ABSTRACT
Physics can be important for mechanisms on higher levels, like those in chemistry or biology. Within the modern debate on mechanisms, the special status of fundamental physics for the mechanistic program was put on record early on. In the context of the standard Hilbert space formalism of quantum mechanics, the prediction of certain measurement outcomes does not have any mechanistic explanation. Bohm gives up the assumption that the quantum state is complete and uses the always determinate particle positions as the additional hidden parameters–but in doing so uses a preferred frame, which causes a conflict with Special Relativity. Two things may block mechanistic explanations for composite systems. First, the composition laws of quantum systems could preclude mechanistic explanations for the behavior of composite systems. Second, complex systems dynamics may be incompatible with the micro-reductive nature of mechanistic explanations, roughly to the same extent that complex systems exhibit emergent behavior. The chapter argues that both concerns should disappear on closer scrutiny.
