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Causality and Chance in Modern Physics

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This book is a bold and original investigation of the philosophical foundations of physical science. David Bohm, as a superb physicist with a major textbook on quantum mechanics, is qualified for what he undertakes to do in this book. The book is devoted partly to a detailed exposition of "mechanical philosophy". Bohm describes in detail the sources and implications of this philosophy as it appears in classical mechanics, statistical physics, and quantum mechanics. Bohm argues that mechanical philosophy is not a necessary consequence of the formalism or of the well-known success of these theories. It is one possible, albeit widespread, interpretation. According to Bohm, the mechanical philosophy is a result of assuming the validity of a scientific theory in all possible situations and contexts. Bohm shows how other more reasonable interpretations of specific theories can be developed. Bohm's own interpretation involves various levels, described by qualitatively distinct theories. These may be related but are not necessarily reducable to a basic level. In particular, Bohm discusses quantum mechanics from this point of view. This serves as an introduction to what Bohm elsewhere turned into a technical research programme. The book is pervaded by a sense of Bohm's deep and unified vision of the physical world.

In this, David Bohm's first book looking at the conceptual foundations of modern physics he writes in a fast paced energetic way which, although quite analytical and interesting, lacks the warmth to be found in his later books.

His aim is to investigate the concepts of cause and chance and their applicability in physics. Bohm considers the ideas of causality in terms of relationshipos between "things" both as one-to-many and many-to-one types, then considers how contingency, chance and probablity are present in natural law.

Then, starting from the ideas of classical mechanistic physics and the changes which occurred over several hundred years in the way that the philosophy of mechanism both, took hold, 17th and 18th centuries, and significantly changed, 19th century he considers the longevity of this philosophy even after changes in it which would normally entertain a new outlook: classical particle mechanics->wave theory->fields. All of these new developments altered how the philosophy of mechanism was thought of but still maintained fundamental aspects such as: a quantitative law which could explain all natural phenomena. he goes on to explain the links between macroscopic and microscopic levels of law and how in each level a relatively independent state of affairs exists which regard to the laws, valid in each case.

Further, with the development of quantum theory at the start of the 20th century, ideas of probablity, indeterminacy and discreteness became the new concepts in physics, once again significantly changing the outlook yet still maintaining the most important tenet of mechanism: a be all and end all explanation of reality ie a final explanation which knows no alteration.

Bohm then goes on to demonstrate at least qualitatively what a different, alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics could look like, introducing his concepts of the sub-quantum level and the qualitative infinity of nature which is yet a unity. In the final chapter he looks at the way in which humans attempt to comprehend this qualitative infinity in terms of the abstraction of certain aspects from the whole and its consequences such as the multiplicity of these abstractions and their significance. He thereby avoids the seemingly obvious conclusion of Neumann regarding the non-existence of underlying laws or hidden variables. He considers question on the modes of being, becoming and how a "thing" can exist for long periods of time unchanged and yet in certain contexts always changing. He belittle's the Laplacian mechanistic "God" and what objective reality really means.

It is Bohm's first attempt at these difficult issues (1957) long before chaos theory and its ability to lead to randomness even from strictly deterministic laws and the further developments he himself underwent in talks with Krishnamurti and the consequent construction of the idea of the holomovement. This book does not go as deep or is as fascinating as his later, richer ideas. But it does give an overview of what Bohm wished to change in physics and also society through his ideas such as dialogue.

A good introduction to a deep thinker.

I consider this book a gem.

The forthright explanations of mechanistic systems, both deterministic and indeterministic, will help to awaken any student of physics as to the degree to which their world-view may not be as broad as they had imagined.

The concerns raised about quantum mechanics are not trivial or extreme. And they are raised with deliberation and humility. Likewise, so are Bohm's suggested solutions.

Finally, and most importantly I think, the argument for a world-view of physics that presumes - as the most scientifically (investigationally speaking) useful view to take - that the universe is comprised of an infinite number of levels of depth and complexity. Perhaps there are not an infinite number of levels of reality, but to presuppose there is opens the mind to want to investigate what they might be. Thus, supposing that QM defines and "explains" the 'bottom' of reality is first, not a logically strong position (just as Brownian motion formulas do not "explain" such motion as a fundamental aspect of nature) and secondly, such a view is scientifically inhibiting: supposing that QM *is* the bottom level of reality is rather silly in light of our historical knowledge of how humans have consistently misjudged the 'fundamental' aspects of nature in the past, and supposing we have reached it now via QM is a dubious claim. Further, even the issue of determinism vs. indeterminism may be a moot point: it may be at a lower level of reality, there is no such distinction - we may be seeing those two 'macroscopic' aspects of a more basic or inclusive feature of reality.

If you want to be an original thinker in physics (or perhaps any science or philosophy), this book is a good starting point to help you realize how easily assumptions of the nature of reality slip past our awareness.

I think this is the best book about the fundamental assumptions of science I have ever read. David Bohm is one of the wisest and open-minded thinkers I've ever encountered. He believes that science should be based on the assumption of the "qualitative infinity of nature." We shouldn't assume that anything is what it is absolutely. "Any given set of qualities and properties of matter and categories of laws expressed in terms of these qualities and properties is applicable only within limited contexts, over limited ranges of conditions and to limited degrees of approximation...." The continued existence of any entity or property depends on a balance of the processes tending to change it in different directions. "The broader the context or longer period of time, the more opportunity for that balance to be fundamentally altered." This is consistent with what the process philosophers have told us: Being is just an abstraction from becoming.

Scientific laws can apply only conditionally, not absolutely; they are always subject to revision. We should doubt that any description of "elementary particles" or statement of laws governing them could constitute a full and final description of reality. We should also doubt that we can know the universe's future: "the prediction of the 'heat death' of the universe will probably be invalidated by qualitatively new developments reflecting the inexhaustible and infinite character of the universal process of becoming."

Much of Bohm's book is a critique of the philosophy of mechanism, which he regards as an unjustified extrapolation from science's success in discovering certain conditional mechanistic relationships. Mechanism aims to reduce everything to interactions between basic entities with fixed qualities, like the parts of a machine. This overlooks another kind of relation, the "reciprocal relationship" between an entity and the broader context that makes it what it is. The earliest forms of mechanism were deterministic, assuming that the future could be calculated from the initial positions and velocities of entities and the forces acting upon them. Bohm does not confine his critique to deterministic mechanism, but extends it to the indeterministic mechanism of quantum mechanics. The conventional interpretation of QM attributes an absolute and final validity to the indeterminacy principle, so that only a statistical description of reality is permitted and no causal interpretation of phenomena is even pursued. Bohm regards causality and chance--necessary causes and chance contingencies--as two aspects of all processes. Any theory that embraces one to the exclusion of the other is inherently incomplete. "Neither causal laws nor laws of chance can ever be perfectly correct, because each inevitably leaves out some aspect of what is happening in broader contexts." That's why Bohm has led the search for a "hidden variables" interpretation of QM. In the end, Bohm regards the mechanistic philosophy in all its forms as contrary to the spirit of scientific inquiry, since it tends to regard a limited truth as the whole truth. "The essential character of scientific research is that it moves towards the absolute by studying the relative, in its inexhaustible multiplicity and diversity."

In contrast to the mechanistic philosophy, Bohm proposes a more holistic and organic view. "The inter-relationships of the parts (or sub-wholes) within a system depend crucially on the state of the whole, in a way that is not expressible in terms of properties of the parts alone. Indeed, the parts are organized in ways that flow out of the whole. The usual mechanistic notion that the organization, and indeed, the entire behaviour, of the whole derives solely from the parts and their predetermined inter-relationships thus breaks down."

Recommended for readers interested in theoretical physics or the philosophy of science.

Bohm in this book attacks to Standard Interpretation of Quantum Physics. He starts with definition of Physical Theories, Laws of Nature, discusses Statistical Mechanics and goes into Deterministic Mechanicstic Philosophys and indeterminist Mechanistic Philosophy. He attackes Bohr and Heisenberg on their stand that Uncertainity Principal is the rule of the nature and foundation of Quantum Physics.Claims it is not conclusively proven as a rule and than argues that one can always find new Theory that can be fundemantally different from Uncertainity Principle, yet could explain nature better and yields current Quantum Physics as complimentarity. Although he claims that Heisenberg's claim is with no foundation, I believe he fails to prove that Nature can not be explained completely with limited number of laws and concepts.His argument against Heisenberg could be reversed and used against his own argument