Between Rationalism and Empiricism: Selected Papers in the Philosophy of Physics

Henry Margenau

Brigitte Falkenburg

The article investigates the way in which Peter Mittelstaedt has been con- tributing to the philosophy of physics for half a century. It is shown that he pursues a path between rationalism and empiricism in the sense of Erhard Scheibe's philosophy of the physicists. Starting from Kant's a priori he gives a rational reconstruction of the conceptual revolutions of 20th century physics. The central topic of his philosophy of physics is the quest for semantic self-consistency, which for quantum mechanics is a hard nut to crack.

Shiro Ishikawa

Recently, we proposed quantum language (in short, QL) as a mathematical realization of the quantum mechanical worldview. QL has the form of “axioms (measurement and causality)” + “linguistic Copenhagen interpretation”. And the quantum language can cover both quantum and classical systems. In this way, QL is one of the most powerful scientific theories beyond statistics, and I believe QL is the only dualism that has been scientifically successful. If so, the history of Western philosophy (mostly dualistic idealism) can be discussed from the quantum linguistic point of view. In this paper, we discuss the similarities between quantum language and Cartesian and Kantian epistemology. We conclude that “Axioms (measurement and causality)” can be characterized as a study belonging to Continental rationalism that sought to advance Descartes’s mind-body dualism. On the other hand, “linguistic Copenhagen interpretation” belongs to British empiricism (Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant), which can be characterized as the epistemological application of Descartes’s mind-body dualism. The conventional theory is that continental rationalism and British empiricism were synthesized by Kant. Therefore, I think it is necessary to weigh the usual conventional theory with our claims.

Lars‐Göran Johansson

Martin Strauss

In selecting the papers for this volume I have excluded all physics papers proper. I have further omitted all book rev.iews. Instead, I have included two papers not published previously; they are marked by an asterisk (*) in the table of contents. Since many of the papers were occasioned by Symposia or similar gatherings their chronological order is rather accidental. Hence I have tried to group the papers thematically into four parts. Within each part the order of sequence is from the more general to the more special, or from a more popular to a more technical treatment. The same principle has been applied to the sequential order of the parts. The foundational papers on quantum mechanics have been arranged in a somewhat dif ferent manner. Chapters XVI-XIX are concerned with the logic of complementarity while in Chapters XX-XXII a more radical recon ceptualization is carried out. Two of the older papers (Chapters VI and VIII) have been revised to bring them more into line with present terminology. Other papers have been corrected by additions and omissions. Additions are marked by square brackets [ ], while double square brackets [[ II signify omis sions or parts to be omitted. Hence [[A]] [B] means that 'A' should be replaced by 'B'. The heading of one paper (Chapter XX) has been changed to make it more descriptive.

Wolfgang Ernst Friederich Pauli