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What makes a theory physically “complete”?

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Abstract

Three claims about what makes a theory “physically complete” are (1) Shimony's assertion that a complete theory says “all there is to say” about nature; (2) EPR's requirement that a complete theory describe all “elements of reality”; and (3) Ballentine and Jarrett's claim that a “predictively complete” theory must obey a condition used in Bell deviations. After introducing “statistical completeness” as a partial formalization of (1), we explore the logical and motivational relationships connecting these completeness conditions. We find that statistical completeness motivates but does not imply Jarrett's completeness condition, because Jarrett's condition encodes further intuitions about locality and causality. We also dispute Ballentine and Jarrett's claim that EPR-completeness implies Jarrett's completeness condition.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of California at Berkeley, 94720, Berkeley, California

    Andrew Elby

  2. Subfaculty of Philosophy, 10 Merton St., University of Oxford, OX1 4JJ, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Harvey R. Brown & Sara Foster

Authors
  1. Andrew Elby
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  2. Harvey R. Brown
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  3. Sara Foster
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Elby, A., Brown, H.R. & Foster, S. What makes a theory physically “complete”?. Found Phys 23, 971–985 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00736011

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00736011

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