In this paper, the main outlines of the discussions between Niels Bohr with Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger during 1920–1927 are treated. From the formulation of quantum mechanics in 1925–1926 and wave mechanics in 1926, there emerged Born's statistical interpretation of the wave function in summer 1926, and on the basis of the quantum mechanical transformation theory—formulated in fall 1926 by Dirac, London, and Jordan—Heisenberg formulated the uncertainty principle in early 1927. At the Volta Conference in Como in (...) September 1927 and at the fifth Solvay Conference in Brussels the following month, Bohr publicly enunciated his complementarity principle, which had been developing in his mind for several years. The Bohr-Einstein discussions about the consistency and completeness of qnautum mechanics and of physical theory as such—formally begun in October 1927 at the fifth Solvay Conference and carried on at the sixth Solvay Conference in October 1930—were continued during the next decades. All these aspects are briefly summarized. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to show that, instead of quantum probabilities, wave packets are physically real. First, Cartwright's recent argument for the reality of quantum probabilities is criticized. Then, the notion of ‘physically real’ is precisely defined and the difference between wave functions and quantum probabilities clarified. Being thus prepared, some strong reasons are discussed for considering the wave packet to be physically real. Finding the reasons inconclusive, I explain how the Aharonov—Bohm effect delivers the final punch. I (...) conclude that wave packets are the quantum objects that underlie the indeterministic quantum processes and have the propensity of displaying probabilistic (or indeterministic) behavior. (shrink)

I argue that Bohmian mechanics cannot reasonably be claimed to be a deterministic theory. If one assumes the “quantum equilibrium distribution” provided by the wave function of the universe, Bohmian mechanics requires an external random oracle in order to describe the algorithmic randomness properties of typical outcome sequences of long runs of repeated identical experiments. This oracle lies beyond the scope of Bohmian mechanics, including the impossibility of explaining the randomness property in question from “random” initial conditions. Thus the advantages (...) of Bohmian mechanics over other interpretations of quantum mechanics, if any, must lie at an ontological level, and in its potential to derive the quantum equilibrium distribution and hence the Born rule. (shrink)

The essential role of classical mechanics in the “old quantum theory” is well known. With the rise of a genuine quantum formalism, classical analogies remained a powerful heuristic tool. However, classical insights soon proved problematic, and in some cases, even counterproductive. The case of the implementation of quantum canonical transformations provides a distinguished case study for the historian studying the circumstances which led to the transformation theory of London, Dirac and Jordan. -/- The attempts to use canonical transformations in strict (...) analogy to classical practice met serious difficulties as soon as one tried to accommodate the action-angle scheme. At some point, the very consistency of quantization went addressed because of the unclear quantum equivalence of classically equivalent Hamiltonians. -/- The early attempts, often beset with ill-defined problems, are illustrative of the lack of understanding of the underlying mathematical scheme. The latter had to be properly appraised before the problem of the meaning of changing variables in quantum theory could be solved. This is why the latter proved instrumental in the discovery of transformation theory. -/- Some of the problems which arose then are still highly instructive from the foundational point of view, and worth to be rediscovered, beyond their historical interest. (shrink)

We aim to show from a new perspective that Quine’s ontological relativity, based largely on his so-called “proxy-function argument”, falls short of being a rigorously coherent philosophical conception, as it exhibits significant formal defects. This new perspective enables exposing the shortcomings of Quine's position and suggests a possible reformulation of the original position. Moreover, we argue that his ontological relativity is inconsistent with the empirical data associated with some of our best physical theories, such as quantum mechanics. We refer to (...) fundamental concepts of philosophy and the foundations of mathematics in order to clarify our critique of Quine’s position concerning the relation between formalized theories and both what we can know about the real world and how we come to know it. (shrink)

Eighty years after de Broglie’s, and a little more than half a century after Bohm’s seminal papers, the de Broglie–Bohm theory (a.k.a. Bohmian mechanics), which is presumably the simplest theory which explains the orthodox quantum mechanics formalism, has reached an exemplary state of conceptual clarity and mathematical integrity. No other theory of quantum mechanics comes even close. Yet anyone curious enough to walk this road to quantum mechanics is soon being confused by many misleading signposts that have been put up, (...) and not just by its detractors, but unfortunately enough also by some of its proponents. This paper outlines a road map to help navigate ones way. (shrink)

The wavefunction is the central mathematical entity of quantum mechanics, but it still lacks a universally accepted interpretation. Much effort is spent on attempts to probe its fundamental nature. Here I investigate the consequences of a matter ontology applied to spherical masses of constant bulk density. The governing equation for the center-of-mass wavefunction is derived and solved numerically. The ground state wavefunctions and resulting matter densities are investigated. A lowering of the density from its bulk value is found for low (...) masses due to increased spatial spreading. A discussion of the possibility to experimentally observe these effects is given and the possible consequences for choosing an ontological interpretation for quantum mechanics are commented upon. (shrink)

In October 1924, The Physical Review, a relatively minor journal at the time, published a remarkable two-part paper by John H. Van Vleck, working in virtual isolation at the University of Minnesota. Using Bohr’s correspondence principle and Einstein’s quantum theory of radiation along with advanced techniques from classical mechanics, Van Vleck showed that quantum formulae for emission, absorption, and dispersion of radiation merge with their classical counterparts in the limit of high quantum numbers. For modern readers Van Vleck’s paper is (...) much easier to follow than the famous paper by Kramers and Heisenberg on dispersion theory, which covers similar terrain and is widely credited to have led directly to Heisenberg’s Umdeutung paper. This makes Van Vleck’s paper extremely valuable for the reconstruction of the genesis of matrix mechanics. It also makes it tempting to ask why Van Vleck did not take the next step and develop matrix mechanics himself. (shrink)

It was repeatedly underlined in literature that quantum mechanics cannot be considered a closed theory if the Born Rule is postulated rather than derived from the first principles. In this work the Born Rule is derived from the time-reversal symmetry of quantum equations of motion. The derivation is based on a simple functional equation that takes into account properties of probability, as well as the linearity and time-reversal symmetry of quantum equations of motion. The derivation presented in this work also (...) allows to determine certain limits to applicability of the Born Rule. (shrink)

Fast moving classical variables can generate quantum mechanical behavior. We demonstrate how this can happen in a model. The key point is that in classically evolving systems one can still define a conserved quantum energy. For the fast variables, the energy levels are far separated, such that one may assume these variables to stay in their ground state. This forces them to be entangled, so that, consequently, the slow variables are entangled as well. The fast variables could be the vacuum (...) fluctuations caused by unknown super heavy particles. The emerging quantum effects in the light particles are expressed by a Hamiltonian that can have almost any form. The entire system is ontological, and yet allows one to generate interference effects in computer models. This seemed to lead to an inexplicable paradox, which is now resolved: exactly what happens in our models if we run a quantum interference experiment in a classical computer is explained. The restriction that very fast variables stay predominantly in their ground state appears to be due to smearing of the physical states in the time direction, preventing their direct detection. Discussions are added of the emergence of quantum mechanics, and the ontology of an EPR/Bell Gedanken experiment. (shrink)

Nelson’s stochastic quantum mechanics provides an ideal arena to test how the Born rule is established from an initial probability distribution that is not identical to the square modulus of the wavefunction. Here, we investigate numerically this problem for three relevant cases: a double-slit interference setup, a harmonic oscillator, and a quantum particle in a uniform gravitational field. For all cases, Nelson’s stochastic trajectories are initially localized at a definite position, thereby violating the Born rule. For the double slit and (...) harmonic oscillator, typical quantum phenomena, such as interferences, always occur well after the establishment of the Born rule. In contrast, for the case of quantum particles free-falling in the gravity field of the Earth, an interference pattern is observed before the completion of the quantum relaxation. This finding may pave the way to experiments able to discriminate standard quantum mechanics, where the Born rule is always satisfied, from Nelson’s theory, for which an early subquantum dynamics may be present before full quantum relaxation has occurred. Although the mechanism through which a quantum particle might violate the Born rule remains unknown to date, we speculate that this may occur during fundamental processes, such as beta decay or particle-antiparticle pair production. (shrink)

The histories interpretation provides a consistent realistic ontology for quantum mechanics, based on two main ideas. First, a logic is employed which is compatible with the Hilbert-space structure of quantum mechanics as understood by von Neumann: quantum properties and their negations correspond to subspaces and their orthogonal complements. It employs a special syntactical rule to construct meaningful quantum expressions, quite different from the quantum logic of Birkhoff and von Neumann. Second, quantum time development is treated as an inherently stochastic process (...) under all circumstances, not just when measurements take place. The time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation provides probabilities, not a deterministic time development of the world. The resulting interpretive framework has no measurement problem and can be used to analyze in quantum terms what is going on before, after, and during physical preparation and measurement processes. In particular, appropriate measurements can reveal quantum properties possessed by the measured system before the measurement took place. There are no mysterious superluminal influences: quantum systems satisfy an appropriate form of Einstein locality. This ontology provides a satisfactory foundation for quantum information theory, since it supplies definite answers as to what the information is about. The formalism of classical information theory applies without change in suitable quantum contexts, and this suggests the way in which quantum information theory extends beyond its classical counterpart. (shrink)

Gerald Holton has famously described Einstein’s career as a philosophical “pilgrimage”. Starting on “the historic ground” of Machian positivism and phenomenalism, following the completion of general relativity in late 1915, Einstein’s philosophy endured (a) a speculative turn: physical theorizing appears as ultimately a “pure mathematical construction” guided by faith in the simplicity of nature and (b) a realistic turn: science is “nothing more than a refinement ”of the everyday belief in the existence of mind-independent physical reality. Nevertheless, Einstein’s mathematical constructivism (...) that supports his unified field theory program appears to be, at first sight, hardly compatible with the common sense realism with which he countered quantum theory. Thus, literature on Einstein’s philosophy of science has often struggled in finding the thread between ostensibly conflicting philosophical pronouncements. This paper supports the claim that Einstein’s dialog with Émile Meyerson from the mid 1920s till the early 1930s might be a neglected source to solve this riddle. According to Einstein, Meyerson shared (a) his belief in the independent existence of an external world and (b) his conviction that the latter can be grasped only by speculative means. Einstein could present his search for a unified field theory as a metaphysical-realistic program opposed to the positivistic-operationalist spirit of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

This paper analyzes correspondence between Reichenbach and Einstein from the spring of 1926, concerning what it means to ‘geometrize’ a physical field. The content of a typewritten note that Reichenbach sent to Einstein on that occasion is reconstructed, showing that it was an early version of §49 of the untranslated Appendix to his Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre, on which Reichenbach was working at the time. This paper claims that the toy-geometrization of the electromagnetic field that Reichenbach presented in his note should (...) not be regarded as merely a virtuoso mathematical exercise, but as an additional argument supporting the core philosophical message of his 1928 monograph. This paper concludes by suggesting that Reichenbach’s infamous ‘relativization of geometry’ was only a stepping stone on the way to his main concern—the question of the ‘geometrization of gravitation’. (shrink)

Traditionally, “the operator calculus of Born and Wiener” has been considered one of the four formulations of quantum mechanics that existed in 1926. The present paper reviews the operator calculus as applied by Max Born and Norbert Wiener during the last months of 1925 and the early months of 1926 and its connections with the rise of the new quantum theory. Despite the relevance of this operator calculus, Born–Wiener’s joint contribution to the topic is generally bypassed in historical accounts of (...) quantum mechanics. In this study, we analyse the paper that epitomises the contribution, and we explain the main reasons for the apparent lack of interest in Born and Wiener’s work. We argue that they did not solve the main problem for which the tool was intended, that of linear motion, because of their reluctance to use Dirac delta functions. (shrink)

This article re-examines Schrödinger’s charge density hypothesis, according to which the charge of an electron is distributed in the whole space, and the charge density in each position is proportional to the modulus squared of the wave function of the electron there. It is shown that the charge distribution of a quantum system can be measured by protective measurements as expectation values of certain observables, and the results as predicted by quantum mechanics confirm Schrödinger’s original hypothesis. Moreover, the physical origin (...) of the charge distribution is also investigated. It is argued that the charge distribution of a quantum system is effective, that is, it is formed by the ergodic motion of a localized particle with the charge of the system. (shrink)

In 1927, Paul Dirac first explicitly introduced the idea that electrodynamical processes can be evaluated by decomposing them into virtual (modern terminology), energy non-conserving subprocesses. This mode of reasoning structured a lot of the perturbative evaluations of quantum electrodynamics during the 1930s. Although the physical picture connected to Feynman diagrams is no longer based on energy non-conserving transitions but on off-shell particles, emission and absorption subprocesses still remain their fundamental constituents. This article will access the introduction and the initial reception (...) of this picture of subsequent transitions (PST) by conceiving of concepts, models, and their representations as tools for the practitioners. I will argue for a multi-factorial explanation of Dirac’s initial, verbally explicit introduction: the mathematical representation he had developed was highly suggestive and already partly conceptualized; Dirac was philosophical flexible enough to talk about transitions when no actual transitions, according to the general interpretation of quantum mechanics of the time, occurred; and, importantly, Dirac eventually used the verbal exposition in the same paper in which he introduced it. The direct impact of PST on the conception of quantum electrodynamical processes will be exemplified by its reflection in diagrammatical representations. The study of the diverging ontological commitments towards PST immediately after its introduction opens up the prehistory of a philosophical debate that stretches out into the present: the dispute about the representational and ontological status of the physical picture connected to the evaluation of the perturbative series of QED and QFT. (shrink)

Modern physics is founded on two mainstays: mathematical modelling and empirical verification. These two assumptions are prerequisite for the objectivity of scientific discourse. Here we show, however, that they are contradictory, leading to the ‘experiment paradox’. We reveal that any experiment performed on a physical system is—by necessity—invasive and thus establishes inevitable limits to the accuracy of any mathematical model. We track its manifestations in both classical and quantum physics and show how it is overcome ‘in practice’ via the concept (...) of environment. We argue that the unravelled paradox induces a new type of ‘ontic’ underdetermination, which has deep consequences for the methodological foundations of physics. (shrink)

We show that there is a hidden freedom in quantum many-body theory associated with overcompleteness of the time evolution through the single-particle subspace of a many-body system. To fix the freedom, an additional constraint is necessary. We argue that the appropriate constraint on the time evolution through the subspace is to quantize the propagation of entangled pairs of particles, represented by the single-particle spectral function, instead of individual particles. This solution method creates a surface that indicates the multiplicity of every (...) solution to the inverse problem defined by matching the freedom to the constraint. Upon measurement, the system collapses nonlocally onto a single quantized solution. In addition to a combinatoric multiplicity, each solution acquires a multiplicity due to its stability when subject to a small variation in the microscopic degrees of freedom. Numerical calculations for a two-level system show that our theory improves upon standard theory in the description of non-quasiparticle spectral features. Our reinterpretation of quantum many-body theory is not based on the Born rule and offers a more faithful representation of experiments than current theory by modeling individual, quantized events with an explicit collapse model. (shrink)

Traditionally one main emphasis of the quantum mechanical measurement theory is on the question how the pure state of the compound system 'measured system + measuring apparatus' is transformed into the 'mixture' of all possible results of that measurement, weighted with their probability: the so-called “disappearance of the interference terms”. It is argued in this note that in reality there is no such transformation, so that there is no need to account for such a transformation theoretically. _German_ Gewöhnlich liegt ein (...) Hauptgewicht der quantenmechanischen Messtheorie auf der Frage des Übergangs vom,reinen Fall' des Gesamtsystems,gemessenes System + Messgerät' in das,Gemenge' aus allen möglichen Messergebnissen, gewichtet mit ihren Wahrscheinlichkeiten: Das sog.,,Verschwinden der Interferenzterme“. In dieser Notiz wird die Meinung vertreten, dass es einen solchen Übergang faktisch nicht gibt, so dass es nicht notwendig ist, eine theoretische Erklärung für den Übergang zu geben. (shrink)

The key to the measurement problem is the entity at the heart of Everett's formulation, the state of the memory, defined as the record of observations. In humans, the integrated synthesis defines the perceptual reality, a projective, three-dimensional representation of the world. This 'world hologram' is the conscious point of view, the mind in Lockwood's interpretation, the 'phenomenal perspective'. As Everett demonstrates, the collapse dynamics operates only judged by the state of the memory; the physical observer remains in a superposed (...) state. An operational mind-body property dualism is defined. This field of information is multiply instantiated in the many worlds of the unitary wave function. As these are superposed and coincident, the net result is a single world hologram. The physical frame of reference on this view is the superposition of the class of instantiating worlds, a second-logical-type phenomenon. By definition determinate only where defined by observations, this is the physical ontology of Everett's relative state. Collapse on observation is inherent. The evidence is the retrodiction of the holographic universe. This is the cosmology of the relative state. As it is determinate solely where defined by the world hologram that delineates the outer boundary, entropy is defined solely by this surface. The quasi-classical world is the cosmology in the absolute state. The incompatible dynamics of quantum mechanics operate in these two different types of physical frames of reference. The linear dynamics is the time evolution of the quasi-classical worlds. On observation, judged by the state of the world hologram, the class of instantiating worlds is redefined, becoming the class of worlds in which the observed outcome occurred. Collapse effectively operates. The holographic universe of the mind updates. The dynamics operate at different levels of logical type. The measurement problem is a category error. (shrink)

Entropy is ubiquitous in physics, and it plays important roles in numerous other disciplines ranging from logic and statistics to biology and economics. However, a closer look reveals a complicated picture: entropy is defined differently in different contexts, and even within the same domain different notions of entropy are at work. Some of these are defined in terms of probabilities, others are not. The aim of this chapter is to arrive at an understanding of some of the most important notions (...) of entropy and to clarify the relations between them, After setting the stage by introducing the thermodynamic entropy, we discuss notions of entropy in information theory, statistical mechanics, dynamical systems theory and fractal geometry. (shrink)

Bohmian mechanics, which is also called the de Broglie-Bohm theory, the pilot-wave model, and the causal interpretation of quantum mechanics, is a version of quantum theory discovered by Louis de Broglie in 1927 and rediscovered by David Bohm in 1952. It is the simplest example of what is often called a hidden variables interpretation of quantum mechanics. In Bohmian mechanics a system of particles is described in part by its wave function, evolving, as usual, according to Schrödinger's equation. However, the (...) wave function provides only a partial description of the system. This description is completed by the specification of the actual positions of the particles. The latter evolve according to the.. (shrink)

A vivid discussion revolves around the role of the human mind in the quantum measurement process. While some authors argue that conscious observation is a necessary element to achieve the transition from quantum to classical states during measurement (Wigner, 1963), some go even further and propose a more active influence of the human mind on the probabilities of quantum measurement outcomes (e.g. Atmanspacher, Römer, & Walach, 2002; Penrose & Hameroff, 2011). This proposition was tested in micro-psychokinesis (micro-Pk) research were intentional (...) observer effects on quantum random number generators (RNGs) were investigated. In the studies presented here we extended this line of research and tested the impact unconscious goals on micro-Pk. Our focus was cigarette addiction as an unconscious drive and hypothesized that regular cigarette smokers would influence the outcome of a quantum RNG that determined whether the participant was going to see a smoking-related or a neutral picture. Study 1 revealed strong evidence for micro-Pk (BF = 66.06) supporting the H1. As expected, no deviation from chance was found with non-smokers. In Study 2, a pre-registered highly powered replication attempt, failed to reproduce this result and showed strong evidence for H0 (BF = 11.07). When the data from both studies are combined a remarkable change in effect across time (resembling a combination of appearance followed by decline) can be seen only in the smoker’s subsample. Appearance-and-decline effects were absent in the non-smokers sample and in a simulation. Based on von Lucadou’s Model of Pragmatic Information we suggest that (micro-)Pk effects follow a systematic pattern comparable to a dampened harmonic oscillation. This concept may shed new light on past and future Pk research. (shrink)

This thesis is a work of experimental physics, a search for new physics with the ATLAS experiment. I post this thesis on the PhilArchive because it includes a pedagogical summary of quantum mechanics and the standard model of particle physics in the combination of chapters 1-2 and appendix A. This was my attempt at the end of my PhD of giving a bird's eye view of the standard model, with a thorough bibliography of the publication trail that lead to its (...) development. I find myself pointing to it at philosophy conferences. // -/- This thesis presents a review of work on the performance of the reconstruction and identification of hadronic tau decays and studies of events reconstructed with a ditau final state with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The first cut-based tau identification used with ATLAS data and the first observations of W→τν and Z→ττ at ATLAS are described, as well as many of the issues concerning the calibration and systematic uncertainties of reconstructed taus. The first measurement of the Z→ττ cross section at ATLAS with 2010 dataset is reviewed. Last, results are presented from the first search for high-mass resonances decaying to ττ at ATLAS with the 2011 dataset. (shrink)

The paper surveys the possibility of keeping a neo-Kantian approach in the face of Loop Quantum Gravity. Together with a preliminary analysis of Cassirer’s re-interpretation of Kantian philosophy that allowed him to harmonize the a priori cognitions with the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, it will focus on the distinction between constitutive and regulativea priori. In this way, the paper will suggest that despite Rovelli’s refutation of Kant’s interpretation of space and time, he seems, at least implicitly, to hold (...) to a couple of neo-Kantian assumptions: the usage of constitutivea priori principlessuch as granularity, indeterminism and partially relation, and the claim for functionalism as a rule in ordering the ‘appearances’. (shrink)

In this thesis I will examine the philosophy of the physicist Max Born. As well as his scientific work, Born wrote on a number of philosophical topics: causation, realism, determinism, and probability. They appear as an interest throughout his career, but he particularly concentrates on them from the 1940s onwards. Born is a significant figure in the development of quantum mechanics whose philosophical work has been left largely unexamined. It is the aim of this thesis to elucidate and to critically (...) examine that work. I will give a defence of presentist historiography in the history and philosophy of science and a brief biography of Born. With regards to causation, the thesis will argue that he holds that there exist principles regarding causal relations that have guided the development of physics and have, in the modern formulation of the subject, been confirmed as having an empirical status. I will argue that he is a selective realist, initially with regards to invariant properties and, later on, a structural realist. With regards to determinism, I will argue that Born has produced an argument, compatible with modern philosophical definitions of determinism, that we were never entitled to conclude from the success of classical mechanics that the world was deterministic. Finally, I will argue that Born holds an objective interpretation of probabilities in quantum mechanics which, due to his strong belief in the physical reality of quantum-mechanical probabilities and his apparent disbelief in the superposition of the wave-function, is most likely a long-run propensity theory. (shrink)

The use of probability theory is widespread in our daily life as well as in scientific theories. In virtually all cases, calculations can be carried out within the framework of classical probability theory. A special exception is given by quantum mechanics, which gives rise to a new probability theory: quantum probability theory. This dissertation deals with the question of how this formalism can be understood from a philosophical and physical perspective. The dissertation is divided into three parts. In the first (...) part, the formalism of quantum probability theory and its relation to quantum mechanics is presented. The second part considers the possibility of reformulating quantum probability theory to embed it within classical probability. Mathematically, this possibility overlaps with the possibility of the existence of hidden variables theories of quantum mechanics: theories that attempt to solve fundamental problems in quantum mechanics by introducing additional physical properties of systems. The conclusion of this part is that, although classical reformulations of quantum probability theory are formally possible, they offer little insight into the formalism of quantum probability theory itself. The third part regards a more direct investigation of quantum probability theory. A reformulation of quantum probability theory is obtained by constructing a quantum logic on the basis of empirical non-probabilistic predictions of quantum mechanics. In this reformulation quantum probability functions are conditional probability functions on an algebra of propositions about measurements and measurement outcomes. (shrink)

Everett demonstrates the appearance of collapse, within the context of the unitary linear dynamics. However, he does not state clearly how observers are to have determinate measurement records, hence 50 years of debate. This, however, is inherent. He defines the observer as the record of observations, which, naturally, is the record of correlations established with the physical environment. As in Rovelli's Relational Quantum Mechanics, the correlations record is the sole determinant of the effective physical environment, here the quantum mechanical frame (...) of reference: due to multiple realisation of the functional identity of the observer, the physical environment is a simultaneity of all the physical environments in which it is instantiated, a 'universe superposition', in which only the environment correlated with the observer by observations is determinate. This effects a discrete and idiosyncratic physical environment for each version of an observer, in which determinate measurement records are recorded. Quantum mechanics is on this view fully relational, demonstrated as not only viable but necessary by Rovelli & Laudisa. The quantum mechanical frame of reference is Everett's 'Relative State', and on Tegmark's 'inside view', the time evolution follows the standard von Neumann-Dirac formulation. Thus observers get precisely the measurement records predicted by the standard formulation, but since objectively there is only the appearance of collapse, there is neither a measurement problem nor a disparity with relativity. The linear dynamics and the collapse dynamics are directly experienced, as the passage of time and the making of observations, respectively. (shrink)

This thesis is an attempt to reconstruct the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics. First, we argue that the wave function in quantum mechanics is a description of random discontinuous motion of particles, and the modulus square of the wave function gives the probability density of the particles being in certain locations in space. Next, we show that the linear non-relativistic evolution of the wave function of an isolated system obeys the free Schrödinger equation due to the requirements of spacetime translation (...) invariance and relativistic invariance. Thirdly, we argue that the random discontinuous motion of particles may lead to a stochastic, nonlinear collapse evolution of the wave function. A discrete model of energy-conserved wavefunction collapse is proposed and shown to be consistent with existing experiments and our macroscopic experience. In addition, we also give a critical analysis of the de Broglie-Bohm theory, the many-worlds interpretation and other dynamical collapse theories, and briefly discuss the issue of unifying quantum mechanics and special relativity. (shrink)

In this paper a possible interpretative value of Aristotle’s fundamental ontological doctrine of potentiality and actuality is considered in the context of operationally undoubtedly the most successful but interpretatively still controversial theory of modern physics – quantum mechanics – especially regarding understanding the nature of the world, the phenomena of which it describes and predicts so successfully. In particular, beings of the atomic world are interpreted as real potential beings actualized by the measurement process in appropriate experimental arrangement, and the (...) problem of actual beings of the atomic world is considered in the context of Aristotle’s threefold requirement for the priority of actuality over potentiality – in time, definition or knowledge, and substantiality. (shrink)

It is shown that violation of the Born Rule leads to a breakdown of the correspondence between the quantum electromagnetic field and its classical counterpart. Specifically, the relationship of the quantum coherent state to the classical electromagnetic field turns out to imply that if the Born Rule were violated, this could result in apparent deviations from the energy conservation law applying to the field and its sources. The result, which is fully general and independent of interpretations of quantum theory, suggests (...) that the Born Rule is just as fundamental a law of Nature as are the field conservation laws. (shrink)

This article analyzes the implications of protective measurement for the meaning of the wave function. According to protective measurement, a charged quantum system has mass and charge density proportional to the modulus square of its wave function. It is shown that the mass and charge density is not real but effective, formed by the ergodic motion of a localized particle with the total mass and charge of the system. Moreover, it is argued that the ergodic motion is not continuous but (...) discontinuous and random. This result suggests a new interpretation of the wave function, according to which the wave function is a description of random discontinuous motion of particles, and the modulus square of the wave function gives the probability density of the particles being in certain locations. It is shown that the suggested interpretation of the wave function disfavors the de Broglie-Bohm theory and the many-worlds interpretation but favors the dynamical collapse theories, and the random discontinuous motion of particles may provide an appropriate random source to collapse the wave function. (shrink)