Epistemology and Probability: Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and the Nature of Quantum-Theoretical Thinking

Gordon G. Globus

Arkady Plotnitsky

Abner Shimony

Jean Louis Van Belle

This paper offers some epistemological reflections on the idea of elementary particles, boson and quark-gluon theory, and the nature of quantum-mechanical conservation laws. We apply Occam’s Razor Principle to what we think of as an unnecessary ‘multiplication of concepts’ by ‘the young wolves’ (Feynman, Dyson, Schwinger etc.) as they were claiming their own territory by trying to distinguish themselves from the first-generation quantum physicists (Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Dirac, Pauli, etc.). We argue that their abandoning of Dirac’s research agenda (a kinematic model of quantum mechanics) has failed. We have no convincing model of the strong force, and the idea of virtual particles mediating forces resembles 19th aether theory: it looks like a superfluous concept. We also think it is a crucial mistake to think of the weak force as a force. Decay or disintegration processes should be analyzed in terms of transient or resonant oscillations and in terms of classical laws: conservation of energy, linear and angular momentum, charge and – importantly – the Planck-Einstein relation. Indeed, we argue the Planck-Einstein relation embodies the idea of the elementary cycle which – as a theoretical concept – has much more explanatory power than the idea of a particle. We feel vindicated by the 2019 revision of SI units (which abolished the mass unit as a fundamental unit) and the recent development of intuitive ‘mass without mass’ models of the electron and the photon.

Arkady Plotnitsky

This article explores Bohr's argument, advanced under the heading of 'complementarity,' concerning quantum phenomena and quantum mechanics, and its physical and philosophical implications.In Bohr, the term complementarity designates both a particular concept and an overall interpretation of quantum phenomena and quantum mechanics, in part grounded in this concept.While the argument of this article is primarily philosophical, it will also address, historically, the development and transformations of Bohr's thinking, under the impact of the development of quantum theory and Bohr's confrontation with Einstein, especially their exchange concerning the EPR experiment, proposed by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen in 1935.Bohr's interpretation was progressively characterized by a more radical epistemology, in its ultimate form, which was developed in the 1930s and with which I shall be especially concerned here, defined by his new concepts of phenomenon and atomicity.According to this epistemology, quantum objects are seen as indescribable and possibly even as inconceivable, and as manifesting their existence only in the effects of their interactions with measuring instruments upon those instruments, effects that define phenomena in Bohr's sense.The absence of causality is an automatic consequence of this epistemology.I shall also consider how probability and statistics work under these epistemological conditions.

Abner Shimony