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Physics World

Wheeler's world

Ian G. Moss

Published Feb 1, 1989• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

There was once a prolonged argument between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein about the nature of quantum theory. The theory had proved invaluable for describing the atom and the nucleus but it challenged Einstein's ideas about the rest of the cosmos. Einstein repeatedly pressed Bohr to provide him with a better definition of quantum theory, but was never satisfied.

DOI
10.1088/2058-7058/2/2/29

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There was once a prolonged argument between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein about the nature of quantum theory. The theory had proved invaluable for describing the atom and the nucleus but it challenged Einstein's ideas about the rest of the cosmos. Einstein repeatedly pressed Bohr to provide him with a better definition of quantum theory, but was never satisfied.
Abstract It was not a question of whether light should be pictured as waves or particles, or atoms as solar systems, but of whether the microworld could be pictured at all. The famous debate between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr reached beyond quantum physics to the deepest foundations of science. Faced with the ever more perplexing ‘irrationalities’, Bohr, Einstein, and their followers fell into two broadly opposed camps. Bohr’s approach of ‘complementarity’ accommodated the apparent absurdities of the microworld, declared quantum concepts to be purely ‘symbolic’, and insisted that the manifestation of quantum phenomena in experiment be discussed only in the language of classical physics. He asserted that quantum theory was mathematically coherent and complete. Einstein could not accept Bohr’s ‘tranquilizing philosophy’, which dealt in probabilities rather than certainties. He insisted that physicists look more deeply for the causes of entanglement and rejected the spooky actions at a distance that this implies. Their discussion, respectful and profound, reached stasis in the mid-1930s with the apparent victory of Bohr, while attention shifted to nuclear and particle physics. But their arguments continued to reverberate, and later physicists identified testable consequences of the theory. Ingenious experiments have now confirmed its radical strangeness. Vividly capturing the personalities and interactions of a remarkable cast of characters, the prevailing socio-political circumstances, and threaded through with explanations of theory and experiment, this erudite and carefully crafted telling by Jim Baggott and John Heilbron may prove to be the definitive account of the Bohr–Einstein debate and its legacy.
Arguably the most important scientific debate of the 20th Century was that which took place between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr over the nature of reality. Bohr argued that reality was subjective in nature and therefore depended on the presence of an observer or observing process, while Einstein argued that reality had to be objective. The debate was never resolved, ending prematurely with Einstein's death in 1955. Having outlived Einstein, Bohr's ideas have come to dominate modern physics and Einstein has been somewhat sidelined. Perhaps now it is time to revisit the debate to see if Einstein was correct all along.
“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress,” said Niels Bohr with characteristic irony. The quantum view of the atom began with Bohr. Coming from Denmark, he worked with Rutherford, who although famously skeptical about theoreticians, supported him. Max Planck had previously introduced the idea of the quantum, and Einstein had extended it from matter to light, but Bohr’s proposal that electrons can adjust their orbits only by quantum leaps was revolutionary. The next revolution was Schrödinger’s description of electrons as waves instead of particles. This led to recognition of the wave–particle duality. The rest of the 20th century was marked by the realization that the apparently fundamental particles of the nucleus, the proton and the neutron, each actually consisted of a series of sub-particles. The wave–particle duality created a baffling series of paradoxes. Following revolutions tended to be driven by theoreticians, and massive team efforts were required to identify the sub-particles experimentally.