Abstract
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory that represents physical processes at atomic and sub-atomic level. It is an extraordinarily successful theory, but its interpretation has been the subject of endless controversies. Quantum mechanics and its further developments such as quantum field theory have been invoked to justify beliefs in idealism, the independent existence of the mind, infinite worlds, and almost anything imaginable. In this chapter I review the basic assumptions of both quantum mechanics and quantum field theory and present an analysis of their ontological implications. I evaluate the concept of matter in the light of both theories and conclude that, far from being idealistic theories, they agree with a fully materialistic view of the world.
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Notes
- 1.
Bohr (1987), p. 54.
- 2.
Heisenberg (1962), p. 145.
- 3.
Wigner (1995), p. 248.
- 4.
Feynman (1965), p. 129.
- 5.
The problem of measurement might be enunciated more precisely saying that quantum systems evolve in a superposition of states before a measurement. The measurement, however, always reveals a definite particular state. See the end of Sect. 4.3.
- 6.
A Hilbert space is an abstract vector space possessing the structure of an inner product that allows lengths and angles to be measured. Hilbert spaces are complete in the sense that there are enough limits in the space to allow the techniques of calculus to be used.
- 7.
In this definition the symbol ∗ designates the conjugate-complex of the wave function.
- 8.
Heisenberg (1958), p. 28.
- 9.
von Neumann (1955) (original 1932).
- 10.
London and Bauer (1939), p. 252.
- 11.
This is not the only realist and objective interpretation that can be proposed for quantum mechanics. The Many-Worlds interpretation, for instance, adopts the collapse postulate and interprets it at face value accepting an ontological inflation. The overabundant ontology that results is perfectly compatible with materialistic views. This article is not the place to discuss the different arguments for and against these and other interpretations. Rather, the point to be emphasized here is the fact that quantum mechanics can be consistently understood in a way such that the theory does not imply a challenge for materialism. For discussions about interpretations of quantum mechanics see Ruetche (2011) and Acuña (2019).
- 12.
For interacting particles the tensor product should be considered.
- 13.
For simplicity I consider here a scalar field.
- 14.
All theories discussed here are renormalizable.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for useful remarks. This work was supported by the Argentine agencies CONICET (PIP 2014-00338) and ANPCyT (PICT-2017-2865), as well as by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO/FEDER, UE) under grant AYA2016-76012-C3-1-P and PID2019-105510GB-C31.
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Romero, G.E. (2022). Quantum Matter. In: Romero, G.E., Pérez-Jara, J., Camprubí, L. (eds) Contemporary Materialism: Its Ontology and Epistemology. Synthese Library, vol 447. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89488-7_4
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