Coherence, Entanglement, and Reductionist Explanation In Quantum Physics

F.J. Duarte, T S Taylor

Andreas Hüttemann

This paper tries to get a grip on two seemingly conflicting intuitions about reductionism in quantum mechanics. On one hand it is received wisdom that quantum mechanics puts an end to ‘reductionism’. Quantum entanglement is responsible for such features of quantum mechanics as holism, the failure of supervenience, and emergence. While I agree with these claims, I will argue that it is only part of the story. Quantum mechanics provides us with thoroughgoing reductionist explanations. I will distinguish two kinds of microexplanation (or micro-‘reduction’). I will argue that even though quantum entanglement provides an example of the failure of one kind of microexplanation, it does not affect the other. Contrary to a recent paper by Kronz and Tiehen, I claim that the explanation of the dynamics of quantum mechanical systems is just as reductionist as it used to be in classical mechanics.

Gregg S. Jaeger

Morris, Jamie

This work presents a constraint-based meta-framework for understanding persistent foundational dualities across physics, biology, and consciousness studies. Rather than proposing new physical mechanisms or historical cosmologies, it formalizes a post-reductionist perspective in which no globally sufficient singular description of reality is admissible. The framework replaces substance with persistence as the primary ontological primitive and treats irreducible dualities (e.g., wave–particle, observer–observed, gene–environment) as structural necessities rather than epistemic gaps. Scientific progress is reframed as translation between complementary descriptions instead of unification by collapse. Consciousness is formally introduced as a coherence-seeking interface process that operates across irreducible dualities, explaining its persistent tension with fragmentation and meaning without invoking metaphysical claims, panpsychism, or interventionist implications. From the axioms follow explicit structural limits, including the impossibility of a final theory, a total observer, permanent non-dual consciousness, or total control of complex systems. The framework is compatible with existing physical and biological theories and is intended as a stabilizing methodological guide for post-reductionist science. Ethical containment is built in by design: no inference from this work licenses the manipulation, collapse, or redesign of foundational dualities.

Rathindra Nath Sen

If it is possible to detect the path of an atom in a double-slit atom interferometer, then interference will not be observed even if path detection causes no change in the atom's momentum. This fact was explained by Scully et al and Duerr et al by using a principle ofcomplementarity that could not be formulated mathematically, together with a rather peculiar notion of entanglement. We provide an explanation based on considerations of Galilei invariance, without recourse to any notion of complementarity or entanglement. However, we do have to assume that, under conditions of the experiment, composite systems such as atoms and molecules may be regarded as single particles. This assumption is the basis of modern atom and molecule interferometry, but it lacks justification from the first principles of quantum mechanics. In our world-view the welcher Weg problem merely highlights this fact. The empirical validity of this assumption seems to reveal an aspect of quantum mechanics which can justly be termed anti-reductionist, and we conclude that use of unnecessarily strong hypotheses to explain observed phenomena can hide important physical -- and occasionally philosophical -- problems.

Jürgen Audretsch