History and Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics I : The Ontological Interpretation

Abstract

The standard quantum mechanics provides a bare mathematical description. This positivistic attitude effectively replaces all forms of realism, causality and related determinism with mathematical recipes for calculating probable "expectation values” of the corresponding physical quantities. Thus, in the standard quantum mechanics, few illustrative and metaphoric devices represent the micro-physical processes of underlying quantum systems. On the other hand, the de Broglie-Bohm ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics transforms the Schrödinger's equation into a form of Newton's Second Law of Motion and re-constitutes particle ontology and dynamical determinism. Under the ontological interpretation, through particles' trajectories visualized in real space and time, the intuitive and cognitive representations on the dynamical motion can have some legitimate physical meanings in explaining quantum phenomena.