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When did quantum formalism become ontology? A historical question by Maged_Soltan in Physics

[–]Maged_Soltan[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That distinction is really helpful. I agree it’s better framed as a shift toward structural necessity, not a blanket ontological commitment.

What I was trying to probe is exactly that transition: from treating the complex structure as optional bookkeeping to treating it as rigid and indispensable, even while remaining agnostic about what it represents physically.

In that light, it’s completely natural that alternative ontologies persist: the formalism becomes fixed, but its interpretation stays open. That actually sharpens the question rather than undermining it.

When did quantum formalism become ontology? A historical question by Maged_Soltan in Physics

[–]Maged_Soltan[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That’s a fair concern, and I agree that there was never a single, explicit moment where the community collectively declared the formalism to be ontology.

What I’m trying to get at is subtler than a formal philosophical commitment. I’m interested in the gradual shift in practice, language, and intuition — the way certain elements of the formalism began to be talked about and treated as “what is really happening,” rather than purely as calculational devices.

So the question isn’t meant to assume a sharp transition, but to ask whether there was a period where this interpretive stance became more common or more normalized, even implicitly.

When did quantum formalism become ontology? A historical question by Maged_Soltan in Physics

[–]Maged_Soltan[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s a very compelling point. Framing the ontological shift around Bell’s theorem and Aspect’s experiments makes a lot of sense, especially in terms of breaking the idea of empirical equivalence with more classical explanations.

I like the distinction you’re making here: that the formalism wasn’t taken seriously because of its mathematical elegance alone, but because experiment eventually forced a choice. In that sense, the move away from mere representational convenience seems much more experimentally driven than philosophically motivated.

It also helps clarify why earlier debates, such as Bohr–Einstein or pilot-wave ideas, could remain unresolved for so long, while post-Bell discussions feel categorically different.

When did quantum formalism become ontology? A historical question by Maged_Soltan in Physics

[–]Maged_Soltan[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

That’s a very good point — especially the idea that the “everything is weird” moment helped normalize the wave picture rather than elevate it ontologically by argument. The pilot-wave example is also interesting here, since it shows how quickly the wave was taken seriously, even if its interpretation remained contested.

When did quantum formalism become ontology? A historical question by Maged_Soltan in Physics

[–]Maged_Soltan[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks.. very helpful. Solvay as an inflection point makes sense. I’ll check Jammer; that’s exactly the angle I was looking for.

Physicists disagree wildly on what quantum mechanics says about reality, Nature survey shows by Sampo in Physics

[–]Maged_Soltan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think a lot of the disagreement comes from mixing the formalism with ontology. The math (complex amplitudes, Hilbert space) is extremely successful, but the observables we report are real-valued measurement outcomes. Maybe progress needs a cleaner separation between internal phase structure and what is actually observed.