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Old 17-December-2008, 05:47 PM
Warren Platts Warren Platts is offline
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Originally Posted by Joe Durnavich View Post
Your bomb example here describes a reduction to components. In what sense is Bohm's physics that sort of reduction of quantum physics? It seems to me that these are two different recipes for calculation and any notion that one recipe describes the inner mechanism of the other is mistaking theory for mechanism.
There are two types of reduction: (1) theoretical reduction, as when it is said that Newton's mechanics can be reduced to Einstein's special relativity; and (2) part-whole reductionism whereby the emergent properties of a whole (those properties not shared by the parts) are explained in terms of the properties of the parts. So yes, it's my hope that Bohmian physics offers a potential reduction of the latter kind.

Physics is unique--and not in a good way in my view--in that at least one school of physics would like it if it were possible to reduce all things to the equations of mathematics--literally. That way, all metaphysics--i.e., all physical ontologies--can be dispensed with: there is nothing more to say about things other than that they are permanent possibilities of sensation (PSS's). This program of "mathematical assent" has only been carried out so far for the lone hydrogen atom: supposedly, the behavior of a lone hydrogen atom can be completely described by the equations of quantum mechanics. Ideally, all talk of things like atoms and molecules would be eliminated entirely and replaced by mathematical formulas with no loss of content.

Bohmian physics as I understand it, on the other hand, holds out for the possibility that there might still be mechanisms analogous to a camshaft that cannot be seen by the application, however precise, of clumsy photons. Imagine trying to explain the behavior of an internal combustion engine if you weren't allowed to take the thing entirely apart. You would come up with a mathematical description that would contain variables that would describe the hidden mechanism of the camshaft. Hence, you would have a theory of "hidden variables"; and it wouldn't be a category mistake to characterize that theory as an attempt at part-whole reductionism: you can't directly access the hidden mechanism, but you take it on faith that it is ontologically similar to the things you can access--that is, that the hidden mechanism is mechanical in nature.
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