Quantum Theory

Quantum Theory is David Bohm's systematic textbook exposition of quantum mechanics, written to present the theory's formalism and conceptual structure to advanced students. Its concern is the orthodox account of the quantum world—measurement, uncertainty, the wave function, and the strange interdependence of observer and observed.

The treatment is unusually philosophical for a textbook. Bohm works carefully through the interpretive puzzles of the theory, especially the role of measurement and the apparent breakdown of classical separability, and his close attention to these difficulties later drove him toward the causal "pilot-wave" interpretation and, ultimately, his philosophy of enfolded wholeness.

Regarded as a classic exposition, the work secured Bohm's standing as a major theoretical physicist. It stands as the rigorous scientific foundation from which his more speculative later vision of the implicate order would grow.