Propensity Theory proposes a foundational root theory encompassing quantum mechanics within a unified deductive framework. Starting from propensity as a fundamental ontological category, the theory explains all phenomena through a five-stage cycle of bond formation and dissolution. Numerical simulations across six quantum phenomena show agreement with established predictions. The theory also introduces Propensity Induction — a methodology for actively designing phenomena. Includes Author's Clarifying Notes on pluralistic realism and the genesis of information.
Propensity Theory proposes a foundational root theory encompassing quantum mechanics within a unified deductive framework. Starting from propensity as a fundamental ontological category, the theory explains all phenomena through a five-stage cycle of bond formation and dissolution. Numerical simulations across six quantum phenomena show agreement with established predictions. The theory also introduces Propensity Induction — a methodology for actively designing phenomena. Includes Author's Clarifying Notes on pluralistic realism and the genesis of information.
Quantum mechanics, despite its predictive power, lacks a coherent ontology—the "mechanism" its name implies. Wave-particle duality, entanglement, and the indispensability of complex numbers remain mysteries, suggesting the theory may be incomplete in principle. Drawing on the Physical Information Cosmology (PIC) framework—where the universe emerges via a two-stage phase transition from a conserved Physical Information vacuum—we propose that quantum entities are not particles or waves but three-dimensional projections of higher-dimensional "Physical Information Packets." Each packet inherently possesses three superimposed potentialities: informaticity (correlation), energeticity (wave), and substantiality (matter). This triadic structure, which we term the Information-Wave-Particle Triality, is a direct consequence of the recursive partial transitions (information→energy→matter) at cosmic genesis. We demonstrate that wave-particle duality arises from measurement coupling with either energetic or substantial potentials; the uncertainty principle reflects the mutual exclusivity of these observational modes; and entanglement is the informaticity dimension becoming manifest. The complex number structure of quantum mechanics is shown to be the necessary algebraic representation of a system with two orthogonal ontic dimensions (substance and energy). This framework explains why Bell inequality violations are inevitable from a local perspective within a globally structured tetrahedral universe. It offers a parsimonious, testable ontology that unifies quantum phenomena under the same conserved Physical Information from which all reality emerges. In this picture, PIC plays its own dice—the probabilities of quantum mechanics are not a mark of incompleteness, but the necessary manifestation of the information-energy-matter triality rooted in cosmic genesis.
The purpose of this paper is to revisit a neglected understanding of quantum mechanics, the so-called propensity theory and to propose a amended version of it. According to this version, the causal-structural approach adopted here, a quantum system has a physical structure, consisting of relata (components, say electrons) and relations (determining the interrelations between the components). This structure is mathematically encoded in wave functions and forms the base, on which propensities supervene. This paper proposes that propensities or intrinsic dispositions supervene on the structural properties of the system. A propensity is a disposition of a quantum system to display selective aspects in response to an encounter with a measurement situation. The selective propensities manifest themselves as probabilities, in accordance with the application of the Born rule to respective wave functions.
Abstract Metaphysicians should pay attention to quantum mechanics, but not because it provides definitive answers to many metaphysical questions. The theory itself is remarkably silent on the nature of the physical world, and the various interpretations of the theory on offer present conflicting ontological pictures. Rather, quantum mechanics is essential to the metaphysician because it reshapes standard metaphysical debates and opens up unforeseen new metaphysical possibilities. Even if quantum mechanics provides few clear answers, there are good reasons to think that any adequate understanding of the quantum world will result in a radical reshaping of our classical worldview in some way or other. Whatever the world is like at the atomic scale, it is almost certainly not the swarm of particles pushed around by forces that is often presupposed. This book guides readers through the theory of quantum mechanics and its implications for metaphysics in a clear and accessible way. The theory and its various interpretations are presented with a minimum of technicality. The consequences of these interpretations for metaphysical debates concerning realism, indeterminacy, causation, determinism, holism, and individuality (among other topics) are explored in detail, stressing the novel form that the debates take given the empirical facts in the quantum domain. While quantum mechanics may not deliver unconditional pronouncements on these issues, the range of possibilities consistent with our knowledge of the empirical world is relatively small—and each possibility is metaphysically revisionary in some way.
This paper explores the application of category theory to provide a semantic framework for quantum vector spaces, which are fundamental to quantum mechanics and quantum information. We move beyond the traditional algebraic and analytical descriptions of Hilbert spaces to adopt a more abstract, compositional, and graphical approach rooted in monoidal categories. This categorical perspective allows for a unified understanding of quantum phenomena, including superposition, entanglement, and measurement, by representing quantum systems as objects and processes as morphisms. We delve into the concept of compact closed categories and dagger symmetric monoidal categories as the appropriate mathematical structures to capture the essential features of quantum theory, such as duality, adjoints, and the tensor product for composite systems. Furthermore, the paper discusses how graphical calculi, arising from these categorical structures, offer an intuitive and rigorous method for reasoning about quantum protocols and computations, facilitating the design and verification of quantum algorithms. By providing a high-level, axiomatic framework, categorical semantics clarifies the foundational principles of quantum mechanics and opens new avenues for developing quantum programming languages and understanding the interplay between quantum information and computation.
Emergent quantum mechanics explores the possibility of an ontology for quantum mechanics. The resurgence of interest in "deeper-level" theories for quantum phenomena challenges the standard, textbook interpretation. The book presents expert views that critically evaluate the significance—for 21st century physics—of ontological quantum mechanics, an approach that David Bohm helped pioneer. The possibility of a deterministic quantum theory was first introduced with the original de Broglie-Bohm theory, which has also been developed as Bohmian mechanics. The wide range of perspectives that were contributed to this book on the occasion of David Bohm’s centennial celebration provide ample evidence for the physical consistency of ontological quantum mechanics. The book addresses deeper-level questions such as the following: Is reality intrinsically random or fundamentally interconnected? Is the universe local or nonlocal? Might a radically new conception of reality include a form of quantum causality or quantum ontology? What is the role of the experimenter agent? As the book demonstrates, the advancement of ‘quantum ontology’—as a scientific concept—marks a clear break with classical reality. The search for quantum reality entails unconventional causal structures and non-classical ontology, which can be fully consistent with the known record of quantum observations in the laboratory.
Contemporary fundamental physics combines extraordinary empirical success with the per-sistence of unresolved foundational difficulties. While theoretical frameworks continue to in-crease in formal sophistication, certain classes of conceptual problems remain stable acrosssuccessive developments. This paper argues that this situation reflects a structural feature ofscientific methodology rather than a collection of isolated technical shortcomings.The central claim is that a methodological asymmetry between formal and ontological el-ements of scientific theories gives rise to a structural catch–22. Formal structures are readilyrevised, extended or elaborated, whereas ontological commitments that delimit a theory’s do-main of applicability are typically held fixed and remain implicit. As a result, foundationalproblems that originate at the level of interpretive structure cannot be resolved within the spaceof admissible responses, leading instead to formal complication or interpretive proliferation.Against this background, foundational paradoxes are not treated here as primary targetsof resolution but as diagnostic indicators of this structural constraint. The paper develops asystematic classification of paradox formation across fundamental physics, identifying five recur-ring mechanisms of ontological misalignment: boundary-region effects, illicit domain extension,projection conflation, temporal category errors and interpretive overloading. These mechanismsrecur across diverse theoretical contexts and account for the persistence of otherwise disparateparadoxes.The papers contribution is methodological and diagnostic: to clarify the structural conditionsunder which certain classes of foundational problems arise and persist and to show how makingontological commitments explicit can expand the space of coherent scientific description withoutundermining empirical rigor. The analysis also highlights how prevailing publication practicestend to reinforce the structural dynamics identified here.