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Physics Today

Niels Bohr, the Quantum, and the World

Victor F. Weisskopf

Published Oct 1, 1985• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

IVI Odern scientific progress is often described in terms of revolutions and upheavals, where one new theory destroys previous theories. This description overlooks the fact that scientific development is intrinsically evolutionary. Most of the new and so-called revolutionary ideas in modern science were refinements of the old system of thought, generalizations or extensions. Relativity did not do away with Newton's mechanics orbits of satellites are still calculated with New-

DOI
10.1063/1.2814762

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IVI Odern scientific progress is often described in terms of revolutions and upheavals, where one new theory destroys previous theories. This description overlooks the fact that scientific development is intrinsically evolutionary. Most of the new and so-called revolutionary ideas in modern science were refinements of the old system of thought, generalizations or extensions. Relativity did not do away with Newton's mechanics orbits of satellites are still calculated with New-
The twentieth century has seen two major revolutions in our theories of physics concerning nature, and these have made us change many of our concepts about the terms in which nature can be described. The new theories born in these revolutions are the theory of relativity and of quantum mechanics. The biological sciences had their revolutions in the nineteenth century, and while remarkable progress has been made since, nothing comparable to that upheaval has occurred in this century. Of the two massive changes in the concepts of the physical sciences, we can discuss but one here. [excerpt]
At the close of the nineteenth century, we stood on the threshold of one of the greatest periods of science, in which the entire world and understanding of science would be shaken to the core and greatly modified. This explosion of knowledge led ultimately to that same information revolution that we live in today. Planck and Einstein showed that light was not continuous but made of small corpuscles that today we call photons. Einstein changed the understanding of mechanics with his theory of relativity: airplanes became conceivable; radio and television blossomed; and the microelectronics industry, which drives most of modern technology, came into being. New areas of science were greatly expanded and developed, and one of these was quantum mechanics, which is the story to be told here. Yet, the development of quantum mechanics and the leadership of Niels Bohr have distorted the understanding of quantum mechanics in a strange way. There are some who would say that Bohr set back the real understanding of quantum mechanics by half a century. I believe they underestimate his role, and it may be something more like a full century. Whether we call it the Copenhagen interpretation, or the Copenhagen orthodoxy, it is the how for the continuing mysticism provided by Mach that is still remaining in quantum mechanics. It is not the why. Why it perseveres and why it was forced on the field in the first place is an important perception to be studied. In this book, I want to trace the development of quantum mechanics and try to uncover the why.
Once I tried to teach some quantum mechanics to a class of law students, philosophers, and art historians. As an advertisement for the course I put together the most sensational quotations I could collect from the most authoritative practitioners of the subject. Heisenberg was a goldmine: “The concept of the objective reality of the elementary particles has thus evaporated…”; “the idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist, independently of whether or not we observe them … is impossible …” Feynman did his part too: “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” But I failed to turn up anything comparable in the writings of Bohr. Others attributed spectacular remarks to him, but he seemed to take pains to avoid any hint of the dramatic in his own writings. You don't pack them into your classroom with “The indivisibility of quantum phenomena finds its consequent expression in the circumstance that every definable subdivision would require a change of the experimental arrangement with the appearance of new individual phenomena,” or “the wider frame of complementarity directly expresses our position as regards the account of fundamental properties of matter presupposed in classical physical description but outside its scope.” I was therefore on the lookout for nuggets when I sat down to review these three volumes – a reissue of Bohr's collected essays on the revolutionary epistemological character of the quantum theory and on the implications of that revolution for other scientific and non-scientific areas of endeavor (the originals first appeared in 1934, 1958, and 1963.)
Modern science has held unprecedented success in describing the workings of the universe. Quantum electrodynamics – the capstone of 20th century scientific endeavour – is one of the most accurately demonstrated theories in history. It predicts the behaviour of the physical world to unparalleled precision, and it has driven the most revolutionary of our modern technological innovations. But this most fundamental of physical theories is far from complete. To the contrary, its many successes do well to conceal its limitations. The more deeply we peer into the fundamental workings of the universe, the more we find that we have to impose limitations not only upon what we know, but on what we can know. In over 100 years since its inception, there has been little progress in reconciling the illogical, often counterintuitive implications of quantum theory. This lack of progress in forming a coherent interpretation suggests either a theory that is incomplete in its description of reality, or a fundamental flaw underlying the manner in which we perceive the world around us.