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philosophy of physics
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Isaac Newton Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Immanuel Kant James Clerk Maxwell Hendrik Antoon Lorentz Albert Einstein
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Attempts to solve the measurement problem

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Written by
David Z. Albert
Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University. Author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience and others.
David Z. Albert
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Two influential solutions to the measurement problem have been proposed. The first, due to the American-born British physicist David Bohm (1917–92), affirms that the evolution of the wave functions of physical systems is governed by laws in the form of linear differential equations of motion but denies that wave functions represent everything there is to say about physical systems. There is an extra or “hidden” variable that can be thought of as “marking” one of the superposed positions as the actual outcome of the measurement. The second, due to G.C. Ghirardi, A. Rimini, and T. Weber, affirms that wave functions are complete representations of physical systems but denies that they are always governed by laws in the form of linear differential equations of motion.