When Probability Is Not the Real: Stability and Concretion in Quantum Physics

This essay proposes fundamental ontological clarification within contemporary de-bates on quantum physics: the rigorous distinction between probability as a regime of prediction and the real as material dynamics. Against the widespread view ac-cording to which quantum indeterminacy would imply a vague, unstable, or “merely statistical” reality, the text argues that probability belongs to the epistemic plane of knowledge and anticipation, not to the ontological plane of what exists. Quantum physics does not describe an ontologically fluctuating world, but a world whose symbolic access is structurally limited. On this basis, the essay examines the role of Born’s statistical interpretation, decoherence theory, Bell’s theorems, and the Pu-sey–Barrett–Rudolph result, showing how these impose formal costs on any ontol-ogy that conflates formalism and reality. In critical dialogue with QBist, relational, and agential-realist approaches, the text develops a conception of concretion grounded in the notion of mark: the concrete emerges when a material interaction is irreversibly inscribed in a physical support. Stability, far from meaning fixity, is un-derstood as emergent robustness—movement in regime—sufficient to sustain prac-tices, techniques, and historical continuity. The essay concludes by arguing that quantum physics, rather than dissolving the real, demands a more exacting ontology capable of distinguishing precisely between the real, the concrete, and theory.