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Physics Bulletin

Scientific Uncertainty and Information

F. I. G. RAWLINS

Published Feb 1, 1965• 33 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Leon Brillouin New York: Academic Press Inc. 1964. Pp. xiv + 164. Price 52s. This book, by the well-known adjunct professor at the University of Columbia is an attempt to survey the philosophical foundations of science as we conceive them to be in contemporary thought. There are two main parts, the first dealing with information and imagination in science, and the second with uncertainty in classical mechanics.

DOI
10.1088/0031-9112/16/2/010

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Leon Brillouin New York: Academic Press Inc. 1964. Pp. xiv + 164. Price 52s. This book, by the well-known adjunct professor at the University of Columbia is an attempt to survey the philosophical foundations of science as we conceive them to be in contemporary thought. There are two main parts, the first dealing with information and imagination in science, and the second with uncertainty in classical mechanics.
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Classical mechanics and quantum mechanics are two of the most successful scientific theories ever discovered, and yet how they can describe the same world is far from clear: one theory is deterministic, the other indeterministic; one theory describes a world in which chaos is pervasive, the other a world in which chaos is absent. Focusing on the exciting field of 'quantum chaos', this book reveals that there is a subtle and complex relation between classical and quantum mechanics. It challenges the received view that classical and quantum mechanics are incommensurable, and revives another, largely forgotten tradition due to Niels Bohr and Paul Dirac. By artfully weaving together considerations from the history of science, philosophy of science, and contemporary physics, this book offers a new way of thinking about intertheory relations and scientific explanation. It will be of particular interest to historians and philosophers of science, philosophically-inclined physicists, and interested non-specialists.
The more science tells us about the world, the stranger it looks. Ever since physics first penetrated the atom, early in this century, what it found there has stood as a radical and unanswered challenge to many of our most cherished conceptions of nature. It has literally been called into question since then whether or not there are always objective matters of fact about the whereabouts of subatomic particles, or about the locations of tables and chairs, or even about the very contents of our thoughts. A new kind of uncertainty has become a principle of science. This book is an original and provocative investigation of that challenge, as well as a novel attempt at writing about science in a style that is simultaneously elementary and deep. It is a lucid and self-contained introduction to the foundations of quantum mechanics, accessible to anyone with a high school mathematics education, and at the same time a rigorous discussion of the most important recent advances in our understanding of that subject, some of which are due to the author himself.
Hans Reichenbach University of California Press (agents; London: Cambridge University Press) . 1965. Pp. x + 182. Price 12s. 6d. This is a welcome paperback edition of a book which originally appeared in 1944. Its aim is to analyse the new concepts and methods of physical reasoning which have been introduced into atomic physics as the result mainly of Schrodinger's proof of the physical equivalence of wave and quantum mechanics, of Born's probability interpretation of the wave equation, of Heisenberg's interpretationof the principle of indeterminacy and of Bohr's principle of complementarity.
F J Belinfante Oxford: Pergamon Press 1973 pp xix + 354 price £8 It is a well known consequence of quantum theory that, because of the uncertainty principle, it is impossible even in theory to predict exactly the observable outcome of any process on the atomic or subatomic scale; only the probabilities of various possible outcomes can be predicted. Although most physicists accept this state of affairs with equanimity there have always been those who regard it as unsatisfactory and who attempt to modify the theory so as to make it strictly deterministic, while retaining its many remarkable successes in accounting for observable phenomena.