The American Reception of the Quantum as Seen by the Physical Review, 1900-1927

Olival Freire

ABSTRACT In the early 1950s the American physicist David Bohm (1917-1992) produced a new interpretation of quantum mechanics and had to flee from McCarthyism. Rejected at Princeton, he moved to São Paulo. This article focuses on the reception of his early papers on the causal interpretation, his Brazilian exile, and the culture of physics surrounding the foundations of quantum mechanics. It weighs the strength of the Copenhagen interpretation, discusses the presentation of the foundations of quantum mechanics in the training of physicists, describes the results Bohm and his collaborators achieved. It also compares the reception of Bohm's ideas with that of Hugh Everett's interpretation. The cultural context of physics had a more significant influence on the reception of Bohm's ideas than the McCarthyist climate.

Katherine Russell Sopka

Mara Beller

Lee Smolin

In the early 1950s the American physicist David Bohm (1917-1992) lived through a critical moment, when he produced a new interpretation for quantum mechanics and had to flee from the United States as McCarthyism's victim.At that time he faced vicissitudes related to the Cold War and his move from Princeton to São Paulo.This article focuses on the reception among physicists of his papers on the causal interpretation, which were poorly received at the time.I describe his Brazilian exile and analyze the culture of physics surrounding the foundations of quantum mechanics.This article takes into account the strength of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics among physicists, the way in which issues concerning the foundations of quantum mechanics were present in the training of physicists, the low status of these issues on research agendas, and the kind of results Bohm and collaborators were able to achieve.It also compares the reception of Bohm's ideas with that of Hugh Everett's interpretation.This article argues that the obstacles growing from the cultural context of physics at that time had a more significant influence in the reception of Bohm's ideas than did the vicissitudes related to the McCarthyist climate.WHEN DAVID BOHM and Richard Feynman concluded their physics dissertations, during the first half of the 1940s, they were among the most promising students of their generation in American physics.After the war, however, their fates were very different.Feynman reached the zenith of his scientific career in the United States.In 1951, Bohm was forced to leave the United States forever.Before that, he got a position in Princeton, carried out his research on plasma theory, and published a praised graduate

Karl David Stephan

Steven French’s review of Bernard d’Espagnat’s 500-page tome On Physics and Philosophy (Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 60 6 2007 66 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2754610. June 2007, page 66 ) got my attention, with its repeated discussion of something d’Espagnat calls “the Real.” I must confess I have not seen d’Espagnat’s book, but the more I read about this Real in French’s review, the more I thought I’d heard of it somewhere before. In the true scientific spirit of bringing to the attention of a researcher the results of prior research bearing on his work, I have interspersed citations from the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) between passages from French’s review of d’Espagnat’s book.French states that the Real “nevertheless exerts an influence on the phenomena.”Aquinas wrote, “As there can be nothing which is not created by God, so there can be nothing which is not subject to His government” (part 1, question 103, article 5).French writes, “The grand laws of physics are ‘highly distorted reflections … of the great structures of “the Real”’ (page 455)…. The Real, although impossible to conceive, is nonseparable; from it, both consciousness and empirical reality ‘co-emerge.’”Aquinas wrote, “From the knowledge of sensible things the whole power of God cannot be known; nor therefore can His essence be seen. But because they are His effects and depend on their cause, we can be led from them so far as to know of God whether He exists, and to know of Him what must necessarily belong to Him, as the first cause of all things, exceeding all things caused by Him” (part 1, question 12, article 12).Aquinas maintained that there cannot ultimately be any disagreement between faith and reason because both come from an infinitely faithful and infinitely reasonable God. It is amusing that an apparently secular philosopher such as d’Espagnat, writing for a modern audience of physicists and philosophers and basing his thought on the latest results of quantum mechanics, has nevertheless arrived at conclusions in harmony with the greatest philosopher of the Middle Ages.© 2008 American Institute of Physics.

Daniel M. Greenberger, Klaus Hentschel, Friedel Weinert