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arXiv:1502.03831 · Foundations of Chemistry

Quantum mechanics, strong emergence and ontological non-reducibility

Rodolfo Gambini, Lucía Lewowicz, Jorge A. Pullin

Published Mar 20, 2015• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF
DOI
10.1007/s10698-015-9224-1

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The process algebra model has been suggested as an alternative mathematical framework for non-relativistic quantum mechanics (NRQM). It appears to reproduce the wave functions of non-relativistic quantum mechanics to a high degree of accuracy. It posits a fundamental level of finite, discrete events upon which the usual entities of NRQM supervene. It has been suggested that the process algebra model provides a true completion of NRQM, free of divergences and paradoxes, with causally local information propagation, contextuality, and realism. Arguments in support of these claims have been mathematical. Missing has been an ontology of this fundamental level from which the formalism naturally emerges. In this paper, it is argued that information and information flow provides this ontology. Higher level constructs such as energy, momentum, mass, spacetime, are all emergent from this fundamental level.
This work presents a structural interpretation of the reduced Planck constant ℏ within the framework of the Structural Principle of Entanglement (PSE). In this theory, ℏ is not a fundamental physical parameter nor a quantum‑mechanical postulate. Instead, it emerges as the compressed image of a discrete action threshold selected by the regularized emergent structure. The PSE establishes a unidirectional ontological hierarchy: a prespatial structure without geometry, a fundamental reorganization governed by a coherence threshold, an emergent correlation that organizes continuity, a regularization process that filters coherent configurations, and a set of complexity thresholds that preserve discrete structural rigidity. Together, these elements produce a minimum action threshold that is structural rather than physical. Through a compressive and non‑invertible projection, this structural rigidity is formalized in the physical domain as the reduced Planck constant ℏ. As a result, the quantization of action, canonical non‑commutativity, precision limits, and the structure of the quantum state space are not primitive features of nature. They are consequences of the compressive projection and of the discrete rigidity selected in the emergent domain. Quantum physics therefore appears not as a set of fundamental axioms, but as an effective representation of a deeper emergent structure. In this view, ℏ is an ontological property of the PSE hierarchy: the physical signature of a discrete threshold rooted in the prespatial domain. Observable physical reality is a compressed representation of this emergent structure, and ℏ is its most fundamental imprint.