In the The Undivided Universe, David Bohn and Basil Hiley present a radically different approach to quantum theory.

Bohmian mechanics is a theory about point particles moving along trajectories. It has the property that in a world governed by Bohmian mechanics, observers see the same statistics for experimental results as predicted by quantum mechanics. Bohmian mechanics thus provides an explanation of quantum mechanics. Moreover, the Bohmian trajectories are defined in a non-conspiratorial way by a few simple laws.

The hydrodynamical formalism for the quantum theory of a nonrelativistic particle is considered, together with a reformulation of it which makes use of the methods of kinetic theory and is based on the existence of the Wigner phase-space distribution. It is argued that this reformulation provides strong evidence in favor of the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics, and it is suggested that this latter could be better understood as an almost classical statistical theory. Moreover, it is shown how, within this (...) context, the Wigner and the Margenau-Hill functions are not equivalent, and that the latter is essentially unsatisfactory, as well as the associated symmetrization rule. Arguments in favor of a stochastic picture of the phenomena at the microscopic level are also presented. (shrink)