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Crypto-Newtonian

. By this I refer to view that start from a basically quantum mechanical position (usually with a rather traditional interpretation of quantum mechanics) but then impose modifications of the quantum formalism so as to ensure that the net result is basically Newtonian. Examples are hidden variable theories and the primary state diffusion theories (e.g. Percival, 1994). These give a similar picture to (1) but with the concession that there may rather often be special cases where the averaging out doesn't happen and non-local behaviour appears on a large scale.

(On both the preceeding two views a strong emphasis is placed on the wave function as the fundamental object of quantum theory, and a ``collapse'' is invoked to pass to a Newtonian picture. As a result they are very firmly bound to a spatial picture.)



Chris Clarke
Tue Feb 4 16:22:05 GMT 1997