Abstract. The holistic approach of quantum theory is investigated as a tool for social economists to analyze and to interpret socioeconomic reality and paradigms. The link between quantum theory and the social economist's approach to socioeconomic reality, i.e., the “what is,” rests on the premise that each element of the socioeconomic universe relates to the whole system and vice versa. In other words, the meaning of each part is to be found in its implicit reflection of the whole of reality; it has no meaning exclusive of the whole. In terms of quantum theory, investigations of microeconomic processes are interwoven with the macroeconomic frame of reference of the observer. The very act of observation is to be considered as an integral part of the observed system.
Abstract. The holistic approach of quantum theory is investigated as a tool for social economists to analyze and to interpret socioeconomic reality and paradigms. The link between quantum theory and the social economist's approach to socioeconomic reality, i.e., the “what is,” rests on the premise that each element of the socioeconomic universe relates to the whole system and vice versa. In other words, the meaning of each part is to be found in its implicit reflection of the whole of reality; it has no meaning exclusive of the whole. In terms of quantum theory, investigations of microeconomic processes are interwoven with the macroeconomic frame of reference of the observer. The very act of observation is to be considered as an integral part of the observed system.
Abstract Foundations of Quantum Economics unfolds a coherent theoretical thread, replacing the rational-agent premise of mainstream economics with the quantum-person hypothesis: before observation, decision-makers sustain multiple conflicting options encoded in probability amplitudes, and a decision corresponds to collapse triggered by measurement. The book first lays cognitive and mathematical foundations, demonstrating that human judgement inherently exhibits quantum features including superposition, interference and order dependence. Classical probability theory fails for non-commutative economic events, making Hilbert spaces and probability amplitudes indispensable languages for economic inquiry. It then reconstructs causality, information, uncertainty and risk, arguing that economic causes are not uniquely fixed before the collapse of consensus; uncertainty is endogenous to the system, and risk represents the spread of superposed distributions rather than exogenous noise. Built upon this architecture, the work revisits core microeconomic notions such as value, utility, game interaction, supply and demand, property rights, institutions and innovation. All conventional theories are recovered as special limits under zero interference and single eigenstates, while superposition and entanglement furnish fresh explanatory power for economic anomalies. The analysis further expands into macroeconomics, interpreting growth, business cycles, money, fiscal policy, trade and welfare as coherent superposition, phase transition and collapse of collective cognition and consensus, and concludes with the renovation of econometrics and economic governance. The book’s central thesis holds that superposition, interference, observation and collapse are not metaphors borrowed from quantum physics, but intrinsic properties of human cognition and economic practice. Economic realities are not predetermined facts waiting to be discovered; instead, they are generated through human cognition, consensus and practice in the act of measurement. Quantum economics is far more than a cosmetic revision of existing models. It constitutes a shift of research programme, abandoning Laplacian determinism and reconceiving the economy as an open, generative process. The book articulates five interconnected layers: the quantum person as ontological starting point, quantum features of cognition, superposition of collective consensus, endogenous uncertainty, and quantuminformed governance. It reminds researchers and policymakers that economic observation and policy intervention are performative, capable of reshaping the very system they examine. Economics abandons the pursuit of a single, determinate optimum and embraces endogenous uncertainty; policymakers cease to be omniscient system engineers and become prudent stewards of consensus and designers of measurement bases. This volume establishes the unified bedrock for the whole quantum economics series and calls for a new, more honest and realistic economics embedded within the economic process itself.
Quantum Economic Philosophy takes the quantumlike features inherent in human cognition as its starting point, reconstructing economic philosophy to rethink and transcend the mechanistic worldview that has long dominated economic thought. It reworks the ontological, epistemological and methodological underpinnings of economics through quantum logic, breaking away from the constraints of classical substance ontology. Within this new framework, economic agents are no longer isolated, selfcontained atomic individuals but relational nodes embedded within networks; economic states are not predetermined objective facts waiting passively to be documented, but a set of coexisting, superposed potentialities. Economic observation is not a detached, neutral act of recording; rather, observation, together with the observer’s expectations and actions, actively participates in shaping the economic reality under investigation. Adopting a practical ontology, this book reinterprets core categories including value, capital, markets and economic justice. It unpacks the implicit metaphysical presuppositions embedded within mainstream economics, and clarifies that the quantum turn is not merely rhetorical borrowing from quantum physics. Instead, it constitutes a fundamental paradigm shift suited to the endogenous reflexivity, uncertainty and generative character of economic systems. Balancing rigorous philosophical inquiry with theoretical extensibility for economics, this volume is written for students, researchers and thinkers working in economics, economic philosophy and social theory. It strips away the a priori assumptions built into the conventional equilibrium paradigm, lays a coherent and unified conceptual foundation for the entire quantum economics book series, and furnishes a fresh philosophical vocabulary for re-examining economic order, human choice and institutional evolution.
Abstract Microeconomics represents the most formally formalized branch of the social sciences. Yet its core actor—the rational agent endowed with complete and consistent preferences, who maximizes a well-defined utility function without hesitation—does not exist in laboratory experiments, market transactions or real household decision-making. Behavioral economics has dismantled this myth, only to replace it with a disjoint catalogue of separate “effects” and “anomalies”: different effects yield contradictory predictions, and researchers select effects ex post to rationalize all observed outcomes. A discipline that explains everything case by case can barely generate ex ante predictions. This monograph is the first work worldwide to systematically reconstruct quantum microeconomics. Human preferences and beliefs possess a mathematical structure isomorphic to quantum states: prior to a decision, alternative options coexist in superposition; choice constitutes a measurement that constructs preferences; question order alters responses because judgments correspond to incompatible observables; interacting individuals become mutually entangled. Framing effects, order effects, preference reversals and herding behavior are no longer a mere inventory of biases, but predictable signatures emerging from a unified underlying process. This book does not argue that the human brain operates as a physical quantum machine. It posits instead that the mathematical structure of human choice is isomorphic to quantum statesarXiv. The book is organized into six parts. Part I, Paradigm Revolution, diagnoses the century-long crisis of the classical paradigm, traces its mechanistic legacy from Newton to Walras, establishes the philosophical foundations of practical ontology and observation dependence, puts forward the quantum agent hypothesis, and assembles the analytical framework for the entire volume. Part II develops quantum consumer theory, reconstructing preferences, utility, choice, demand and welfare measurement on the basis of superposition. Part III builds quantum producer theory, covering production, costs, supply, the theory of the firm, and profit maximization. Part IV addresses quantum market structure and game theory, treating perfect competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition, oligopoly and games as entangled quantum systems. Part V reconstructs quantum general equilibrium and market failure, including general equilibrium theory, welfare economics, externalities, public goods and asymmetric information. Part VI extends the framework to factor markets for labor, capital and land, synthesizes behavioral microeconomics, and charts future disciplinary frontiers. The book balances unity and depth, originality and rigor, formal rigor and readability. Within an axiomatic framework, it derives core macroeconomic phenomena from a small set of quantum principles. Each chapter contains original theoretical construction, formal mathematical derivation and real-world applications, with purpose-built diagrams to substantiate arguments. This volume is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students, academic researchers, policy practitioners, and all readers who seek to understand why economies boom and collapse.
We present a historical-epistemological analysis of the foundations of quantum mechanics, highlighting the relationships between quantum mechanics and scientific realism, as well as the influence of the neo-positivist philosophy of the first decades of the 20th century. The great significance of the measurement process in the context of quantum mechanics is underlined as an essential element in providing a coherent description of reality, moving from micro to macrocosm, as well as the role that the measurement apparatus and the consciousness of the observer assume during the act of measurement, the related ontological problems, the question of the objectification of the wave function, and that of the definition of discernibility. We consider also an overview of the most important alternative proposals to the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics (Copenhagen interpretation), with particular reference to hidden variable theories and other alternatives to standard quantum mechanics philosophical approach, that are modifying the vision of reality, such as the Everett’s many-worlds theory, the QBism and unified holistic approaches, such as the Primordial Dynamic Space.
Purpose This work examines assumptions of positivism and the traditional scientific method. Design/methodology/approach Insights from quantum mechanics are explored especially as they relate to method, measurement and what is knowable. An argument is made that how social scientists, particularly sociologists, understand the nature of “reality out there” and describe the social world may be challenged by quantum ideas. The benefits of utilized mixed methods, considering quantum insights, cannot be overstated. Findings It is the proposition of this work that insights from modern physics alter the understanding of the world “out there.” Wheeler suggested that the most profound implication from modern physics is that “there is no out there” (1982; see also Baggott, 1992). Grappling with how modern physics may alter understanding in the social sciences will be difficult; however, that does not mean the task should not be undertaken (see Goswami, 1993). A starting point for the social sciences may be relinquishing an old mechanistic science that depends on the establishment of an objective, empirically based, verifiable reality. Mechanistic science demands “one true reality – a clear-cut reality on which everyone can agree…. Mechanistic science is by definition reductionistic…it has had to try to reduce complexity to oversimplification and process to statis. This creates an illusionary world…that has little or nothing to do with the complexity of the process of the reality of creation as we know, experience, and participate in it” (Goswami, 1993, pp. 64, 66). Research limitations/implications Many physicists have popularized quantum ideas for others interested in contemplating the implications of modern physics. Because of the difficulty in conceiving of quantum ideas, the meaning of the quantum in popular culture is far removed from the parent discipline. Thus, the culture has been shaped by the rhetoric and ideas surrounding the basic quantum mathematical formulas. And, over time, as quantum ideas have come to be part of the popular culture, even the link to the popularized literature in physics is lost. Rather, quantum ideas may be viewed as cultural formations that take on a life of their own. Practical implications The work allows a critique of positivist method and provides insight on how to frame qualitative methodology in a new way. Social implications The work utilizes popularized ideas in quantum theory: the preeminent theory that describes all matter. Little work in sociology utilizes this perspective in understanding research methods. Originality/value Quantum insights have rarely been explored in highlighting limitations in positivism. The current work aims to build on quantum insights and how these may help us better understand the social world around us.
Abstract Since Adam Smith, economics has erected a grand edifice upon the foundations of rational agents, equilibrium analysis, and linear causality; however, the 2008 global financial crisis, the European sovereign debt crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic have successively revealed its fundamental limitations when confronted with complex economic phenomena: bubbles that ought not to have existed, crises unforeseen by equilibrium models, non-linear ruptures brought about by technological revolutions, and self-fulfilling expectations—all of which call for a richer theoretical language. This book serves as the foundational introduction to the "Quantum Economics Textbook Series," as well as the first gateway into this entire series. It introduces the methodological framework, mathematical apparatus, and philosophical insights of quantum mechanics to economic analysis, grounding its approach in the core proposition of a practical ontology—that human economic practice itself possesses quantum attributes such as superposition, entanglement, constructibility, uncertainty, and emergence—thereby reconstructing the economic world as a quantum process of superposition and evolution. Six core concepts—superposition, entanglement, measurement collapse, the uncertainty principle, quantum transitions, and emergence—run throughout the work. Quantum economics does not represent a simple negation of classical theory; rather, it constitutes a dialectical sublation: under the classical limit—where decoherence is complete, the measurement basis is fixed, and entanglement vanishes—quantum theory precisely reduces to classical theory. This book comprises five parts and thirty chapters: Part I establishes the paradigm shift and theoretical framework, covering critiques of Newton's worldview, the quantum worldview, a foundational conceptual framework, mathematical foundations, and research methodologies; Part II reconstructs quantum microeconomic theory, encompassing consumers, producers, pricing, markets, the wave-particle duality of markets, quantum games, and welfare economics; Part III builds quantum macroeconomic theory, addressing national income accounting, money, inflation, economic cycles, policy, and open economies; Part IV explores quantum finance and market dynamics, including asset pricing, portfolio management, market sentiment, risk management, and trading theory; Part V extends the scope to organizations, innovation, institutions, development, economic ethics, and the digital economy, while offering insights into the future of this discipline. This volume is intended for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers in economics and related fields, and serves as the essential first volume in the quantum economics series.