Ontological Clarity via Canonical Presentation: Electromagnetism and the Aharonov–Bohm Effect

Quantum physics demands some radical revision of our fundamental beliefs about physical reality. We know that because there are certain verified physical phenomena—two-slit interference, the disappearance of interference upon monitoring, violations of Bell’s inequality—that have no classical analogs. But the exact nature of that revision has been under dispute since the foundation of quantum theory. I offer a method of clarifying what the commitments of a clearly formulated physical theory are, and apply it to a discussion of some options available to account for another non-classical phenomenon: the Aharonov–Bohm effect.