Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory: An Appraisal

406 Pages·1996·7.72 MB·English

by  James T. Cushing (auth.)

BOHMIAN MECHANICS AND QUANTUM THEORY:
AN APPRAISAL
BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Editor
ROBERTS. COHEN, Boston University
Editorial Advisory Board
1HOMAS F. GLICK, Boston University
ADOLF GRUNBAUM, University ofP ittsburgh
SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University
JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University
MARX W. WA RTOFSKY, Baruch College of
the City University ofN ew York
VOLUME 184
BOHMIAN MECHANICS AND
QUANTUM THEORY: AN APPRAISAL
Edited by
JAMES T. CUSHING
Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame
ARTHUR FINE
Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University
SHELDON GOLDSTEIN
Department of Mathematics, Rutgers University
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bohrnian mechanics and quantum theory : an appraisal I edited by James
T. Cush1ng, Arthur F1ne, Sheldon Goldstein.
p. ern. -- <Boston studies 1n the philosophy of science ; v.
184)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-481-4698-7 ISBN 978-94-015-8715-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-8715-0
1. Quantum theory--MathematiCS. I. Cush 1n g. James T.. 1937-
II. Fine, Arthur. III. Goldstein, Sheldon, 1947- IV. Ser1es.
Q174.B67 vel. 184
[OC174.12l
001 · . 01 s--dc20
[530.1' 21 96-11973
ISBN 978-90-481-4698-7
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1996
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1996
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE vii
I. BOHMIAN MECHANICS:
BACKGROUND AND FUNDAMENTALS
JAMES T. CUSHING I The Causal Quantum Theory Program
DETLEF DURR, SHELDON GOLDSTEIN and NINO ZANGHI I
Bohmian Mechanics as the Foundation of Quantum Mechanics 21
ANTONY VALENTINI I Pilot-Wave Theory of Fields, Gravitation
and Cosmology 45
LUCIEN HARDY I Contextuality in Bohmian Mechanics 67
KARIN BERNDL I Global Existence and Uniqueness of Bohmian
Trajectories 77
MARTIN DAUMER I Scattering Theory from a Bohmian Per-
~~~ ~
PETER R. HOLLAND I Is Quantum Mechanics Universal? 99
II. APPLICATIONS AND FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
OF BOHMIAN MECHANICS
C. RICHARD LEAVENS I The "Tunneling-Time Problem" for
Electrons 111
EUAN J. SQUIRES I Local Bohmian Mechanics 131
Y AKIR AHARONOV and LEV V AIDMAN I About Position
Measurements Which Do Not Show the Bohmian Particle
Position 141
P. N. KALOYEROU I An Ontological Interpretation of Boson
Fields 155
CHRIS DEWDNEY and GEORGE HORTON I De Broglie, Bohm and
the Boson 169
TREVOR M. SAMOLS I A Realistic Formulation of Quantum Field
Theory 191
DON N. PAGE I Attaching Theories of Consciousness to Bohmian
Quantum Mechanics 197
v
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
III. HISTORICAL, CONCEPTUAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL
PERSPECTIVES RELATED TO BOHMIAN MECHANICS
MARA BELLER I Bohm and the "Inevitability" of Acausality 211
ARTHUR FINE I On the Interpretation of Bohmian Mechanics 231
MILLARD BAUBLITZ and ABNER SHIMONY I Tension in Bohm's
Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics 251
ROBIN COLLINS I An Epistemological Critique of Bohmian
Mechanics 265
DAVID Z ALBERT I Elementary Quantum Metaphysics 277
TIM MAUDLIN I Space-Time in the Quantum World 285
HARVEY R. BROWN, ANDREW ELBY and ROBERT WEINGARD
I Cause and Effect in the Pilot-Wave Interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics 309
MICHAEL DICKSON I Is the Bohm Theory Local? 321
IV. COMPARISONS WITH SOME OTHER PROGRAMS
JEFFREY BUB I Modal Interpretations and Bohmian Mechanics 331
ADRIAN KENT I Remarks on Consistent Histories and Bohmian
Mechanics 343
GIANCARLO GHIRARDI and RENATA GRASSI I Bohm's Theory
Versus Dynamical Reduction 353
BIBLIOGRAPHY 379
INDEX 399
PREFACE
We are often told that quantum phenomena demand radical revisions of
our scientific world view and that no physical theory describing well defined
objects, such as particles described by their positions, evolving in a well
defined way, let alone deterministically, can account for such phenomena.
The great majority of physicists continue to subscribe to this view, despite
the fact that just such a deterministic theory, accounting for all of the phe
nomena of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, was proposed by David
Bohm more than four decades ago and has arguably been around almost
since the inception of quantum mechanics itself.
Our purpose in asking colleagues to write the essays for this volume
has not been to produce a Festschrift in honor of David Bohm (worthy an
undertaking as that would have been) or to gather together a collection of
papers simply stating uncritically Bohm's views on quantum mechanics.
The central theme around which the essays in this volume are arranged is
David Bohm's version of quantum mechanics. It has by now become fairly
standard practice to refer to his theory as Bohmian mechanics and to the
larger conceptual framework within which this is located as the causal
quantum theory program. While it is true that one can have reservations
about the appropriateness of these specific labels, both do elicit distinc
tive images characteristic of the key concepts of these approaches and
such terminology does serve effectively to contrast this class of theories
with more standard formulations of quantum theory.
The papers in this volume have been grouped around four main topics:
the essentials of Bohmian mechanics; detailed applications and extensions
of these basics; historical and conceptual analyses of the program; com
parisons and contrasts with other formulations of quantum mechanics. We
hope that this book will contribute to a serious and ongoing critical analysis,
extension and application of the central ideas of Bohmian mechanics to
test them for consistency, empirical adequacy and fruitfulness in gener
ating new avenues of research. By no means are all of the authors
represented here enthusiastic supporters of Bohm 's approach to quantum
mechanics. Nor do the editors necessarily agree with every major position
taken in these essays. Points of dissent among authors, even on what are
in some cases matters of historical or technical fact, will be evident to the
reader. For example, the third essay in this volume suggests that the standard
history of early quantum mechanics significantly underrates how complete
Louis de Broglie's 1927 pilot-wave theory actually was and the extent to
which it anticipated Bohm's 1952 version of quantum mechanics. This
type of give-and-take is, of course, not unexpected if a research program
vii
J. T. Cushing et al. (e ds.), Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory: An Appraisal, vii-viii.
viii PREFACE
is to be fairly and productively scrutinized and if there is to be ongoing
debate.
We, and many of the other authors of these essays, benefited greatly from
having the opportunity to discuss our ideas at a conference, "Quantum
Theory Without Observers," conceived of and organized by Professor Detlef
Diirr of the Mathematics Institute at the University of Munich and held in
Bielefeld, Germany, on July 24-28, 1995. Although this volume is in no
sense a proceedings of that conference (which was devoted to more than
just Bohmian mechanics), it is nevertheless true that the majority of our
authors were participants at this conference, where they were able to subject
the work represented in their essays to the critical appraisal of, and to engage
in stimulating exchanges with, the many experts in the foundations of
quantum mechanics who were gathered for this splendid occasion. For
this we are all indebted to Professor Diirr.
JAMES T. CUSHING ARTHUR FINE SHELDON GOLDSTEIN
Department of Physics Department of Department of
University of Notre Philosophy Mathematics
Dame Northwestern University Rutgers University
December, 1995
JAMES T. CUSHING
THE CAUSAL QUANTUM THEORY PROGRAM
In this introductory essay1 about the causal quantum theory program,2 I
summarize some orthodox views on quantum mechanics, sketch David
Bohm's 1952 version of quantum theory and today's conventional wisdom
about it, examine the origins of this program and the rapid rise of the
Copenhagen interpretation to dominance, ask how things might have gone
very differently and why they did not, illustrate (mainly by discussing
Wolfgang Pauli's own reaction) how in the 1950s Bohm's (1952a,b) theory
was rejected out of hand, and, finally, outline a landscape of the renewed
interest in foundational problems of quantum mechanics. I begin by recalling
another infamous case, from the early part of the twentieth century, of the
scientific community's dismissing a challenging theoretical possibility
without even seriously considering the evidence for it.
I. AN EARLIER SNUB BY THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY
Arthur Koestler's The Case of the Midwife Toad (1971) begins by recounting
the contents of a note found beside the body of Dr. Paul Kammerer on an
Austrian mountain path in the fall of 1926 and then goes on to comment:
Thus ended the greatest scientific scandal of the first half of our century. Its hero and victim
was one of the most brilliant and unorthodox biologists of his time. He was forty-five years
old when the joint pressures of an inhuman Establishment and his own all-too-human tem
perament drove him to suicide .... Yet an obituary article in Nature, which is probably
the world's most respected scientific journal, called his last book "one of the finest contri
butions to the theory of evolution which has appeared since Darwin." (Koestler 1971, 13-14)
Kammerer felt that pure Darwinism could not fully account for the all
too rapid rate of progressive changes in species and, so, advocated a form
of the Lamarckian theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
Kammerer was an exceptionally gifted experimenter in breeding several
successive generations of lizards and toads in captivity. The amphibian
creature (actually, the nuptial pads on the male's fore-limbs) that was at
the center of a controversy covering fourteen years was the midwife toad,
Alytes obstetricans. At the Institute for Experimental Biology in Vienna,
Kammerer had made extensive observations, over several years, on lizards
and on toads that showed definitively, so Kammerer claimed, that certain
acquired (i.e., learned) characteristics become inherited. Other people were
unable even to breed in captivity so many successive generations of these
creatures, let alone to confirm or refute his published findings.
What is interesting for comparison with the case of the (non) reception
of David Bohm 's theory that I discuss below is the intensity of the emotion
1
J. T. Cushing eta/. (eds.), Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory: An Appraisal, 1-19.
© 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers.