Is it Possible to Believe in Both Orthodox Quantum Theory and History?

C. Piron

А. В. Никулов

The contemporary controversy about the fundamental obscurity in quantum mechanics keeps on the old one about the aim of science, which was between the founders of the quantum theory. The orthodox quantum mechanics could be created only at the cost of renunciation of reality as the aim of natural science. The description only of phenomena, i.e. results of observation, should not be universal if no one believes that these phenomena are manifestation of a unique reality. Such belief concerning quantum mechanics is quite unacceptable because of irremediably conflict with special relativity. Nevertheless the quantum mechanics was developed and apprehended by most physicists as a universal theory of a quantum world. This fundamental discrepancy between the essence of the orthodox quantum mechanics and its history of development and studying has resulted both to an illusion about the aim of its description among most physicists and to the consideration of its fundamental obscurity as a universal problem among experts in quantum foundation. The aim of this paper is to show that quantum phenomena can not be described universally. It is indicated that rather the Schrodinger's than Born's interpretation of the wave function is valid for description of many quantum phenomena. The fundamental obscurity with which we are faced at the description, for example, macroscopic quantum phenomena differs fundamentally from the one with which the founders of the quantum theory were faced on atomic level.

Peter Vickers

Jeanne Peijnenburg, David Atkinson

Abstract How certain is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle? Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is at the heart of the orthodox or Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. We first sketch the history that led up to the formulation of the principle. Then we recall that there are in fact two uncertainty principles, both dating from 1927, one by Werner Heisenberg and one by Earle Kennard. Finally, we explain that recent work in physics gives reason to believe that the principle of Heisenberg is invalid, while that of Kennard still stands.

Olival Freire

Gerhard Grössing

Identifying »continuum« as a key concept in history, the author establishes a physicist’s view of this term, with a generally broader scope. However, when focusing on quantum physics, he produces a strong criticism both of basic theory building in quantum theory and in the historiography of this very field of scientific research. This criticism involves the fatal distinctions between the concepts of the digital and the analogue, respectively, the maintenance of a strictly reductionist, or »atomistic«, approach – as opposed to possible, more general and systemic view-points, and, consequently, the preference of research purely focussing on the particle-like rather than both the particle- and the wave-like »behaviours« on the quantum-level. It is argued that the dominant pattern of interpretation, the orthodox Kopenhagen inter- pretation, includes a highly metaphysical dimension, thereby hindering the solution of puzzles provided by quantum theory. The article pleads for a re-thinking, and re-working of the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum phenomena, which draws on a ›hidden variables‹ approach in full agreement with present experimental evidence. Furthermore, the dominance of the Kopenhagen interpretation is kept up not only by means of lobbying but also by means of historiography of science. The last chapter offers alternative viewpoints, avoiding the reductionism of the orthodox school, pleading for a more complex, multi-faceted view, and including both wave and particle aspects on an equal footing.