During the first half of the century, positivism had a firm hold on the great majority of physicists. It appeared, however, in recent years that this method of analysis has lost its early creativity. Professor Hooker is among the increasing number of philosophers of physics who are concerned about this situation. His determination to redirect philosophical study to significant human problems is most re freshing. Unfortunately, I am afraid that his technique does not measure up to the difficulty of this task. He polarizes the issue by formulating two comprehensive and mutually incompatible world views and then pro ceeds to destroy positivism and vindicate realism. Since he cannot discern any merit in positivism, it is hard to avoid the implication that Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg were utterly misguided when they used positivist arguments to challenge classical dogmas. Instead of analyzing his paper point by point, I prefer to discuss the problem from my point of view. Let me start by clarifying first how I intend to use the terms 'real' and 'reality'. Curiously, the commonsense usage serves as a good point of departure. We usually know what 'reality' means in contrast to 'dream', 'illusion', 'deception' or 'error'. We know how to compare a photograph or a map with reality. There are situations in physics which are quite similar. We distinguish a real object from a hologram, and we know how to tell a 'real' effect from an experimental error, at least in the long run.
During the first half of the century, positivism had a firm hold on the great majority of physicists. It appeared, however, in recent years that this method of analysis has lost its early creativity. Professor Hooker is among the increasing number of philosophers of physics who are concerned about this situation. His determination to redirect philosophical study to significant human problems is most re freshing. Unfortunately, I am afraid that his technique does not measure up to the difficulty of this task. He polarizes the issue by formulating two comprehensive and mutually incompatible world views and then pro ceeds to destroy positivism and vindicate realism. Since he cannot discern any merit in positivism, it is hard to avoid the implication that Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg were utterly misguided when they used positivist arguments to challenge classical dogmas. Instead of analyzing his paper point by point, I prefer to discuss the problem from my point of view. Let me start by clarifying first how I intend to use the terms 'real' and 'reality'. Curiously, the commonsense usage serves as a good point of departure. We usually know what 'reality' means in contrast to 'dream', 'illusion', 'deception' or 'error'. We know how to compare a photograph or a map with reality. There are situations in physics which are quite similar. We distinguish a real object from a hologram, and we know how to tell a 'real' effect from an experimental error, at least in the long run.
Abstract The confrontation between Einstein and Bohr over the interpretation of quantum theory has been painted in the past as a direct conflict between realism and positivism. However, more recent attempts to uncover the philosophical positions of both Einstein and Bohr have revealed that these were not so black and white. Einstein’s realism was conditioned by the strong empiricist influence in his own early experiences as a theorist and the growing wariness that led him eventually to reject Machian positivism. His was a realism born of a sense of necessity: a belief that a realist stance is the only one that leads to productive theorizing about the physical world. Bohr’s philosophy went through some quite marked changes, principally in response to Einstein’s challenges. The father of modem atomic theory could hardly subscribe to an uncompromising positivist position that rejected the reality of atoms. But the reality of the inner workings of those atoms was, Bohr contended, beyond the reach of a knowledge founded on complementary classical concepts of waves and particles. As Einstein’s challenges became deeper and more subtle, so Bohr’s position shifted to that of a distinctive anti-realism. Add to this a rhetoric in Bohr’s speeches and published writings that insisted on the logical inevitability of the Copenhagen interpretation, that insisted on its status as the only feasible interpretation, and that countenanced no other alternative, and you have dogma in the making. Heisenberg called it ‘Kopen hagener Geist der Quantentheorie’, the Copenhagen spirit of quantum theory which, he declared in 1930, ‘has directed the entire development of modem atomic physics’. Einstein frequently referred to the Copenhagen doctrine as ‘Talmudic’.
Discussions of the interpretation of quantum theory are at present obstructed by (1) the increasing axiomania in physics and philosophy which replaces fundamental problems by problems of formulation within a certain preconceived calculus, and (2) the decreasing (since 1927) philosophical interest and sophistication both of professional physicists and of professional philosophers which results in the replacement of subtle positions by crude ones and of dialectical arguments by dogmatic ones. More especially, such discussions are obstructed by the ignorance of both opponents, and also defenders of the Copenhagen point of view, as regards the arguments which once were used in its defence. The publication of Bunge's Quantum Theory and Reality and especially of Popper's contribution to it are taken as an occasion for the restatement of Bohr's position and for the refutation of some quite popular, but surprisingly naive and uninformed objections against it. Bohr's position is distinguished both from the position of Heisenberg and from the vulgarized versions which have become part of the so-called “Copenhagen Interpretation” and whose inarticulateness has been a boon for all those critics who prefer easy victories to a rational debate. Einstein's main counterargument is discussed, and Bohr's refutation restated. The philosophical background and earlier forms of Bohr's views are stated also. Considering that these views are more detailed, better adapted to the facts of the microdomain than any existing alternative it follows that fundamental discussion must first return to them. Their uniqueness is not asserted, however. Here the author still maintains that a hundred shabby flowers are preferable to a single blossom, however exquisite. But a hundred shabby flowers plus an exquisite blossom are more desirable still.
Now that we have completed our survey of the conceptual problems of quantum physics, what are we to make of it all? One thing that should be clear is that there is considerable scope for us all to have opinions and there is a disappointing lack of practicable experimental tests to confirm or falsify our ideas. Because of this, I intend to drop the use of the conventional scientific ‘we’ in this chapter and to use the first person singular pronoun wherever I am stating an opinion rather than describing an objective fact or a widely accepted scientific idea. This is not to say that everything in the earlier chapters has been free of personal bias, but I have tried to maintain a greater basis of objectivity there than will be appropriate from now on. I first want to refer briefly to a way of thinking about philosophical problems known as ‘positivism’. Encapsulated in Wittgenstein's phrase ‘of what we cannot speak thereof should we be silent’, positivism asserts that questions that are incapable of verification are ‘non-questions’, which it is meaningless to try to answer. Thus the famous, if apocryphal, debate between mediaeval scholars about how many angels can dance on the point of a pin has no content because angels can never be observed or measured so no direct test of any conclusion we might reach about them is ever possible. Opinions about such unobservable phenomena are therefore a matter of choice rather than logical necessity.
Now that we have completed our survey of the conceptual problems of quantum physics, what are we to make of it all? One thing that should be clear is that there is considerable scope for us all to have opinions and there is a disappointing lack of practicable experimental tests to confirm or falsify our ideas. Because of this, I intend to drop the use of the conventional scientific ‘we’ in this chapter and to use the first person singular pronoun wherever I am stating an opinion rather than describing an objective fact or a widely accepted scientific idea. This is not to say that everything in the earlier chapters has been free of personal bias, but I have tried to maintain a greater basis of objectivity there than will be appropriate from now on. I first want to refer briefly to a way of thinking about philosophical problems known as ‘positivism’. Encapsulated in Wittgenstein's phrase ‘of what we cannot speak thereof should we be silent’, positivism asserts that questions that are incapable of verification are ‘non-questions’, which it is meaningless to try to answer. Thus the famous, if apocryphal, debate between mediaeval scholars about how many angels can dance on the point of a pin has no content because angels can never be observed or measured so no direct test of any conclusion we might reach about them is ever possible. Opinions about such unobservable phenomena are therefore a matter of choice rather than logical necessity.
THE conceptual problems raised by the discovery of quantum effects have not been fully resolved after half a century. Part of the reason for this is undoubtedly to be found in the mutual ignorance which prevails between physicists and philosophers. In his book Heisenberg brings together a philosophically inclined temperament with an unrivalled knowledge of physics. The result is a book of very great interest, however much one might disagree with his conclusions. The collection of essays of which the other book is made up is intended to bring crucial conceptual problems in physics especially to the notice of philosophers. The design and intention of the collection is admirable for this is the proper way to overcome the departmentalization of interest that has left the deep conceptual problems still unresolved. Men like Heisenberg who combine philosophical temperament with scientic knowledge of great distinction are rare, and yet the difficulties can only be cleared up by the application of philosophical techniques of analysis to problems which are an intimate and difficult part of physics. A great deal of the interest of Heisenberg's book lies in the very comprehensive account he gives of the origin and growth of the Copenhagen school, and the way the new phenomena forced a largely unwelcome picture of nature upon Bohr and his friends. The most important chapter from a philosophical point of view is that in which Heisenberg defends this interpretation against the attacks to which it has been subjected. The essence of his argument for the interpretation can be summed up in two propositions. (i) The Copenhagen interpretation of physical theory, which depends upon the acceptance of the so-called Principle of Complementarity, is an inevitable and final interpretation. The reason for this is that there are only two possible general models for understanding given physical phenomena; a particle model or a wave model. These are exhaustive and exclusive because the former depends upon discontinuous and the latter upon continuous (using substance here in the traditional philosophical sense). If we find, as we do, that the two fundamental constituents of the universe, matter and radiation, each exhibit two classes of phenomena, one explainable only on a particle model and one on a wave model, then we are compelled to adopt a complementarity hypothesis and give up the idea of finding a single and uniform model for the understanding of phenomena. There are only two kinds of models; they are mutually exclusive; both are required; hence we either despair before an insoluble problem or adopt the Copenhagen interpretation. (2) Any serious criticism of this interpretation must offer an alternative
This paper re-opens the debate on the failure of quantum mechanics to provide an understandable view of micro-reality. A critique is offered of the commonly accepted ‘Copenhagen Interpretation’ of a theory that is only a mathematical approach to the level of reality characterized by atoms and electrons. This critique is based on the oldest approach to thinking about nature for over 2500 years, known as Natural Philosophy. Quantum mechanics (QM) was developed over the first quarter of the 20th Century, when scientists were enthralled by a new philosophy known as Positivism, whose foundations were based on the assumption that material objects exist only when measured by humans – this central assumption conflates epistemology (knowledge) with ontology (existence). The present critique rejects this human-centered view of reality by assuming material reality has existed long before (and will persist long after) human beings (“Realism”). The defensive view that the micro-world is too different to understand using regular thinking (and only a mathematical approach is possible) is rejected totally. At least 12 earlier QM interpretations are critically analyzed, indicating the broad interest in “what does QM mean?” The standard theory of quantum mechanics is thus constructed on only how the micro-world appears to macro measurements - as such, it cannot offer any view of how the foundations of the world are acting when humans are not observing it - this has generated almost 100 years of confusion and contradiction at the very heart of physics. Significantly, we live in a world that is not being measured by scientists but is interacting with itself and with us. QM has failed to provide explanations: only recipes (meaningless equations), not insights. Physics has returned to the pre-Newtonian world of Ptolemaic phenomenology: only verifiable numbers without real understanding. The focus needs to be on an explicit linkage between the micro-world, when left to itself, and our mental models of this sphere of material reality, via the mechanism of measurement. This limits the role of measurement to confirming our mental models of reality but never confusing these with a direct image of ‘the thing in itself’. This implies a deep divide between reality and appearances, as Kant suggested. This paper includes an original analysis of several major assumptions that have been implicit in Classical Mechanics (CM) that were acceptable in the macroscopic domain of reality, demonstrated by its proven successes. Unfortunately, only a few of these assumptions were challenged by the developers of QM. We now show that these other assumptions are still generating confusions in the interpretation of QM and blocking further progress in the understanding of the microscopic domain. Several of these flawed assumptions were introduced by Newton to support the use of continuum mathematics as a model of nature. This paper proposes that it is the attempt to preserve continuum mathematics (especially calculus), which drives much of the mystery and confusion behind all attempts at understanding quantum mechanics. The introduction of discrete mathematics is proposed to help analyze the discrete interactions between the quintessential quantum objects: the electrons and their novel properties. A related paper demonstrates that it is possible to create a point-particle theory of electrons that explains all their peculiar (and ‘paradoxical’) behavior using only physical hypotheses and discrete mathematics without introducing the continuum mathematical ideas of fields or waves. Another (related) paper proves that all the known results for the hydrogen atom can also be exactly calculated from this new perspective with the discrete mathematics. * Surrey, B.C. Canada (604) 542-2299 spsi99@telus.net Version 2.015 08-05-2017 Begun 23-06-2008 {pp. 82, 70.2 Kw; 800 KB}