Boston Network for History and Philosophy of Physics: Ken Wharton (San Jose State University)

Title: Bell’s theorem and its implications for relativistic covariance Abstract: Entanglement experiments prove that one of the assumptions of Bell’s Theorem must fail, but this does not mean that nature must violate the principle of relativity. Even leaving aside the sparse “flash ontologies” where nothing physically happens between measurements, there remains a broad class of Bell-inequality-violating models with a covariant intermediate description. The only conceptual price is that the spacetime regions described by such models must be solved “all-at-once”, as in action principles, allowing future constraints on past hidden variables. After a survey of the relevant aspects of Bell’s Theorem, some examples of all-at-once covariant models of quantum entanglement will be presented and discussed. Bio: Ken Wharton is a physics professor at San Jose State University, his research for the last 20 years has been in the field of quantum foundations. (Previously he was an experimental laser physicist, making the formal switch into foundations only once safely tenured.) He has been a leading proponent of time-symmetric/“all-at-once” models of quantum phenomena, publishing a number of technical and popular pieces with noted philosopher Huw Price. His well-cited 2020 review paper on Bell’s Theorem (Rev. Mod. Phys., with Nathan Argaman) has established Wharton as an expert in the small, but growing, field of retrocausal quantum models.