Abstract Einstein thought that quantum mechanics was incomplete because it was nonlocal. In this paper I argue instead that quantum theory is incomplete, even if it is nonlocal, and that relativity is incomplete because its minimal spatiotemporal structure cannot naturally accommodate such nonlocality. So, I show that relativistic pilot-wave theories are the rational completion of quantum mechanics as well as relativity: they provide a spatiotemporal ontology of particles, as well as a spatiotemporal structure able to explain quantum correlations.
Abstract Einstein thought that quantum mechanics was incomplete because it was nonlocal. In this paper I argue instead that quantum theory is incomplete, even if it is nonlocal, and that relativity is incomplete because its minimal spatiotemporal structure cannot naturally accommodate such nonlocality. So, I show that relativistic pilot-wave theories are the rational completion of quantum mechanics as well as relativity: they provide a spatiotemporal ontology of particles, as well as a spatiotemporal structure able to explain quantum correlations.
Tim Maudlin has argued that the standard formulation of quantum mechanics fails to provide a clear ontology and dynamics and that the de Broglie--Bohm pilot-wave theory offers a better completion of the formalism, more in line with Einstein's concerns. I suggest that while Bohmian mechanics improves on textbook quantum theory, it does not go far enough. In particular, it relies on the ``quantum equilibrium hypothesis'' and accepts explicit nonlocality as fundamental. A deeper completion is available in stochastic mechanics, where the wavefunction and the Born rule emerge from an underlying diffusion process, and in a contextual, category-theoretic semantics in which measurement and EPR--Bell correlations are reinterpreted as features of contextual truth rather than of mysterious dynamics. In this framework, the measurement problem and ``spooky action-at-a-distance'' are dissolved rather than solved. Finally, a dynamics based on Rosen's ``classical Schrödinger equation'' provides a continuous passage between quantum and classical regimes, eliminating any sharp Heisenberg cut.
Pilot wave theory (PWT), also called de Broglie-Bohm theory or Bohmian Mechanics, is a deterministic nonlocal `hidden variables' quantum theory without fundamental uncertainty. It is in agreement with all experimental facts about nonrelativistic quantum mechanics (QM) and furthermore explains its mathematical structure. But in general, PWT describes a nonequilibrium state, admitting new physics beyond standard QM. This essay is concerned with the problem how to generalise the PWT approach to quantum field theories (QFTs). First, we briefy state the formulation of nonrelativistic PWT and review its major results. We work out the parts of its structure that it shares with the QFT case. Next, we come to the main part: We show how PW QFTs can be constructed both for field and particle ontologies. In this context, we discuss some of the existing models as well as general issues: most importantly the status of Lorentz invariance in the context of quantum nonlocality. The essay concludes with a more speculative outlook in which the potential of PWT for open QFT questions as well as quantum nonequilibrium physics are considered.
If the statement by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen on incompleteness of Quantum-Mechanical description of nature is correct, then we can regard Quantum Mechanics as a Method of Indirect Computation. The problem is, whether the theory is incomplete or the nature itself does not allow complete description? And if the first option is correct, how is it possible to complete the Quantum-Mechanical description? Here we try to complement de-Broglie's idea on wave-pilot the stochastic gravitation gives origin to. We assume that de-Broglie's wave-pilots are gravitational stochastic ones, and we shall regard micro-objects as test classical particles being subject to the influence of de-Broglie's waves stochastic gravitation.
Quantum entanglement appears nonlocal: measuring one particle instantaneously determines outcomes for its distant partner, seemingly defying relativistic causality. Building on prior work, we propose that this "paradox" dissolves when particles are recognized not as point-objects but as spatial termini of single, extended correlation sequences. These sequences remain genuinely incomplete – indeterminate in any measurement basis – until measurement supplies the boundary conditions that complete the entire pattern. No information propagates between termini because they were never separate entities. Measurement doesn't reveal hidden properties; it finishes an incomplete structure through the enforcement of local invariants via irreversible interaction with macroscopic systems. This framework explains why superposition exists, why certain observables become classical (position, momentum, and energy), and why quantum behavior dominates at small scales while classical behavior emerges at large scales. The approach eliminates longstanding paradoxes without exotic ontology: no hidden variables, no parallel worlds, no consciousness-dependent collapse, no violation of relativity. We derive testable predictions and resolve the measurement problem: there is no discontinuous collapse, only thermodynamically irreversible completion of correlation sequences. Most provocatively, this analysis reinforces a claim from prior work: if laws are emergent attractors rather than eternal axioms, the search for a "theory of everything" unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity may rest on a category error.
The Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) argument was originally posed as a challenge to the completeness of quantum mechanics, rather than its empirical adequacy. While subsequent developments—most notably Bell’s theorem and experimental tests of nonlocal correlations— have constrained classes of hidden-variable theories, they have not resolved the underlying on- tological question raised by EPR: whether the quantum state exhausts physical reality. In this paper, we revisit the EPR criterion of completeness from the perspective of a temporally grounded physical framework, the Temporal Inertia Framework (TIF). We argue that the orig- inal EPR dilemma rests on an implicit assumption that physical reality must be specified on spacelike hypersurfaces, an assumption shared by both EPR and Bohr. By relaxing this assump- tion and allowing physical correlations to arise from shared temporal structure rather than local spatial variables or superluminal influence, one may satisfy the EPR realism criterion without violating relativistic causality or Bell-type constraints. Quantum mechanics is thus interpreted as operationally complete but ontologically incomplete, with quantum indeterminacy emerging from dynamical interactions with a proposed underlying temporal structure.
Probability amplitude waves described by quantum mechanics are globally coherent relativistically space-like space-time structures, having no internal causal links. In this sense these non-classical structures are anticipated by the classical ontology of special relativity, which also delineates (in a completely different way) space-like non-causal intervals in space-time. I discuss and distinguish two broad classes of globally coherent relativistically space-like space-time structure, and suggest a parsimonious extension of the core ontology of physics to include both (rather than only one as at present), as a way of resolving some puzzles in the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and motivating its formalism. This ontological extension yields well known formal features usually postulated ad-hoc, such as separability of the wave function, and explains the puzzling absolute nature of time in quantum mechanics. The curious fact that the ontologies of both special relativity and quantum mechanics delineate (in strikingly different ways) strictly non-causal intervals in space-time suggests the existence of an explanatory “last common ancestor” ontology, at a higher level of abstraction than the ontologies of either. I briefly sketch such an ontology, consisting of world self-mappings, in terms of which there are two distinct concepts of time, intrinsic and extrinsic, which together play an abstract identity role in the world, and which suggests part of the meaning of both special relativity and quantum mechanics, and of the non-causal coherence of non-classical space-time structures, concerns extrinsic abstract structure, in particular extrinsic time.