Review of van Strien's paper on Bohm’s Theory of Quantum Mechanics and the Notion of Classicality

 PSI Blog 20211101 Review of Van Strien's paper on Bohm’s Theory of Quantum Mechanics and the Notion of Classicality

 

by George S. Coyne

Vancouver Regional Office of PSI

 

Marij van Strien's paper, Bohm’s Theory of Quantum Mechanics and the Notion of Classicality[1], reveals that when David Bohm’s 1952 paper on an alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics was criticized for being a reactionary return to classical physics, Bohm argued that his approach went beyond the classical elements inherent in orthodox QMT. His later work involved speculation and what Strien refers to as mysticism. Strien seeks to explain the difference between the work as Bohm presented it, and the way it was received.

 

Strien contends that there is great continuity between Bohn’s work on QMT from the early 1950s and his later speculative work. Strien does not see his early work as fitting into a mechanistic mold involving realism and determinism. She argues that Bohm’s realism was selective. She points out that his later writings contended that science cannot describe an independently existing reality. Strien argues that although Bohm thought that scientific theories are accurate on some things, he was not a realist because he did not accept that theories can offer approximately true descriptions of reality. She states that Bohm was never firmly committed to determinism. Additionally, Strien focusses on how Bohm’s QMT does not avoid all quantum weirdness, and is non-classical.

 

Strien gives a nuanced answer to the question of whether Bohm was a realist. She states that Bohm agreed that scientific theories must go beyond measurement outcomes and observables, scientific theories are right on some things, and that although scientific progress brings forth the development of new theories, they contain aspects of the older theories. However, he did not accept that reality can be described by scientific theories or that any description of reality is independent of us. He rejected the idea that science is advancing towards a final theory, or that only one theory can ever be valid for a given domain.

 

Strien emphasizes that Bohm’s QMT has strongly nonclassical aspects that facilitates an exact analysis of the measurement process, provides a simple explanation of the double slit experiment, but is not a mechanistic, classical theory and retains some of the weirdness of quantum mechanics. Although particles’ positions are always well-defined, Bohm does not include a well-defined momentum for particles. She states that Bohm’s primary objection to the standard version of quantum mechanics was its hard limit to understanding. In contrast, in Bohm’s ontological approach, quantum processes can be analyzed and understood without limits, even without which scientific theories offer true descriptions of reality, and also does not have to correspond with whether scientific theories describe an independent reality or a real description of it. Thus, Bohm’s QMT does not require a strongly realist program, in terms of providing a fundamental ontology which corresponds to nature.

 

Strien comments that Bohm argues that we have to give up on the belief that “our thinking processes and what we are thinking about are fundamentally distinct”: “It is a mistake to think that the world has a totally defined existence separate from our own and that there is merely an external ‘interaction’ between us and the world”. Using his concept of enfoldment, Bohm contends the world enfolds in our consciousness and we enfold in it. In his view if we understand that we and the world are one, we will be more careful with the environment, which will elicit a better response from the world to us.

 

Strien explains that Bohm supported causality, which he considered a broader concept than determinism because it allows for qualitative and quantitative change. He rejected determinism because he saw it as representing a mechanistic view in which everything is made of “fixed in nature” fundamental elements that can only exhibit quantitative change based on their interactions in accord with fixed laws, leaving no opportunity for anything truly new to arise. Bohm contended that novel things arise at unlimited scales with affects going both from lower and higher levels and vice-versa.

My comment on van Strien's paper

I agree with everything that van Strien has stated in her paper, especially her clarification of how Bohm believed he could rationalize an acceptance of causality to the exclusion of determinism, something that makes no logical sense. His rejection of determinism, because it is mechanistic, is not a scientifically based reason; it represents a preference.

 

In the 408-page book Notfinity Process: Matter-In-Motion 2^nd edition (published by Chappell Natural Philosophy Society June 15, 2021), I provide a 12-page examination of Bohm’s approach to quantum theory. The book includes non-quantum theory explanations for quantum phenomena that occurs in the two-slit experiment and entanglement. A review of the book is available at:

 

http://thescientificworldview.blogspot.com/2021/07/george-coynes-notfinity-process-is.html

 

Notfinity Process: Matter-In-Motion 2^nd edition is now discounted at Amazon.com at $29.95 US. At Amazon in Canada, it is $36.95.

 

[GB: My comment on Bohm

 

Note that I used Bohm’s implied assumption of infinity (The universe is infinite, both in the microcosmic and macrocosmic directions) in devising the complementary assumptions of causality (All effects have an infinite number of material causes) and uncertainty (It is impossible to know everything about anything, but it is possible to know more about anything).[2] That resolved the QMT location-momentum problem while becoming the basis for “The Scientific Worldview” and “Infinite Universe Theory”.

 

I was severely disappointed with Bohm’s mysticism in later life. It was so bad that I had to go to Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union library to check out his ridiculous “Implicate Order” stuff.[3]]

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[1] van Strien, M., Bohm’s Theory of Quantum Mechanics and the Notion of Classicality. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. Volume 71, August 2020, Pages 72-86. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1355219819301716

[2] Bohm, David, 1957, Causality and chance in modern physics: New York, Harper and Brothers, 170 p. [https://go.glennborchardt.com/Bohm]. [Excellent book!}

 [3] Bohm, David, 1978, The implicate order: A new order for physics: Process Studies, v. 8, p. 73-102; Bohm, David, 1980, Wholeness and the implicate order: London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 224 p. [Terrible books!]