On the polemic assessment of what Bell did

2025/06/28 by Justo Pastor Lambare, Lambare, Justo Pastor
Arts and Humanities · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Philosophy and History of Science #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Relativity and Gravitational Theory

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.22915

openalex publication_date 2025/06/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Despite their Nobel Prize-winning empirical falsification, the interpretation of Bell's inequality remains a subject of controversy. This article discusses and attempts to clarify the reasons John S. Bell and A. Einstein claimed that quantum entanglement implies puzzling nonlocal correlations that Einstein famously termed ``spooky action at a distance.'' The issue remains notoriously controversial and has roughly divided the scientific community into localists and nonlocalists. Without taking a stance on either side in the long-standing, polarized debate, we examine Bell's actual argument and highlight how his reasoning differs from the current orthodoxy.

Citations

• Fast Vacuum Fluctuations and the Emergence of Quantum Mechanics
• Counterfactual Reasoning, Realism and Quantum Mechanics: Much Ado About\n Nothing?
• Stop making sense of Bell's theorem and nonlocality? A reply to Stephen Boughn
• What Maudlin replied to
• Einstein, Incompleteness, and the Epistemic View of Quantum States
• BERTLMANN'S SOCKS AND THE NATURE OF REALITY
• Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?

Related

• A Modest View of Bell's Theorem
• The assumption in Bell's inequalities and entanglement problem
• Bell on Bell's theorem: The changing face of nonlocality
• Einstein was right: Proof of absence of spooky state reduction in quantum mechanics
• The Bell experiment; an epistemological approach