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Physics Today
Quantum Mechanics, Born Again Gerald Holton
Published May 1, 2001 • 1 citation
Abstract In his Letter (Physics Today, April 2001, page 94), Carlos D. Galles noted that a photograph caption in my July 2000 Physics Today article on Werner Heisenberg and Albert Einstein (page 39) erroneously credits Heisenberg instead of Max Born with being the first to name the new physics “Quantum Mechanics.” For evidence, he referred to an article in Bartel L. van der Waerden’s Sources of Quantum Mechanics (Dover, New York, 1967).I thank Galles for his correction. But allow me to add that the photograph and its caption were supplied not by me but by Physics Today staff (a staff that I have always found to be helpful to authors, and that rarely, except perhaps at the last minute of production, would make even a small glitch). I also congratulate Galles for reminding readers of the useful book by van der Waerden. I know it well; as it happens, I placed it as volume 5 in the Dover series, Classics of Science, when I was the series’ editor.© 2001 American Institute of Physics.
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In his Letter (Physics Today, April 2001, page 94), Carlos D. Galles noted that a photograph caption in my July 2000 Physics Today article on Werner Heisenberg and Albert Einstein (page 39) erroneously credits Heisenberg instead of Max Born with being the first to name the new physics “Quantum Mechanics.” For evidence, he referred to an article in Bartel L. van der Waerden’s Sources of Quantum Mechanics (Dover, New York, 1967).I thank Galles for his correction. But allow me to add that the photograph and its caption were supplied not by me but by Physics Today staff (a staff that I have always found to be helpful to authors, and that rarely, except perhaps at the last minute of production, would make even a small glitch). I also congratulate Galles for reminding readers of the useful book by van der Waerden. I know it well; as it happens, I placed it as volume 5 in the Dover series, Classics of Science, when I was the series’ editor.© 2001 American Institute of Physics.
Fifteen years ago, I mused in a Reference Frame column on how different generations of physicists differed in the degree to which they thought that the interpretation of quantum mechanics remains a serious problem (Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 42 4 1989 9 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2810963. April 1989, page 9 ). I declared myself to be among those who feel uncomfortable when asked to articulate what we really think about the quantum theory, adding that "If I were forced to sum up in one sentence what the Copenhagen interpretation says to me, it would be "Shut up and calculate!"In the intervening years, I've come to hold a milder and more nuanced opinion of the Copenhagen view, but that should be the subject of another column. The subject of this one is the habit of misquotation or misattribution that afflicts our profession, a rather different example of which I pointed out a few months ago (February 2004, page 10).Given my capacity for intellectual development ("inconsistency," in the terminology deployed in the current American political season), it's fortunate that I've now reached an age at which I tend to forget about things I've written more than a few years ago. Indeed, I find it downright irritating when somebody asks me questions about papers I wrote a mere half dozen years ago, naively identifying me with the author of those ancient texts. Until quite recently, I had no memory of ever having written such a childishly brusque dismissal of such an exquisitely subtle point of view, much less of having published it in so widely read a venue.This amnesia, combined with the evolution in my thinking that had distanced me from my long forgotten words, may explain why I was initially somewhat puzzled by the slight sensation of discomfort that passed over me when, browsing the e-print archive earlier this year, I read a characterization of Max Born's probability rule as "the favorite ingredient of what has been nicknamed, after Feynman's famous dictum, the shut up and calculate interpretation of quantum mechanics."I yield to nobody in my admiration for Richard Feynman's aphorisms on the nature of quantum mechanics. Indeed, long ago I published a poem (Physics Today, April 1985, page 47) consisting of nothing more than a resetting as verse of a paragraph Feynman had written about his own attitude toward the quantum theory, in his now (but not then) famous article that launched the whole field of quantum computation. I like to think I have devoured everything Feynman ever wrote on the character of quantum mechanics. But while "shut up and calculate" sounded dimly familiar to me as a characterization of a certain interpretive stance, I couldn't recall where Feynman had written it. Mulling this over, a terrible thought began to dawn on me. Could it be that I myself had once used the phrase? If so, then it would appear that I had picked it up from something by Feynman, forgotten the source, and presented it as my own. Devastating!It was devastating because I have a horror of writing or uttering any witticism that is not original with me, unless I make it absolutely clear where and (if known) from whom I got it. I don't even like to tell jokes unless I've made them up myself. (I digress to offer you my favorite:Question: What is the difference between theoretical physics and mathematical physics? Answer: Theoretical physics is done by physicists who lack the necessary skills to do real experiments; mathematical physics is done by mathematicians who lack the necessary skills to do real mathematics. Mathematical physicists tend not to like this joke, but other physicists seem to. Nonphysicists, of course, are entirely immune to its charms.)So with growing trepidation, I searched through my past writings on quantum mechanics. I was dismayed when I came upon my 1989 column, which confirmed my worst fears. Not only had I appropriated without proper attribution a Feynman quote, but it appeared to be a famous one. How humiliating! I was afflicted with visions of knowledgeable Physics Today readers shaking their heads 15 years ago at what must have struck them as my shameless attempt to ride to literary glory on the unacknowledged shoulders of Feynman.So I went to the Web to find the source, hoping I could then salvage my reputation by persuading Physics Today to print an addendum or erratum. Google gives more than 130 hits containing both "shut up and calculate" and "feynman." Most of these do not directly link the two, but about a dozen do. Here are a few: "Shut up and calculate" was a motto of Richard Feynman.For example, there's Feynman's "shut up and calculate."My personal philosophy is that of the famous physicist Richard Feynman, who said: "Shut up and calculate."When asked which interpretation of QM he favored, Feynman replied "Shut up and calculate."Richard Feynman foreslog ligefrem en "shut up and calculate" fortolkning af kvantemekanikken.Shut up and calculate—Richard Feynman.Just to make sure, I also searched for "shut up and calculate" and "mermin." I found only 10 hits, all of them mentioning me in ways that had nothing to do with their use, elsewhere, of "shut up and calculate." So it would have been clear to the world that I had indeed passed off Feynman's words as my own.Or had I …?I noticed that not a single one of the Web sites attributing the phrase to Feynman cited a source or hinted at the circumstances under which he had said it. A ray of hope flickered on: Could I once again have become a victim of the Matthew effect?The Matthew effect was enunciated by the great sociologist of science, Robert Merton. 1 1. R. K. Merton, Science 159, 56 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.159.3810.56 Merton worked in those innocent days when sociologists were interested only in the behavior of scientists and not in the content of their science. (To be fair to contemporary sociologists of science, I should modify that last phrase to "and not in the manifestations of that behavior in the content of their science.") I first learned of the Matthew effect more than 20 years ago, on the occasion of my first and, perhaps until now, only, victimization at the hands of the New York Times.I learned the name for what the Times had done to me when I received a very nice note from P. W. Anderson in which he expressed his regret that the newspaper had given him exclusive credit for a nomenclatural advance that was entirely due to me. "A depressingly typical example of the Matthew effect" was how he characterized the misattribution. (I reported the entire history of this contretemps in these pages back in those dark ages [April 1981, page 46] before there were Reference Frame columns.) When I wrote back asking him what the Matthew effect was, he referred me to Merton.It was Merton who identified and named the tendency always to assign exclusive scientific credit to the most eminent among all the plausible candidates. At least I hope it was he, though I'm sure Merton, who invented many wonderful jokes himself, would have been delighted if the credit for it turned out to be misattributed to him. Merton named the effect after the Gospel According to Matthew, because there it is written, For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.—Matthew 25:29.Could the widespread attribution of my wretched witticism to Feynman be another instance of this same deplorable practice? Had I once again been matthewed?Although I didn't say so in my old Reference-Frame article, what inspired this not so terribly bon mot were vivid memories of the responses my conceptual inquiries elicited from my professors—whom I viewed as agents of Copenhagen—when I was first learning quantum mechanics as a graduate student at Harvard, a mere 30 years after the birth of the subject. "You'll never get a PhD if you allow yourself to be distracted by such frivolities," they kept advising me, "so get back to serious business and produce some results." "Shut up," in other words, "and calculate." And so I did, and probably turned out much the better for it. At Harvard, they knew how to administer tough love in those olden days.This bit of history is relevant to the question of whether Feynman's abundance might have been augmented by a portion of the little that I had. Can you imagine the young Feynman ever having had a similar experience that seared "shut up and calculate" into his tender consciousness? No, of course you can't! Nobody could ever have had the slightest reason to direct the best human calculator that ever was to shut up and calculate.But perhaps Feynman was offering such advice to others who were searching for a better understanding of the quantum mechanical formalism. I can't believe that. He said that he "always had a great deal of difficulty understanding the world view that quantum mechanics represents," and added, "I still get nervous with it." 2 2. R. P. Feynman, Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21, 471 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02650179 Nobody who felt that way would ever respond with "shut up and calculate" to conceptual inquiries from the perplexed.Well maybe Feynman, like me, was merely dismissing an interpretive position of others by lampooning it as a "shut up and calculate interpretation." I find this unlikely. For one thing, his strong preference for working things out for himself and, of course, his well-known disdain for philosophy make me doubt that he ever paid much attention to the interpretive positions of others. For another, would one for whom calculation was so effortless and understanding so important be likely to translate anybody's admonition against fruitless speculation into such terms?In short, I suspect that it is only Feynman's habitual irreverence that has linked him in the minds of many to the phrase "shut up and calculate." Who else among the high and mighty—and Merton has taught us that it is only among the high and mighty that people tend to look—could have said it? Albert Einstein? Don't be silly. Erwin Schrödinger? Of course not. Niels Bohr? Don't make me laugh. None of them besides Feynman could have said it. Does that mean that Feynman said it? No!Broaden the search to embrace the low and powerless. Among them am I, who hereby put forth the hypothesis that I was the first to use "shut up and calculate" in the context of quantum foundations. I'm not proud of having said it. It's not a beautiful phrase. It's not very clever. It's snide and mindlessly dismissive. But, damn it, if I'm the one who said it first, then that means I did not, even unconsciously, appropriate the words of Richard Feynman and pass them off as my own. So I have nothing to be ashamed of other than having characterized the Copenhagen interpretation in such foolish terms—a lesser offense than unconscious plagiarism, in my moral bookkeeping.So, dear reader, if you have evidence that Feynman really did say "shut up and calculate," please send it to me. I will not be happy to receive it. I'd rather be a Matthew victim than a plagiarist. But I'd like to know the truth.REFERENCESSection:ChooseTop of pageREFERENCES <<CITING ARTICLES1. R. K. Merton, Science 159, 56 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.159.3810.56 , Google ScholarCrossref, ISI2. R. P. Feynman, Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21, 471 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02650179 , Google ScholarCrossref, ISI© 2004 American Institute of Physics.
We always have had a great deal of difficulty in understanding the world view that quantum mechanics represents. At least I do, because I'm an old enough man that I haven't got to the point that this stuff is obvious to me … It has not yet become obvious to me that there is no real problem. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there is no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem. Richard Feynman Max Born and quantum probabilities In this chapter, we will take a short break from our survey of successful applications of quantum mechanics to take a closer look at the foundations of this great edifice of modern physics. In a sense, we are now disobeying Feynman's warning about the results of the double slit experiment of chapter 1. We shall now ask Feynman's ‘forbidden’ question ‘But how can it be like that?’ Nobody disputes that quantum mechanics has been magnificently successful, enabling us to make correct quantitative calculations of atomic and nuclear effects. But there is a great divergence of opinion about the implications of quantum mechanics for the nature of matter, and indeed, of reality itself. To avoid becoming embroiled in a purely philosophical mire, we will focus on two famous paradoxes. The first of these is the ‘Einstein–Podolsky-Rosen’ paradox, named after its originators Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, and usually abbreviated by the initials ‘EPR’. The second paradox is named after ‘Schrödinger's cat’.
Although I have neither an objection to nor an endorsement of David Mermin’s major premise in his Quick Study, “There is no quantum measurement problem” (Physics Today, June 2022, page 62), I would like to make several contextual points.Mermin’s argument has an extensive history, along with a comparable history of rebuttal. Five decades ago Max Jammer wrote that “measurements in quantum mechanics are no more or less problematic than in classical physics, for the Hilbert space vector is only a purely formal device for relating the statistics associated with these arrangements to the physics of observations in classical physics.” That seems like a condensed version of the argument Mermin presents. On the following page, however, Jammer notes that a “problematic aspect whose serious implications were only gradually understood was the fact that as long as a quantum mechanical one-body or many-body system does not interact with macroscopic objects, as long as its motion is described by the deterministic Schrödinger time-dependent equation, no events could be considered to take place in the system.”11. M. Jammer, The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics: The Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics in Historical Perspective, Wiley (1974), pp. 473, 474.Niels Bohr giving a lecture in Copenhagen in April 1929. (Photograph by Samuel Goudsmit, courtesy of the AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Goudsmit Collection.)PPT|High resolutionRegarding the quotations from Niels Bohr, Mermin’s point is entirely valid and represents Bohr’s position accurately, but Bohr’s thought is always subtle and difficult to capture completely. Another quotation from Bohr, which is consistent with everything else he wrote, is, “The decisive point is that in neither case does the appropriate widening of our conceptual framework imply any appeal to the observing subject, which would hinder unambiguous communication of experience.”22. N. Bohr, Essays 1958–1962 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, Ox Bow Press (1987), p. 7. That quotation seems inconsistent with Mermin’s paragraph that includes the passage “Why should I insist that my interpretation of science, which I use to make sense of the world that I experience, should never make any mention of me?” Bohr always insisted that his framework was a rational “generalization” of classical objectivity.The last and most conceptually important point concerns the ontological status of probability. I don’t necessarily disagree with Mermin and Bruno de Finetti, but it is by no means obvious that they are correct either. David Hawkins, for example, begins 50 pages of rigorous analysis with a brief statement of a major premise.The obvious and natural interpretation of probability in this context is that it introduces, not something that has to do with the nature of the physical system, but something that has to do with the incompleteness of our knowledge….But this opinion turns out to be false. Ignorance of dynamical regularity may be a motive for resorting to probabilities, but it does not explain the probabilities to which we resort.33. D. Hawkins, The Language of Nature: An Essay in the Philosophy of Science, W. H. Freeman (1964), p. 135.Another example can be found in Jammer’s well-known historical account of quantum theory: “For Einstein the notion of probability … was the traditional conception of classical physics, a mathematical objectivization of the human deficiency of complete or exact knowledge but ultimately a creation of the human mind…. For Born probability, as far as it was related to the wave function, was not merely a mathematical fiction but something endowed with physical reality.”44. M. Jammer, The Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics, McGraw-Hill (1966), p. 286.Of course, such examples don’t mean that Mermin’s position is incorrect, but I do think that they demand a better argument than a comparison to “Fairies and Witches.” I am confident that Mermin has such an argument, and I look forward to reading it as I continue working toward a coherent position on the unresolved interpretational issues of quantum theory.ReferencesSection:ChooseTop of pageReferences <<CITING ARTICLES1. M. Jammer, The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics: The Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics in Historical Perspective, Wiley (1974), pp. 473, 474. Google Scholar2. N. Bohr, Essays 1958–1962 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, Ox Bow Press (1987), p. 7. Google Scholar3. D. Hawkins, The Language of Nature: An Essay in the Philosophy of Science, W. H. Freeman (1964), p. 135. Google Scholar4. M. Jammer, The Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics, McGraw-Hill (1966), p. 286. Google Scholar© 2022 American Institute of Physics.
Abstract There is a certain similarity in the early lives of Planck and of Heisenberg [1,2]. Both had fathers who were professors at the University of Munich, both visited the Maximilians-Gymnasium in Munich, and both went to see a professor in Munich to seek advice for their studies. We have mentioned at the beginning of the Prologue how Jolly in vain tried to dissuade Planck from studying physics. Heisenberg, in his autobiographic book [3], which is devised as a series of conversations, tells us of a similar experience. In the autumn of 1920, when he was about to enter the university, his first choice was mathematics. He wanted not only to do course work but also learn about problems of current interest. This, he thought, he could do best by participating in a professor’s seminar usually reserved to advanced students and Ph.D. candidates. He asked for an interview with Lindemann , the most distinguished mathematician in Munich, who was famous for having proved that the number π is transcendental. But the old professor and the young student found no understanding, partly because Lindemann’s dog noisily interfered. The result was that Heisenberg opted for theoretical physics and went to ask Sommerfeld to be admitted to his seminar. Sommerfeld agreed. At that time Pauli, only a year older than Heisenberg, was already actively doing research under Sommerfeld. The two young men became life-long friends.
Translated by Irene Born Newton-John; closing comment by Max Born. 1 1. M. Born, The Born—Einstein Letters 1916-1955: Friendship, Politics and Physics in Uncertain Times, Macmillan, New York (2005), p. 79. Letter © Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This letter antedates by a year or two the “new” quantum mechanics of Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Pasqual Jordan, and Erwin Schrödinger. Einstein begins with a response to a letter about Japan by Born’s wife, Hedi—a letter that has since been lost. But then, as he would for the next 30 years, Einstein launches into his differences with Max on the interpretation of quantum phenomena. If atomic phenomena are truly random, he grumbles, he’d rather be a croupier. Berlin, 29 April 1924Dear Borns,Your letter, dear Mrs. Born, was really excellent. Indeed, what causes the sense of well-being inspired by Japanese society and art is that the individual is so harmoniously integrated into his wider environment that he derives his experiences not from the self, but mainly from the community. Each of us longed for this when we were young, but we had to resign ourselves to its impossibility. For, of all the communities available to us there is not one I would want to devote myself to, except for the society of the true searchers, which has very few living members at any time.… Bohr’s opinion about radiation is of great interest. But I should not want to be forced into abandoning strict causality without defending it more strongly than I have so far. I find the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should choose, of its own free will, not only its moment to jump off, but also its direction. In that case, I would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house, than a physicist. Certainly my attempts to give tangible form to the quanta have foundered again and again, but I am far from giving up hope. And even if it never works, there is always that consolation that this lack of success is entirely mine. … With best wishes.YoursEinstein… Your pretty remark [Mrs. Born, about subject unknown] makes me want to stroke your head, if that is at all permissible in the case of a married lady. Max Born’s 1969 comments:’ The letter from my wife to which Einstein replied is missing. The basic reason for the dispute between [Einstein and me] on the validity of statistical laws was as follows: Einstein was firmly convinced that physics can supply us with knowledge of the objectively existing world. Together with many other physicists, I have been gradually converted, as a result of experiences in the field of atomic quantum phenomena, to the point of view that this is not so. At any given moment, our knowledge of the objective world is only a crude approximation from which, by applying certain rules such as the probability laws of quantum mechanics, we can predict unknown (e.g. future) conditions. REFERENCESection:ChooseTop of pageREFERENCE <<1. M. Born, The Born—Einstein Letters 1916-1955: Friendship, Politics and Physics in Uncertain Times, Macmillan, New York (2005), p. 79. Letter © Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Google Scholar© 2005 American Institute of Physics.