Customer Reviews

The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory

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In this book, David Bohm's (probably) last major work before his death, Bohm and Hiley outline in some detail Bohm's original work on the "quantum potential" which he developed from de Broglie's earlier attempts some years ago. This book brings together Bohm and Hiley's work dealing with the quantum potential approach for varied quantum phenomena such as photon absorption, photon emission, the measurement problem in quantum physics and so on. Throughout it is wise to remind oneself of Bohm's comment on this approach when he stated that it is only one possible exploration of an idea and not meant as a final theory by any means. Bohm points out repeatedly that in order to develop the quantum theory further it needs new concepts/philosophy to delve into deeper aspects of reality. If these thoughts are not kept in mind then one gets the distinct feeling that there is something incomplete in the work as it stands. Bohm's attempts at another approach are made through his ideas of the holomovement or implicate order which, although nebulous, is explored in its principals at least as in much of Bohm's other works.

I don't believe, like other reviewers have stated, that these ideas are vacuuous. New ideas are absoltely necessary in contemporary physics where the pure mathematical developments of string theory feel empty of real depth. Although speculative, at least Bohm's ideas sound physical and have a physical underpinning as those of Schroedinger, Heisenberg and Bohr in the early 20th century. The difference is that these other great physicists had some experimental work to guide them, Bohm does not, or very little. His ideas rely on the ability of experiments to probe deeper levels of reality between what is possible now say 10^-15 m and 10^-35 m, the Planck length. There exists a huge range of orders of magnitude to explore. I believe in fact the last couple of chapters of the book are the really interesting bits which contain such deeper explorations.

It is unfortunate Bohm died early and it is hopefull that Hiley et al will continue his great work with the same radical enthusiasm and not be unconsciously hamstrung by the current mechanistic paradigm.

The authors present a different interpretation of quantum mechanics to the orthodox Copenhagen intepretation. For the serious student of quantum mechanics interested in looking at the field from a fresh perspective, Bohm and Hiley's interpretation is very interesting. Bohm is one of the great physicists of the 20th century who understood quantum mechanics as well as anyone. His 1951 textbook on the subject is a classic. Interestingly, he presented the Copenhagen intepretation in this textbook, but a few years later published articles on his ontological or hidden variable interpretation which is the presented in "The Undivided Universe." A cautionary note is this book is not for the lay person.

Bohm is one of the few genius' who didn't get much recongnition in his lifetime. Had it not been MacCarthy's persecution he would have been a distinguished professor at Princeton and made more impact in Modern Physics.

His genius shows in his radically different interpretation of QM. When you read the first few chapters of his book, it gives you this "eureka" feeling and chill thru your spine. While they say currently there is no way to prove or disprove his theory as it gives the same result as Copenhagen, but I truely believe a correct theory will give insights into other fields and advance further the whole science/ civilization. Only time will tell.

You will need college level quantum mechanics knowledge to go thru the first 8 chapters, which is really the essence of the book. To read beyond that, you will probably need graduate level.

This book puts forward a coherent description of Bohmian mechanics, a theory that is not widely accepted, and has also been challenged by experiment [1,2]. Even if Bohmian mechanics is unable to describe every system, it is still conceivable that this approach may be of value as a computational scheme for addressing certain problems. Because Bohmian mechanics envisions an actual particle responding to a specially modified potential, Monte Carlo calculations may be used to simulate processes such as electron transport [3,4].

[1] M. Baublitz, Phys. Rev A 51, 1677 (1995).

[2] G. Brida et al., J. Phys. B 35, 4751 (2002).

[3] X. Oriols et al. Appl. Phys. Lett. 72, 806 (1998).

[4] L. Shifren and D. K. Ferry, Phys. Lett. A 285, 217 (2001).

Bohm and Hiley also consider the philosophical implications of Bohmian mechanics, as well as that of other interpretations of quantum physics such as parallel universes.

I had heard Bohm speak while I was in grad school, but was completely snowed. All I can remember of the lecture was Bohm saying "Folding unfolding, folding unfolding...," which was meaningless to me at the time. After reading Bohm and Hiley I have a somewhat better idea what Bohm was saying--which seems to be something to the effect that the universe is an undivided whole and not just a bunch of particles wizzing around and sometimes coming together. I still have a lot of work to do, however, before I can consider myself to have a good understanding of Bohm's world view.

Bohm and Hiley convincingly argue that something is very wrong with the way most physicists are taught to think about quantum mechanics. The Copenhagen interpretation is shown to be just one of many, and not a very good one at that. Bohm's causal interpretation provides a physical picture of what's actually going on in a variety of quantum systems. This book ought to be required reading for physics students.

Unfortunately, the book undermines its own credibility with an amazingly high level of speculative claptrap concerning the physics of consciousness, the possibility that the internal structure of an electron may be as complicated as a radio, and other nonsense. If you take the time to separate the wheat from the chaff, your efforts will be rewarded with the most reasonable interpretation of QM to date. But be careful where you step.

It seems that the undivided universe is very much divided. These theory- of-cosmology-books by many a would-be-Einstein started back in 1980 with David Fiske's A THEORY OF COSMOLOGY (Vantage; out of print). Twenty years later there are a hundred of them selling like hotcakes. B&H read about thirty of them and decided to throw their quantum hat into the ring here. What results is a round-robin of physicists writing about physicists in a never ending circle of speculation parading as hypothesis. It is a bit like the Rose Bowl Parade-- the discussion centers around whose float (hypothesis) is more/less speculative, non-provable by experiment, metaphysical, ontological, unverifiable, ambiguous, and complicated. The poor reader is presumed to be a moth trying to get to the candle light through the glass bulb of theory to reach an unvisualizable reality within. The key question B&H posit is: can the theory, whether positing many worlds, many minds, sum of histories or holomovement, contain all of reality within a Hilbert Space equation. Whether the barrel will hold all the apples and still allow the lid to close? Here a word about the authors equations -- math is a shorthand, the simpler the more elegant. Their equations need so much explanation that no simplicity or elegance is achieved. Also the jargon: implicate order, pre-space, quasi-classical world, and decohering histories all need huge sections to explain. I would say most readers are left floating in a sea of abstraction. I found the implicate theory egocentric, a return to pre-Copernican days, when I read the speculation on page 389: `....through the human being, the universe is making a mirror to observe itself.' The Sci-fi writer, Philip Dick, wrote in 1978 that our reality "appears to be a projection by an artifact. ... The artifact, which I call Zebra, has created (actually only projected) our reality as a sort of mirror or image of its maker, so that the maker can obtain thereby an objective standpoint to comprehend its own self." Frankly I found the Sci-fi writer's version of cosmology far more clarifying and understandable than I did the physicists. Frankly I think the authors, B&H, wandered outside of their own sandbox.