Soviet attitude towards Bohr reflects changes in the ideological approach to science. During the last period before Stalin's death Ždanov proclaimed the campaign against Western influence in Soviet philosophy and science. Nevertheless the physicist M. A. Markov tried to introduce complementarity as a materialistic interpretation of quantum‐mechanics in 1948. He was officially condemned. This was followed by a period (1948–54) during which heavy attacks were made against the Copenhagen school. In 1958, after a personal exchange of thoughts with Bohr, academician Fock declared complementarity and probability to be irreversible steps towards a new insight into physical reality, at the same time correcting some of Bohr's epistemological conceptions.
Soviet attitude towards Bohr reflects changes in the ideological approach to science. During the last period before Stalin's death Ždanov proclaimed the campaign against Western influence in Soviet philosophy and science. Nevertheless the physicist M. A. Markov tried to introduce complementarity as a materialistic interpretation of quantum‐mechanics in 1948. He was officially condemned. This was followed by a period (1948–54) during which heavy attacks were made against the Copenhagen school. In 1958, after a personal exchange of thoughts with Bohr, academician Fock declared complementarity and probability to be irreversible steps towards a new insight into physical reality, at the same time correcting some of Bohr's epistemological conceptions.
Vladimir Fock was a Soviet theoretical physicist who, from the 1930s, worked to prove that modern physics was compatible with the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism. In 1957, he went to Copenhagen, and a dispute over the interpretation of quantum mechanics began with Niels Bohr. Fock later claimed that he had found points of convergence with his Danish colleague, most of them concerning issues of wording and recognition of the reality of the world independently of our mind. It led to a specific narrative among historians of physics on Fock and his interpretation of quantum mechanics: The Soviet physicist is often described as a member of the Copenhagen school that contributed to the rapprochement of the Soviet philosophy of physics with the ideas of complementarity in stripping away the positivism in its formulation. Our contribution aims to show that this ideological dimension was only one aspect of reality. Returning to the foundations of Fock's epistemology of physics, we argue that he relied on the principles of antireductionism and scientific realism to develop an interpretation of the theory that sought to overcome Bohr's approach and that the differences between the two men cannot be reduced to mere questions of formulation.
Niels Bohr and Philosophy of Physics: Twenty-First Century Perspectives examines the philosophical views, influences and legacy of the Nobel Prize physicist and philosophical spokesman of the quantum revolution, Niels Bohr. The sixteen contributions in this collection by some of the best contemporary philosophers and physicists writing on Bohr's philosophy today all carefully distinguish his subtle and unique interpretation of quantum mechanics from views often imputed to him under the banner of the “Copenhagen Interpretation.” With respect to philosophical influences on Bohr's outlook, the contributors analyse prominent similarities between his viewpoint and Kantian ways of thinking, the views of the Danish philosopher Harald Høffding, and themes characteristic of American pragmatism. In recognizing the importance of Bohr's epistemological naturalism they examine his defence of the indispensability of classical concepts from a variety of different perspectives. This collection shows us that Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics, now nearly a century old, still has the power to shed light on a variety of issues that have arisen only since his lifetime, as well as decoherence theory and other non-collapse interpretations. Balancing historical themes with contemporary discussions, Niels Bohr and the Philosophy of Physics establishes Bohr's on-going contribution to the philosophy of physics and examines his place in the history of philosophy.
Niels Bohr and the Philosophy of Physics: Twenty-First-Century Perspectives examines the philosophical views, influences and legacy of the Nobel Prize physicist and philosophical spokesman of the quantum revolution, Niels Bohr. The sixteen contributions in this collection by some of the best contemporary philosophers and physicists writing on Bohr’s philosophy today all carefully distinguish his subtle and unique interpretation of quantum mechanics from views often imputed to him under the banner of the “Copenhagen Interpretation.” With respect to philosophical influences on Bohr’s outlook, the contributors analyse prominent similarities between his viewpoint and Kantian ways of thinking, the views of the Danish philosopher Harald Høffding, and themes characteristic of American pragmatism. In recognizing the importance of Bohr’s epistemological naturalism they examine his defence of the indispensability of classical concepts from a variety of different perspectives. This collection shows us that Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, now nearly a century old, still has
SUMMARY. — This paper emphasizes the evolution of complementarity, in Niels Bohr's successive formulations of this idea, from 1927 to 1939, despite little, if any change in the definition of the concept with time. In the Como lecture, in 1927, Bohr introduced the idea of « complementary descriptions » in a problematic, polemical way. Against Schrödinger' s interpretation, he stressed the « irrationality » inherent in the quantum postulate. In 1935, Bohr again used complementarity polemically, in his reply to Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen. But far from intending it to convey irrationality this time, he meant to use it instead to prove that quantum mechanics is a complete theory. Finally, I will take up Bohr's attempts to apply complementarity to fundamental problems in biology, psychology, sociology, and so forth. I will argue that the introduction of complementarity outside physics was not motivated by an imperialist ambition of the Copenhagen School, but rather inspired by Bohr's own personal philosophy.
The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is usually called standard because it is presented in the basic textbooks on the field. In the USSR this interpretation was treated from the point of view of the philosophy of dialectic materialism, which was taken as the state ideology. This treatment was oscillated from negative and rejecting of definitely positive. The Copenhagen interpretation has been rejected by the Marxist philosopher A. Maximov, it was severely criticized by the physicist D. Blohintsev, who supported the ensemble approach to quantum mechanics, it was adopted by the mathematician-physicist V. Fock, who proposed some corrections and reservations to it. The Soviet ideology was not completely homogeneous and stable. From the very beginning it contained the philosophy of activity which was something like the “shadow component”. By accepting the philosophy of activity the physicist M. Markov provided the authentic presentation of the Copenhagen interpretation in 1947. In 1980 the philosophy of activity became popular among Russian intellectuals, and the philosopher I. Alexeev published the detailed presentation of the Copenhagen interpretation by treating it as methodologically productive.
The political attitude and the ideology of a very small elite of physicists (Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and view other) played a major role in the construction of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics in the 1920s.Lastly, the hegemonic standard acausal Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics abandoned the principle of causality in quantum mechanics and opened a very wide door to mysticism, logical fallacies and wishful thinking in physics and in science as such.Historically, the Second International Congress for the Unity of Science (Copenhagen, June 21-26, 1936) tried to solve the problem of causality within physics but without a success.Thus far, 80 years after the Second International Congress for the Unity of Science this publication will expel Bohr's and Heisenberg's dogma of non-causality out of quantum mechanics and re-establish the unrestricted validity of the principle of causality at quantum level and under conditions of relativity theory by mathematizing the relationship between cause and effect in the form of the mathematical formula of the causal relationship k.In contrast to Bohr, Heisenberg and other representatives of the Copenhagen interpretation quantum mechanics, a realistic interpretation of quantum theory grounded on the unrestricted validity of the principle of causality will expel any kind of mysticism from physics and enable a quantization of the gravitational field too.