Abstract
The letters demonstrate that Bohm was exceptional for a physicist in that he took his philosophy very seriously.
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- 1.
See his letter admonishing Melba for ignoring philosophical questions (18, 45, pp. 167–169). He argues that “[a]lmost no great physicist worked entirely without a philosophy”, whereas today all physicists “want are “results” that “pay off” immediately in higher jobs, recognition, job security, navy contracts, etc.”. Note also his comment to Miriam: “But I am afraid that my first love is the philosophical problem and not the detailed dry scientific problems. Yet it is the latter which supply the means by which the philosophical point of view comes close to reality and demonstrates its fruitfulness.” (27, 104, p. 344).
- 2.
In a 1953 letter, Bohm clearly shows some awareness of the “mechanical” approach of the Soviets, see (26, 97, p. 320).
- 3.
Marx and Engels (1988).
- 4.
(20, 57, p. 201).
- 5.
Wilkins (1986), Vol III.
- 6.
Wood (2004).
- 7.
Meikle (1985).
- 8.
See Wood (2004), Chaps. 7, 8, 11 and 12, for a fuller explanation, as well as a refutation of the post-war academic trend wishing to deny Marx’s materialism.
- 9.
- 10.
A similar distinction to Aristotle’s was made by the great biologist Ernst Mayr, who used the term “ultimate cause” in relation to Darwinian natural selection and that of “proximate cause” for immediate, physiological and mechanical causes. For a recent critical discussion of Mayr’s approach with references see Laland et al. (2013).
- 11.
See Wood (2004), Chaps. 13 and 14 on the complex issue of dialectics in Hegel and Marx and the differences between them.
- 12.
This is Bohm’s terminology. Wood uses the term “mechanistic reductionism” and Meikle uses the term “atomism”.
- 13.
Marx and Engels (1988), pp. 527–532.
- 14.
Wood (2004), pp. 169–170.
- 15.
Meikle (1985), especially Chap. 7.
- 16.
Lenin (1962).
- 17.
Wilkins (1986), Vol VI.
- 18.
See Bakhurst (1991), Chap. 4, for a more sympathetic treatment.
- 19.
- 20.
In the sense of Lenin and Bohm. It is now often called anti-realism. David Joravsky uses the term differently to mean limiting “knowledge to the methods and results of the empirical sciences”. Joravsky (2009), p. xi.
- 21.
- 22.
See Bakhurst (1991), Chap. 4, for more detail. Bakhurst draws the “modest conclusion that there are reasonable, though perhaps not conclusive, grounds to associate Empiriocriticism [i.e. positivism in Bohm’s sense] with the doctrines of Lenin’s idealist” (ibid. p. 102).
- 23.
Lenin (1962), p. 262.
- 24.
Bohm (1989).
- 25.
For a more detailed historical but non-mathematical treatment see Bohm (1957), Chap. III. For a good, more mathematical treatment see Baggott (1992). It should be said, however, that the outline given here must be qualified by the recognition that there was a lack of clarity and agreement among the founding fathers (Beller 1999).
- 26.
Other examples of such properties are energy and duration, as well as the “spin” of a quantum particle along different axes.
- 27.
Usually denoted by the Greek letter “psi”, \(\psi \), which is assumed to be a solution of Schrodinger’s wave equation.
- 28.
(21, 65, pp. 225–229). \(\Delta x \Delta k \ge 1\) is mathematical shorthand for the Heisenberg relation. Further discussion on Quantum Theory is undertaken at (21, 66, pp. 234–236) and (22, 67, pp. 238–240). We will leave Bohm’s very critical views on mathematics and the role of mathematicians in holding back theoretical physics to the next chapter.
- 29.
Later he considered it was Heisenberg’s approach rather than Bohr’s. Bohm and Hiley (1993), p. 18.
- 30.
(21, 65, p. 226).
- 31.
(22, 67, p. 239).
- 32.
Bohm (1989), Chap. 6, Sect. 2 and Chap. 22. In this latter chapter, he analyses the apparatus as well as the quantum system under investigation and concludes that “this problem can be solved without carrying the analysis as far as the stage in which the apparatus interacts with a human observer” (Bohm 1989, p. 606).
- 33.
See Bohm (1989), Chap. 8 and the reference in his letter to Hanna in early 1950 (14, 1, pp. 99–100).
- 34.
(21, 66, p. 235).
- 35.
(21, 66, p. 235).
- 36.
See the letter to Hanna (14, 10, p. 110). Note that Bohm is hoping to work with Niels Bohr on a philosophy book!
- 37.
In (14, 11, p. 112), he is “getting interested in the problem of the electron again”, which may well relate to this.
- 38.
- 39.
Freire (2015), p. 27.
- 40.
Letter to Einstein, Feb 27, 1953 in Folder C12 in the Birkbeck archives.
- 41.
Graham (1971), p. 74.
- 42.
ibid, p. 80.
- 43.
See (26, 94, p. 311): here Bohm states that a “vigorous criticism of the foundations of quantum mechanics is going on in the “East””. Loren Graham refers to a 1951 paper by the Russian physicist D.I. Blokhintsev, which was critical of the standard interpretation. It advocated his own, distinctive statistical ensemble approach, which is not at all similar to Bohm’s. However, according to Graham, Blokhintsev dismisses the usual objections to “hidden variable” theories and acknowledges that such a “theory of quantum mechanics might at some future date permit a numerical description of the individual microparticle, although at the present time he considered such a description to be impossible.” Graham (1966). It may be that an earlier version of Blokhintsev’s work had reached the US and an English translation was obtained by Bohm.
- 44.
(17, 37, pp. 151–153).
- 45.
He clarifies this in a paper following up the original 1952 papers (Bohm (1953)), referred to in mathematical notation by \(P \rightarrow \vert \psi \vert ^2\) and discussed in a number of letters (23, 74, p. 257), (23, 78, pp. 264–265), (24, 83, p. 277), (25, 88, p. 293), (26, 93, p. 308), (26, 94, p. 312), (17, 37, p. 151) and (17, 38, pp. 154–155). Another version, with input from Vigier, was published in Bohm and Vigier (1954).
- 46.
Note that in explaining his theory to Morrison, Bohm only uses the wave function and not the “quantum potential” concept derived from it, which features in the 1952 papers. He only discusses the “quantum potential” aspect of his theory in the letters once, in (25, 90, p. 298), explaining how hypotheses are put forward. In Bohm (1957), Chap. 4, Sect. 4 he considers a general “quantum force” rather than a quantum potential, the nature of which, it is presumably hoped, will be clarified in the relativistic generalizations of the theory. See also Hiley and Peat (1987), p. 37, where Bohm explains that the instantaneous “entanglement” of distant particles was seen to contradict relativity and was regarded as a “serious difficulty to be resolved with the aid of further new orders.”.
- 47.
(22, 73, p. 254).
- 48.
In a November 1951 letter to Miriam, (20, 58, p. 205), it is clear that Bohm expects Miriam to know about his infinity of levels approach, so presumably he first developed the idea at Princeton.
- 49.
(22, 73, p. 255).
- 50.
(21, 65, pp. 227–229), (22, 68, pp. 245–246) and (22, 73, pp. 254–255).
- 51.
(15, 20, pp. 123–124).
- 52.
Freistadt (1956).
- 53.
See the distribution list in (19, 52, p. 180).
- 54.
(21, 65, p. 227).
- 55.
(22, 68, p. 246).
- 56.
(22, 73, p. 255).
- 57.
The “causal laws” in (22, 73, pp. 254–255).
- 58.
(18, 43, pp. 163–165) and (18, 46, pp. 170–173).
- 59.
Dates given by Mario Bunge in an email to the author, 21.09.2015. There is little to indicate Bunge’s visit in the letters: Bohm refers to Bunge and his wife as “nice people” in (28, 110, pp. 360–361) and refers to Bunge’s view of George Yevick, (29, 111, p. 370). Bohm also visited Bunge in Argentina on his way to Israel, early in 1955 (18, 49, p. 175).
- 60.
Bunge (1951).
- 61.
Bunge (2009). In his email to me, Bunge says he had “just been weaned from Marxist philosophy.” Bunge also writes that he “asked him [Bohm] why he was wasting his time reading that garbage” (i.e. Hegel). Bohm replied “Because it inspires me.” Bunge ruefully adds “Fortunately his physics did not suffer”. It is difficult to reconcile this story, based on hindsight, with the many references to Hegel in Bunge (2009). There are more fulminations against Hegel in Bunge’s autobiography (Bunge 2016), as well as attacks on Bohm’s later “New Age” views, and the comment about his own philosophical development: “I wasted too much time trying to decipher Hegels riddles, and it took me several years to realize that he had started the Counter-Enlightenment and had invented the trick of passing off absurdity as depth” (ibid p. 102).
- 62.
- 63.
For a readable summary of the range of modern philosophical views, mainly Humean, see Mumford and Anjum (2013).
- 64.
(18, 46, p. 170).
- 65.
e.g. (21, 66, pp. 235–236).
- 66.
- 67.
(18, 43, p. 164).
- 68.
As explained further in Bohm (1957), 3.
- 69.
(18, 46, p. 171). Similarly in Bohm (1957), Chap. 5, Sect. 4, he writes that his infinite levels philosophy enables us “to retain all the positive achievements that were made possible by the development of mechanism.”
- 70.
- 71.
Bohm (1957), Chap. 4, Sect. 9.
- 72.
(18, 46, p. 171).
- 73.
- 74.
In (19, 50, pp. 178–179) he writes of “the extremes to which Lysenko went in criticizing backward trends in biology”. Previously, in March 1953 (26, 97, p. 320), he wrote of “Lysenko’s excessively dogmatic presentation of his basically correct point of view”.
- 75.
See Brown (2012) for details of and on the response of the famous Communist physicist J.D. Bernal. Although Bernal wrote an appalling eulogy to Stalin after his death in 1953, he did recognize the importance of the discovery of DNA in the same year.
- 76.
- 77.
(17, 35, p. 148).
- 78.
Bohm has a profound hatred of the “American Way of Life”, to which he repeatedly refers.
- 79.
(20, 59, pp. 206–207).
- 80.
(21, 66, p. 233) See also (32, 123, pp. 430–431).
- 81.
(27, 101, pp. 332–333).
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Talbot, C. (2017). Bohm’s Philosophy as Revealed by the Letters. In: Talbot, C. (eds) David Bohm: Causality and Chance, Letters to Three Women. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55492-1_6
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