The Re-Solution of Nashian and Bohmian Perspectives
It was said by Cedric Villani, when John Nash passed away, that not long before the tragedy Nash confided in Villani he had been doing some work that might have significance in regard to Einstein's theory of relativity.
Nash has talked about this in various interviews and he gave a lecture on a special equation that confirms Villani's story.
The further truth is, like Nash's lecture series Ideal Money, the insights Nash shares in regard to cosmology and quantum theory came to him in the 50's (see 3m10s of this video):
Around that time it is said that Nash actually visited Einstein to talk about his insights and that Einstein responded by giving Nash some books to read. One can wonder what literature he was given to study and whether Einstein gave Nash the credit he deserved (and would later be recognized for).
He also wrote an awkward letter to Oppenheimer apologizing for what seems to be a similar event in which Nash was describing some of his insights in regard to quantum theory:
Probably my speaking in such a way is due to a reaction against the attitude of most of the physicists (also some mathematicians who have studied Q.T.) to whom I have spoken. They seem quite too dogmatic in their attitudes. If one expresses any sort of questioning attitude or a belief in “hidden parameters” they often simply treat one as a stupid or at best quite ignorant person.
Nash talks about wanting to explore the connection between classics and quantum mechanics:
I want to find a different and more satisfying under-picture of a non-observable reality (at least non-observable directly through standard electromagnetic [atomic] interactions, which always disturb the system uncontrollably and give rise to the uncertainty principle)
I want to discover why the classical picture is still latent in Q.M. to such a strong extent. Of course this is an individual matter of opinion and feeling. Only the individual himself can finally decide that he considers that he understands something.
What is interesting about this is the similar line of thinking David Bohm had embarked on at nearly that exact time with his Suggested Interpretation of Quantum Theory. Bohm was a protege of Einstein and thanks him for insightful dialogue at the end of his discourse on what is essentially an inquiry into the relationship between classical and quantum mechanics.
Bohm's later work was never wholly or very well received and over 50 years later quantum theory and our attempts at quantization still don't sit well with Nash:
But I don’t myself understand either renormalization or the general theory of quantiza-tion. (To me it seems like “quantum theory” is in a sense like a traditional herbal medicine used by “witch doctors”. We don’t REALLY understand what is happening, what the ultimate truth really is, but we have a “cook book” of procedures and rituals that can be used to obtain useful and practical calculations (independent of fundamental truth).)
Nash paints his reasoning for arriving at a particular interesting formula, but in his strangely un-dramatic (and esoteric) style he seems to proclaim it to be a dead end:
So it seems of some interest, indeed, that a tensor equation of fourth order may have some possible eventual connection with some conceivable theoretical concept of quantized gravity but it is for me needed to find other reasons for justifying the study of an equation such as that given here.