‘Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory produces a good deal but hardly brings us closer to the secret of the Old One’. These views were contained in a letter written by Albert Einstein to Max Born in December 1926. Though the following year would see the completion of work on the theoretical foundation of the modern physics of atoms and particles, Einstein was never to change his judgement and remained firmly convinced that ‘this business […] contains some unreasonableness’. He was unwilling to sacrifice his own ideas as to the cognitive scope of science even in the face of the important results being achieved by the new theory. To the undeterministic findings of quantum mechanics he opposed his belief in the ‘possibility of giving a model of reality, a theory, that is to say, which shall represent events themselves and not merely the probability of their occurrence’. For this reason he chose to live with the isolation of his scepticism and dissent, ironically accepting the reputation as a obstinate heretic that he had won over the years among his colleagues, and worked to the end on his own research programme to develop a unified field theory of rigorously causal nature. As is generally known, Einstein carried on a strong scientific and philosophical dispute with the defenders of the so-called official interpretation of quantum mechanics.
When the Great War began in August, 1914, Erwin schrödinger at the age of twenty-seven was a Privatdozent at Vienna University, at the outset of a promising career in physics. He served throughout the war as a commissioned officer in the Austrian fortress artillery, first on the Italian front and later assigned to the imperial meteorology department in Vienna. On October 7,1915, his revered professor of theoretical physics, Fritz Hasenöhrl, was killed by a grenade in an Italian attack on Mount Plaut in the South Tirol. Early in 1918, schrödinger received word that he was being seriously considered for the position of Professor Extraordinarius [associate professor] in theoretical physics at the University of Czernowitz. ‘I made up my mind to lecture there on honest theoretical physics, first of all according to the pattern of the splendid lectures of my beloved teacher Fritz Hasenöhrl, fallen in the war, but besides to concern myself with philosophy, deeply immersed as I then was in the writings of Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Mach, Richard Semon, and Richard Avenarius. My good angel intervened, since soon Czernowitz no longer belonged to us. So nothing came of it. I had to stick to theoretical physics, and, to my astonishment, something occasionally emerged from it.’ Even on active duty, schrödinger found time to read deeply in philosophy, and indeed it was the only thing that kept him from despair during the long years of senseless killing and destruction. A serious interest in philosophy was not unusual among German and Austrian physicists, but with schrödinger at that time it was so important that he was even tempted to sacrifice scientific research to devote his life to philosophical study. Much later, in 1963, Max Born wrote: ‘I am convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics). It has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity), which are applicable far beyond physics.’ By his discovery of wave mechanics, Erwin schrödinger contributed in a major way to this revolutionary change in our view of the world [ Weltanschauunung ].
When the Great War began in August, 1914, Erwin Schrödinger at the age of twenty-seven was a Privatdozent at Vienna University, at the outset of a promising career in physics. He served throughout the war as a commissioned officer in the Austrian fortress artillery, first on the Italian front and later assigned to the imperial meteorology department in Vienna. On October 7, 1915, his revered professor of theoretical physics, Fritz Hasenöhrl, was killed by a grenade in an Italian attack on Mount Plaut in the South Tirol. Early in 1918, Schrödinger received word that he was being seriously considered for the position of Professor Extraordinarius [associate professor] in theoretical physics at the University of Czernowitz. ‘I made up my mind to lecture there on honest theoretical physics, first of all according to the pattern of the splendid lectures of my beloved teacher Fritz Hasenöhrl, fallen in the war, but besides to concern myself with philosophy, deeply immersed as I then was in the writings of Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Mach, Richard Semon, and Richard Avenarius. My good angel intervened, since soon Czernowitz no longer belonged to us. So nothing came of it. I had to stick to theoretical physics, and, to my astonishment, something occasionally emerged from it.’ Even on active duty, Schrödinger found time to read deeply in philosophy, and indeed it was the only thing that kept him from despair during the long years of senseless killing and destruction. A serious interest in philosophy was not unusual among German and Austrian physicists, but with Schrödinger at that time it was so important that he was eveny. Much later, in 1963, Max Born wrote: ‘I am convinced that theoretical physics is tempted to sacrifice scientific research to devote his life to philosophical stud actually philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics). It has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity), which are applicable far beyond physics.’
February 2000, “The Quantum View” What a really nice article! I read it once this evening with dinner (at a place that served grilled chicken – not so easy to scroll through a computer screen under those conditions!). Now, with my jetlag in distinct control – its 3:30 AM for me – let me read it again and make a few comments here and there. (I just arrived in Haifa yesterday for a visit with Asher Peres; I'll be here a little over a week.) Why don't you write the following for your requested reference: C. A. Fuchs, “The Structure of Quantum Information,” available at […] [Of course, it is no longer available. Instead, see note to Carl Caves, dated 21 December 1997.] I like this view of physics as being like a jig-saw puzzle. Note a typo in this paragraph: you misspelled de Broglie. Ruskai-ism 1: As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that either Heisenberg or Schrödinger was motivated by political or social factors . Actually there is a pretty strong case that these two guys were indeed quite motivated by cultural factors to find an indeterministic element in physics. And that was long before quantum mechanics took a final form. Two important articles to read in this regard are: P. Forman, “Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory, 1918–1927: Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a Hostile Intellectual Environment,” in Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, Vol. 3 , edited by R. McCormmach (U. Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1971), pp. 1–115. […]
On 25 March 1935, the Physical Review received a paper from Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, with the title “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” A few days later, on 30 March 1935, I was born. My life with Einstein was off to a promising start. Some would call it an inauspicious start. Abraham Pais, for example, says in his otherwise admirable biography of Einstein [1] that “the only part of this article that will ultimately survive, I believe, is this last phrase [ No reasonable definition of reality could be expected to permit this ], which so poignantly summarizes Einstein's views on quantum mechanics in his later years.” But today, in this centenary of the Einstein annus mirabilis, as the EPR paper and I both turn 70, it is, in fact, the most cited of all Einstein's papers [2]. The debate over its conceptual implications rages hotter than ever, and for the first time, practical (well, for the moment still gedanken practical) applications of the EPR effect have emerged in cryptography and in other areas of quantum information processing. Being only five weeks old, I was unprepared to pay attention to the article that appeared in the New York Times on 4 May 1935 under an elaborate set of headlines and subheads: And I was completely oblivious to the stern rebuke from Einstein himself, published three days later in the Times , which declared that “any information upon which the article … is based was given to you without my authority. It is my invariable practice to discuss scientific matters only in the appropriate forum and I deprecate advance publication of any announcement in regard to such matters in the secular press.” Apparently Podolsky had tipped off the Times to the article, which did not appear in the sacred press until the 15 May issue of Physical Review. It is not clear that Einstein ever forgave him, and I wish I had been old enough to send Podolsky a cross letter myself. Anyone growing up in America in the 1940s knew that the preeminent genius of our age, and perhaps of any other, lived in Princeton, New Jersey, had a predilection for baggy sweaters, and was always badly in need of a haircut—as far ahead of his time in dress and grooming as he was ahead in science during his 1905 annus mirabilis.