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The Persistence of Memory: Surreal Trajectories in Bohm's Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jeffrey A. Barrett
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Abstract

In this paper I describe the history of the surreal trajectories problem and argue that in fact it is not a problem for Bohm's theory. More specifically, I argue that one can take the particle trajectories predicted by Bohm's theory to be the actual trajectories that particles follow and that there is no reason to suppose that good particle detectors are somehow fooled in the context of the surreal trajectories experiments. Rather than showing that Bohm's theory predicts the wrong particle trajectories or that it somehow prevents one from making reliable measurements, such experiments ultimately reveal the special role played by position and the fundamental incompatibility between Bohm's theory and relativity. They also provide a striking example of the theory-ladenness of observation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue 4 , December 2000 , pp. 680 - 703
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

This paper is an extension of the discussion of surreal trajectories in Barrett 1999, 127–40. That section of the book was based on talk I gave at the Quantum Mechanics Workshop at the University of Pittsburgh in the Spring of 1997. And that talk owed much to conversations with Peter Lewis, David Albert, and Rob Clifton. I would also like to thank Michael Dickson and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

‡

Send reprint requests to the author, Logic and Philosophy of Science, 3151 Social Science Plaza, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697–5100.

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