Platonic Wholes and Quantum Ontology

The subject of the book is a reconsideration of the internalistic model of composition of the Platonic type, more radical than traditional, post-Aristotelian externalistic compositionism, and its application in the field of the ontology of quantum theory. At the centre of quantum ontology is nonseparability. Quantum wholes are atemporal wholes governed by internalistic logic and they are primitive, global physical entities, requiring an extreme relativization of the fundamental notions of mechanics. That ensures quantum theory to be fully consistent with the relativistic causal structure, without any spacelike nonlocality and time asymmetry, and makes the quantum blockworld ontology inevitable. It seems that the more internally relativized physics is, the more Platonic it becomes.

Autorentext

Marek Woszczek, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (Poland) and has published on the metaphysics of nature, the philosophy of physics, the history of early modern physics, Naturphilosophie and the philosophy of religion.

Inhalt

Contents: Ontological models of composition and quantum systems - Internalistic compositionism and Platonic wholes - Quantum nonseparability as an ur-phenomenon of mechanics - Global nonseparability, local contextuality and time-symmetric quantum mechanics - Leibnizian 'Liaison', the classical blockworld with internal dynamics and the physics of global histories - Quantum blockworld ontology with internal, generalized dynamics and the Universal Principle of Relativity - Quantum theory as a deepening of relativity (D.R. Finkelstein) - Relational quantum mechanics and Carlo Rovelli's programme - Quantum topology.