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 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 article develops a contextual Boolean formalization of the Bell-Bohm-Modal-Thomistic (BBMT) model under the provisional name Contextual Ontological Actualization Framework (COAF). Its central thesis is deliberately limited: Boolean algebra does not prove the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics of potency and actuality, but it can represent, within compatible quantum contexts, a disciplined sequence of determination, modality, actualization, and renewed determination. That is, it aims to show a path to accessing analogical ontology from BBMT. In this case, the idea is to maximize the algebraic route and postpone conceptual interpretation until the last moment. As I will show in subsequent articles, other options exist, but for now we will follow this path. Under this proposal, the global network of quantum propositions is distinguished from Boolean subalgebras associated with compatible observables, while a privileged beable algebra linked to position is examined as the domain in which a defined valuation can be assigned without postulating a prohibited global valuation1. On the other hand, the transition from physical-mathematical structure to ontology is governed neither by univocal identity nor by equivocal separation, but by a composite analogy. At this point, it is necessary to keep in mind two elements of the realist ontological framework that inspire BBMT-COAF: 1) Reality is divided into actual and potential; that is, potency is part of reality, because otherwise it would be impossible for a being to become actual. 2) The entity, as a transcendental concept, is analogous, and this analogy is twofold: it possesses a horizontal dimension expressed in proportionality and a vertical dimension expressed in its attributive predicability. This last element is the position subscribed to by the author in the discussion of specialists, which should be taken beforehand as a hermeneutical prejudice. Horizontally, a proper proportionality analogy compares the relation between physical possibility and physical actuality with that between potentiality and act. Vertically, an analogy of intrinsic attribution orders physical actuality and potentiality to their ontological analogs. Building on Ángel González Álvarez's synthesis of the Thomistic analogy and Santiago Ramírez's proposed correction to the Cayetano-Suárez opposition, this work also clarifies the conception of being that should govern the interpretation: a being is not an abstract logical unity, but rather the inseparable unity of essence and existence, intrinsically realized in diverse ways. Consequently, COAF is presented as a research program and a formal correspondence, not as a deduction of ontology from quantum mechanics. Furthermore, we must not forget that we are attempting to demonstrate that the analogical realist interpretation is not contradictory; that is, we begin with analogy and then demonstrate that this interpretive option of scientific realism does not lead to contradiction. This technique does not imply circularity and is used in various sciences when direct demonstration, whether experimental or deductive, is not possible. It thus proves that a proposition considered true will maintain this condition as long as no derived contradiction is found. Moreover, we must also remember that the BBMT model and its COAF form part of a hermeneutic and, consequently, interpretive thesis.
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 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 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.
As far as classical physics is concerned, it is possible to trace causal relations between physical objects (i.e. particles in this case) back to intrinsic properties of these objects (such as their mass and charge). On this view, causal relations turn out to be internal instead of external relations, supervening on intrinsic properties of the relata (as proposed by Heil and Lowe). However, one can raise doubts about this view already in Newtonian mechanics. The decisive blow to this view comes from quantum physics, with Bell’s theorem proving that no dynamics based on local, intrinsic properties of quantum objects can yield the empirical predictions of quantum mechanics. Nonetheless, quantum entanglement by no means implies that we have to abandon an ontology of objects (i.e. substances such as particles) in favour of an ontology of structures (as claimed by French and Ladyman). Any of the known proposals for a quantum ontology of matter in space-time is committed to objects. However, on any of these proposals, what determines the dynamics of these objects are not local, intrinsic properties, but a global or holistic property instantiated by all the objects together – that is, a structure that takes all the objects in the universe as its relata. The view set out in this paper thus amounts to combining ontic structural realism with an ontology of objects that can be conceived as substances. This suggestion is illustrated by drawing on the ontology of quantum physics worked out by Bohm and Bell. 1.
Modal Actualism offers a realist, non-Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics that preserves unitary dynamics while explaining definite outcomes without invoking collapse or branching. The central distinction is between modal structure—the full set of decoherent histories physically supported by the universal wavefunction—and actuality, the single decoherent history that is realised. Decoherence partitions modal structure into quasiclassical trajectories, but only one such trajectory constitutes the actual worldline. Probability is interpreted as modal measure: a structural feature of the wavefunction that quantifies the weight of possible histories without implying their actuality. This framework dissolves foundational paradoxes by blocking the inference from modal multiplicity to ontological multiplicity, thereby avoiding Everettian inflation while retaining the explanatory power of decoherence. Modal Actualism reconciles quantum correlations with relativistic locality and reframes cosmological fine-tuning as a feature of modal structure rather than evidence for multiverse ensembles