanics
Jan Walleczek advances the concept of agent inaccessibility as a fundamental principle in quantum mechanics, based on the objective uncomputability of quantum processes as a formal limit [2]
The final article in this category is contributed by Roderich Tumulka [12]. He provides an overview of Bohmian mechanics, and continues to describe “more recent developments and extensions of Bohmian mechanics, concerning, in particular, relativistic space–time and particle creation and annihilation.”
Summary
Foundational principles and concepts are introduced to help guide thinking about the validity of ontological propositions for quantum mechanics. Referring to the well-known conceptual challenges in interpreting quantum theory, Maudlin concludes by noting that if “physicists were to adopt this method . Jan Walleczek advances the concept of agent inaccessibility as a fundamental principle in quantum mechanics, based on the objective uncomputability of quantum processes as a formal limit [2]. In support of the Bohmian theory, the proposal of an agent-inaccessibility principle presents an alternative position to the standard textbook view of quantum indeterminism. Walleczek concludes that the 20th century quantum revolution need not imply “a radical shift from determinism to indeterminism” but that—based on current knowledge—it is only valid to assert that “the quantum revolution signifies the profound discovery of an agent-inaccessible regime of the physical universe”. Seager corrects the persistent, but flawed, view that Bohmian ontology “is a return to a classical picture of the world“, and he explains that “Bohm’s metaphysics is about as far from that of the Newtonian classical metaphysical picture of the world as one could get”
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