PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association

On the Present State of the Philosophy of Quantum Mathematics

Howard Stein

Published Jan 1, 1982• 3 citations

Abstract

It was with some trepidation that I agreed to speak today, because of a strong doubt that I could say anything substantial not already to be found in the literature of the subject. I cannot say that this trepidation has been subsequently relieved: all I can claim to offer in this paper is a review of certain basic characteristics or themes in the quantum-mechanical situation (which by now should, I think, be thoroughly understood by everyone engaged with the matter), supplemented by some rather general reflections on our philosophical predicament. In aid of these more general reflections, I shall indulge a proclivity for calling on historical matters—some fairly recent, some older, some ancient—which I hope may serve to place current issues in a useful perspective; and I ask your forgiveness for allowing myself to quote certain previous, but hitherto unpublished, remarks of my own.

DOI: 10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1982.2.192444

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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. 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"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. 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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. 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