Bahreini, Jafar and Razmi, Habibollah and Monfared, Mahdi
(2020)
Is determinism completely rejected in the standard Quantum Mechanics?
[Preprint]
Abstract
Determinism is related to other fundamental concepts such as causality. However, with the growth of quantum physics, determinism became a scientific "dilemma" and has created many challenges in various contemporary sciences. Most of modern physicists chose elimination of determinism. The basic question is: Is determinism completely removable? To answer this question, this paper is to investigate this concept analytically. At first we consider different aspects of the terminology and definition of determinism. Particularly, we pay attention to different kinds of determinism including global/local domain, complete/incomplete form, and the main factor in the formation of events. It is discussed that although determinism took a complete and universal form in classical physics, because of some philosophical ideas, determinism changed into a different concept, even as a problem and an undesirable element, in the standard (Copenhagen interpretation of) quantum mechanics. It is explained that determinism is a complex concept with a number of aspects and characteristics. Prediction, the world accessibility, and connection between the past and the future are the characteristics of the concept of determinism which cannot be set aside from the science. The final result is that, without any pre-assumption or alternative interpretation as what is done in already known realistic and deterministic theories as Bohmian quantum mechanics and/or many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, determinism cannot be completely denied in the standard (Copenhagen interpretation of) quantum mechanics.
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