What Would It be Like to be Bohmians? Experiencing a Gestalt Switch in Physics as an Effect of Path Dependence

ABSTRACT

The philosophical goal is to characterize ‘path dependence’ (PAD) in science by comparison to PAD in technology where the concept was initially introduced. I rely on quantum mechanics to substantiate the analyses, exploiting the contrast between standard versus Bohmian quantum physics (NQP/BQP). To achieve the goal, counterfactual history is mobilized as a means to generate instructive virtual alternatives to the actual scientific path: I design a ‘permuted-situations counterfactual scenario’ in which it is BQP, instead of NQP, that first acquires a monopoly on physics and is exclusively practiced in science education, before NQP is introduced. Then, I endeavor to ‘reenact’ – as forensic investigators carry out the re-enactment of a crime scene – how virtual mainstream Bohmians would assess NQP. Contrasting the two ‘views from inside’ – ‘what it is like to be’ a standard quantum physicist in our world (a physicist trained in NQP) and what it would be like to be a physicist exclusively trained in BQP – I attempt to come as close as possible to an ‘experience’ of the gestalt switch involved when shuttling back and forth between one scientific worldview to the other. The effects of PAD in physics are discussed on this basis.

KEYWORDS:

• Gestalt switch
• quantum mechanics
• Bohm
• path dependence
• self-reinforcement
• lock-in

Acknowledgments

In relation to the philosophical project (called MultiScienceS) that constitutes the background of this paper, I am deeply grateful to Steve Fuller for his support and insightful suggestions, as well as to Sjoerd Zwart for our stimulating philosophical discussions, his enduring encouragements, and all the good ideas he had. I am moreover indebted to Greg Radick and Agnes Bolinska for their comments and linguistic help on an earlier version, to an anonymous reviewer for several precious remarks that greatly contributed to upgrading the paper, and to Georg Theiner for his assistance and flexibility all along the reviewing process. Finally, warm thanks to Claryn Spies who kindly improved the initial English version of this text by removing grammatical errors and stylistic infelicities.

Turning from people to institutions, I want to acknowledge the fundamental contribution of the French institutions that have played a role in the financial support of the MultiScienceS project: The Archives Henri-Poincaré – Philosophie et Recherches sur les Sciences et les Technologies (UMR7117 CNRS); The Maison des Sciences de l’Homme de Lorraine; The Université de Lorraine and its scientific pole Connaissance, Langage, Communication, Sociétés; and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Peacock (2009) is one of the rare who did. Another is Steve Fuller. Fuller’s fascinating reflections on this issue (see especially Fuller 2015) invite us to consider PAD from multiple points of view that highlight the ambivalence of the feelings that may be associated with it, often negative (a potential threat to science and society), but also sometimes positive (a wealth likely to bear fruit).

2. See Acuna (2014) for a recent detailed analysis of the predictive equivalence.

3. §3.B provides the motivation for this choice.

4. See, e.g. §6.2, the quotation from Zwirn.

5. Among the recent exceptions favorable to BQP, see Norsen (2017). To share my personal experience, for some twenty years, I gave courses in philosophy of science to physicists and teachers in physics, and almost none of my students ever heard about BQP.

6. See especially Dirac (1930), Chapter 1. See also Neumann (1932).

7. See, e.g. Passon (2005) for a brief but thoughtful overview of the main arguments raised against Bohmian theories, or Norsen (2017), who offers an intuitive approach of the pro and cons of NQP and BQP with plenty of instructive quotations.

8. See, e.g. Fuller (2015), or Chang (2015). Peacock (2009) briefly raises this type of question and lists works that defended such pluralist positions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Léna Soler

Léna Soler is associate professor at the Université de Lorraine and member of the Archives Henri-Poincaré – Philosophie et Recherches sur les Sciences et les Technologies (Nancy, France). Her area of specialization is philosophy of science (especially of quantum mechanics). Among her main research topics are the following issues: the contingency versus inevitability of scientific achievements; scientific pluralism; the ‘practice turn’ in science studies; the robustness of scientific results; tacit aspects of scientific practice; theory choice; and the incommensurability problem. She wrote an Introduction à l’épistémologie (3rd ed., Ellipses, 2018), and has been the main editor of several collective books, among which are Rethinking Scientific Change and Theory Comparison: Stabilities, Ruptures, Incommensurabilities? (Springer, 2008, with Howard Sankey and Paul Hoyningen), Characterizing the Robustness of Science (Springer, 2012, with William C. Wimsatt, Thomas Nickles and Emiliano Trizio), Science after the Practice Turn in the Philosophy, History, and Social Studies of Science (Routledge, 2014, with Michael Lynch, Sjoerd Zwart, and Vincent Israël-Jost), and Science as it Could Have Been: Discussing the Contingency/Inevitability Problem (Pittsburgh, 2015, with Andrew Pickering and Emiliano Trizio). On contingency in science, she also published a special issue with Howard Sankey (Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2008).