This article presents the methodology of a philosophical investigation into the interpretation of Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics. Its starting point is a methodological asymmetry: modern theoretical physics has generated a stable scientific core together with persistent and mutually incompatible philosophical interpretations, while the analogical realism of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition has remained comparatively absent from that discussion. The method therefore combines two ordered moments. Description reconstructs the scientific theories and philosophical traditions with methodological restraint, distinguishing physical content from later ontological interpretation. Hermeneutical analysis then examines the relations among competing meanings without presupposing the tripartite classification it seeks to test. Causality and the principle of least action function as transversal analytical coordinates across Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics, while the uncertainty principle provides an additional coordinate specific to the quantum domain. Fregean sense/reference and the degrees of formal abstraction control transitions among logical, physical, and ontological levels. The Bell-Bohm-Modal-Thomistic (BBMT) model is introduced only as a later bridge to be tested, not as a premise of the descriptive stage. The methodological aim is to determine whether analogical realism can enter the hermeneutic circle of theoretical physics without altering the scientific formalism or collapsing distinct levels of discourse.
This article presents the methodology of a philosophical investigation into the interpretation of Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics. Its starting point is a methodological asymmetry: modern theoretical physics has generated a stable scientific core together with persistent and mutually incompatible philosophical interpretations, while the analogical realism of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition has remained comparatively absent from that discussion. The method therefore combines two ordered moments. Description reconstructs the scientific theories and philosophical traditions with methodological restraint, distinguishing physical content from later ontological interpretation. Hermeneutical analysis then examines the relations among competing meanings without presupposing the tripartite classification it seeks to test. Causality and the principle of least action function as transversal analytical coordinates across Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics, while the uncertainty principle provides an additional coordinate specific to the quantum domain. Fregean sense/reference and the degrees of formal abstraction control transitions among logical, physical, and ontological levels. The Bell-Bohm-Modal-Thomistic (BBMT) model is introduced only as a later bridge to be tested, not as a premise of the descriptive stage. The methodological aim is to determine whether analogical realism can enter the hermeneutic circle of theoretical physics without altering the scientific formalism or collapsing distinct levels of discourse.
This article presents the introductory architecture of a doctoral investigation into the hermeneutical interpretation of twentieth-century theoretical physics. Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics are treated first according to their physical structures and then through Neo-Kantianism, Logical Empiricism, Scientific Realism, and the comparatively neglected alternative of Aristotelian-Thomistic Classical Realism. The central hypothesis is that these interpretative horizons can be examined according to predominant tendencies toward univocity, equivocity, and analogy, and that analogy may preserve realist reference without collapsing scientific representation into ontology. The investigation distinguishes physical description, philosophical interpretation, hermeneutical comparison, and ontological evaluation. Its principal constructive test is the Bell-Bohm-Modal-Thomistic (BBMT) model: Bell secures the realist demand for a physical referent; Bohmian mechanics specifies effective physical determination; Modal Interpretation distinguishes dynamical and value states; contextual Boolean algebra may supplement M as a formal control but is not a constitutive fifth component; and the decisive passage from M to T is mediated through Fregean sense/reference, formal abstraction, participation, and a combined analogy of proper proportionality and intrinsic attribution. The broader thesis is that these levels form a tripartite hermeneutical circle whose final evaluation bears on scientific interpretation, ontology, and the existential horizon of the reader1.
This condensed version presents BBMT (Bell–Bohm–Modal–Thomistic) as a controlled interpretative bridge between contemporary Scientific Realism and the analogical ontology of Classical Realism. The construction begins from Bell’s requirement of beables as a mind-independent physical referent, specifies that referent through Bohmian particle configuration and guidance, and introduces the Modal Interpretation to distinguish dynamical and value states as the quantum-modal poles of possibility and actuality. Contextual Boolean algebra is retained as a formal control of modal determination rather than as an additional constitutive component. The decisive transition from M to T is semantic and ontological rather than deductive: Frege’s distinction between sense and reference permits preservation of the physical referent under a change of sense; Thomistic formal abstraction legitimizes the consideration of the same reality under different formal objects; participation grounds the restricted physical realization in a more universal ontological structure; and a combined analogy of proper proportionality and intrinsic attribution relates modal possibility/actuality to potency/act without univocal identification or equivocal rupture. BBMT therefore ascends epistemically from quantum physical determination toward ontology while preserving the inverse direction of ontological priority. The model does not derive Thomistic ontology from quantum mechanics; it proposes a disciplined route by which a realist quantum referent may be interpreted under the act–potency structure and thereby reach the threshold of analogical being.
This chapter presents the results and conclusions of the research in three parts. The first part contains the hermeneutical results. It shows that the Neo-Kantian, logical-empiricist, and scientific-realist interpretations of Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics, considered with respect to the transversal principles of causality and stationary action, satisfy the criteria by which Mauricio Beuchot identifies hermeneutical interpretations. It then classifies them: Neo-Kantianism as predominantly univocal, logical empiricism as predominantly equivocal, and scientific realism as univocal in its ontology, although it belongs to the realist family. Classical realism, reached through the BBMT bridge of Chapter 7, appears as the only analogical interpretation, because only it grounds its ontology in the third degree of formal abstraction. The second part derives a secondary thesis concerning the existential states that tend to accompany each hermeneutical mode: anguish in the case of univocity, hopelessness in the case of equivocity, and hope in the case of analogy. It is presented as a philosophical interpretation in dialogue with psychological research, not as an empirical finding. The third part draws three corollaries: a cosmological corollary, which reinterprets the problem of time in the Wheeler–DeWitt equation through the act–potency structure; a physical corollary, which examines the “absolute” that physics can reach within its own formal object; and an ontological corollary, which shows that the first three ways of Thomas Aquinas are valid within the analogical hermeneutic.
This chapter repeats for quantum mechanics the comparison carried out for relativity in Chapter 5. Its thesis is that the same three interpretative families, neo-Kantian, empiricist and scientific realist, reappear in the philosophical reception of quantum mechanics, but in a more radical form, because the dispute now reaches the meaning of the quantum state, of probability and of measurement. The chapter first identifies what the formalism established in Chapter 4 leaves open and treats the Copenhagen framework as a point of departure rather than a unified doctrine. It then reconstructs the neo-Kantian interpretation (the Kantian affinities of Bohr’s complementarity, Cassirer, Grete Hermann and contemporary transcendental perspectives), the empiricist interpretation (Heisenberg’s observability principle, instrumentalism, Schlick, Frank, Reichenbach and van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism) and, on equal terms, the realist interpretation: Einstein and the EPR argument, Popper’s propensities, the de Broglie–Bohm theory, Bell’s beables and local causality, realist modal interpretations, and the Everett and collapse programmes. The realist family is the most developed of the three in quantum mechanics, but it is also internally plural: it affirms that the theory refers to a mind-independent reality while disagreeing about whether that reality consists of particles, fields, propensities, branching worlds or definite and possible properties. On this basis the chapter compares the three interpretations of causality and of stationary action. Causality appears as a relativized condition of objective description, as a statistical relation without surplus content, or as an objective but non-local structure; stationary action appears as a coordination axiom of quantum dynamics, as an empirically equivalent formulation, or as a real dynamical structure that in Bohm’s theory directly guides motion. The result confirms the pattern of Chapter 5 and identifies the precise point, the relation between quantum possibility and actuality, from which the BBMT bridge of Chapter 7 will start.
I distinguish two senses in which one can take a given physical theory to be `complete'. On the first, a complete physical theory is one that, in principle, completely describes physical reality. On the second, a complete physical theory is one that provides all of the conceptual resources one needs to describe any (in general probabilistic) physical phenomenon to any level of detail one likes, in principle. I argue that while the (neo-)Everettian approach to interpreting quantum mechanics aims to show that it is complete in the first sense, the (neo-)Bohrian approach begins from an understanding of quantum mechanics as being complete in the second sense. I then discuss some of the essential differences between how classical and quantum theory describe phenomena, and the way in which the quantum description can be thought of as a ``natural generalisation'' (to use Bohr's phrase) of the classical description. Finally, I elaborate upon the two visions of physics from which one can motivate the first and the second sense of completeness, respectively: \emph{metaphysical realism}, on the one hand, and what I will call \emph{methodological realism}, on the other -- and discuss what one can say about the significance of the differences between quantum and classical description from each of these points of view. I suggest that there is a sense in which the views of (neo-)Everett and the views of (neo-)Bohr can be understood to be mutually supporting positions, from their respective perspectives, even though they are diametrically opposed.
ABSTRACT The paper aims to bridge the history of quantum theory with its philosophical implications. The focus is not only on the scientific underpinnings of quantum mechanics (these theories emerged as ‘ad hoc’ responses to experimental anomalies) but also on the philosophical ramifications of its probabilistic nature and indeterminacy, which differ from classical realism. The paper examines Dirac's, Bell's, and modern views, focusing on how quantum mechanics (QM) challenges traditional notions of causality, objectivity, and truth while embracing epistemological and metaphysical perspectives. Debates over collapse theories and hidden variables are discussed, as well as Putnam's philosophical outlook, which includes his trenchant involvement with realism, logic, and the measurement problem. Finally, the paper proposes that QM represents a philosophical revolution that renews our understanding of reality, knowledge, and scientific explanation, rather than simply serving as a physical theory for assessing the prospects of quantum philosophy by connecting it to broader aspects such as relativity, causality, and scientific realism.