This paper mainly examines the relationship between David Bohm’s Hidden variable theory in Quantum Theory in 1952 and Original East Asian Thoughts such as Laozi, Zhuangzi, Chan Buddhism, and The Book of Change(老莊禪易). Through John Bell’s theorem in 1964 proved Bohm’s Hidden variable theory include Einstein’s hypothesis at least does not apply to in local area.BR In this paper, we discuss the correlation between the two thoughts despite the difference in their origin or perspective. Bohm
This paper mainly examines the relationship between David Bohm’s Hidden variable theory in Quantum Theory in 1952 and Original East Asian Thoughts such as Laozi, Zhuangzi, Chan Buddhism, and The Book of Change(老莊禪易). Through John Bell’s theorem in 1964 proved Bohm’s Hidden variable theory include Einstein’s hypothesis at least does not apply to in local area.BR In this paper, we discuss the correlation between the two thoughts despite the difference in their origin or perspective. Bohm
Prologue A memorial conference for John Bell, open to the public, was held at Rutgers University around 20 years ago. I gave a short talk there on Bell's views about David Bohm's “hidden variables” formulation of quantum mechanics, a version of quantum mechanics often called the de Broglie–Bohm theory or Bohmian mechanics. This theory was in fact discovered by Louis de Broglie in 1927. In 1952, it was rediscovered and developed by Bohm, who was the first to appreciate its connection to the predictions of standard quantum mechanics. I did not publish the talk. I have decided that it would be appropriate to publish a very lightly edited version of it here, in this volume devoted to the work of Bell on the foundation of quantum mechanics. One reason for doing so is that the connection between Bell and Bohm continues to be somewhat underplayed, with the strength of his advocacy of Bohmian mechanics not properly appreciated. For example, about half of the papers in Bell's collected works on the foundations of quantum mechanics deal with Bohmian mechanics. But in his fine introduction to the revised edition of this great book [1], Alain Aspect mentions this theory in only a single sentence, and parenthetically at that. For several decades after Bell proved his nonlocality theorem, based in part on Bell's inequality, it was widely claimed that Bell had shown that hidden variables – and Bohmian mechanics in particular – were impossible, that they were incompatible with the predictions of quantum mechanics. For example, the great physicist Eugene Wigner, who, unlike most of his contemporaries, was profoundly concerned with the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics and usually wrote on the subject with great clarity and insight, has written that This [hidden variables] is an interesting idea and even though few of us were ready to accept it, it must be admitted that the truly telling argument against it was produced as late as 1965, by J. S. Bell … This appears to give a convincing argument against the hidden variables theory.
Abstract In 1957, Bohm and Yakir Aharonov alighted on experiments on correlated photons performed some years earlier. Although the experimenters had not looked for EPR-type correlations, Bohm and Aharonov found no contradictions with quantum theory, concluding that entanglement is a real property of matter. Inspired by Bohm, in 1964 John Bell first dispatched von Neumann’s impossibility proof, readmitting the possibility of local hidden variables, and showed how experiment could decide if they existed. Many physicists later misunderstood this as a challenge to Copenhagen. But, as Bohm and Aharonov explained: ‘ . . . there is no inconsistency in the quantum-mechanical conclusion that such correlations exist, but there is, in [Bohr’s] point of view, no way even to raise the question of what is their origin’. If the particles cannot be considered as separable, Einstein’s gaping explanatory hole returns. Interested experimenters had first to disinter the question, which Bell had buried in an obscure journal.
This thesis aims to explore the relationship between the science, the philosophy and the esoteric imagination of the American physicist David Bohm (1917-1992). Bohm is recognized as one of the most brilliant physicists of his generation. He is famous for his ‘hidden variables’ interpretation of quantum mechanics. Bohm wrote extensively on philosophical and psychological subjects. In his celebrated book Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1882) he introduced the influential ideas of the Explicate and the Implicate orders that are at the core of his process philosophy. Bohm was also a very close disciple of the Indian teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), whom he recognized to have had an important influence on his thought. Chapter 1 is a general explanation of what I intend to do, why my research is filling an important gap, introduce the field of Western esotericism as a scholarly subject and suggesting that it offers a fruitful way of approaching the thought of David Bohm. I also explain my research principles and a brief description of the philosophical standpoint from which I am approaching the material. Chapter 2 gives a description of the textual sources I used in my research. This is followed by a comprehensive literature review. Chapter 3 is a biographical essay where I give an account of Bohm’s life, career, works, major ideas and their development, stressing their significance for the development of Bohm’s holistic philosophy and his interactions with the esoteric. This chapter is an introduction to the main ideas of the dissertation. Chapter 4 revisits the genesis of the Causal Interpretation, Bohm’s first attempt to deal with the interpretation of quantum mechanics. I make emphasis on the philosophical developments that gave rise to it. I introduce all the relevant physics and give a detailed explanation of the problem of interpretation and Bohm’s first proposal. Chapter 5 is about the philosophical developments in Bohm’s thought brought by the Causal Interpretation. In particular I examine the influence that G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) had on Bohm’s thought and explain why I take the view that this is an esoteric influence. Chapter 6 reviews the developments in Bohm’s thought during the 1960’s. I describe Bohm’s search for radically new concepts in physics and his exchanges with several thinkers ending with his encounter with Jiddu Krishnamurti. Chapters 7 and 8 are devoted to the study of Bohm’s philosophy as he elaborated it after 1960. Chapter 7 concentrates on the idea of the Implicate Order and it also studies the Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Bohm’s last version of his interpretation effort, which is based on the Implicate Order. In chapter 8 I examine Bohm’s theory of how the mind and the body are connected through a ladder of consciousness formed by a series of Explicate and Implicate Orders, and finishes with an exposition of Bohm’s dialogue technique. In the last chapter I summarize my conclusions. An appendix is included with a brief overview of Bohm’s legacy. All the relevant details about the esoteric currents that Bohm encountered during his life and that are required to understand our argument are introduced as they are needed throughout the main body of the text.
One of the most important interpretative problems of quantum mechanics concerns the so called hidden variables. Sometimes it is said that the Bell's theorem falsifies theories of such variables, but in fact, it falsifies only local ones. This paper deals with David Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is a kind of nonlocal hidden variable theory. This theory delivers a full deterministic and realistic description of quantum phenomena and predicts the same results as standard quantum mechanics. It is argued that this interpretation is still worth being investigated, because it remains in the full agreement with the mathematical formalism of this theory and it surpasses the standard interpretation as far as simplicity and lack of arbitrary assumptions are concerned.
Hidden variable theories, ‘the hidden parameter’ as von Neumann called them, entered the quantum scene soon after the formalization of quantum mechanics as we know it today. That formalization was led by front-line physicists like Born, Dirac, Heisenberg, Jordan, and Schrödinger. Attention to hidden variable theories garnered strength following the criticisms towards quantum mechanics formulated by Einstein and colleagues in 1935. That criticism, stating that quantum mechanics was ‘not complete,’ as a theory, led Bohm, in the 1950s, to formulate hidden variable theories. In turn, Bell in 1964 introduced his famed Bell theorem that provided a test for the existence of hidden variable theories. This chapter examines the history of the futile search, for experimental proof, for the existence of these theories.
Abstract We will first define what is meant by “hidden variables”. Then, we will review theorems proving the impossibility of theories introducing such variables in a naive way. Next, we will outline the de Broglie-Bohm theory and show that it is not refuted by those theorems. To do that, we will explain how “measurements” work in that theory, using the examples of spin measurements and of momentum measurements. Those measurements do not reveal pre-existing properties of the quantum particle but are the result of interactions between that particle and the measuring apparatus. And this is why the de Broglie-Bohm theory is not refuted by the theorems on the impossibility of hidden variables. We will also explain the relationship between the no “hidden variables” theorems and nonlocality, with and without introducing Bell’s inequalities.