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Griot Revista de Filosofia

Da parte ao todo: a cisão cartesiana na epistemologia de Heisenberg

Vinícius Carvalho da Silva

Published Dec 16, 2018• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this work we seek to investigate how the german physicist philosopher Werner Heisenberg understood the importance of cartesian philosophy in the construction of scientific thought of modernity. For Heisenberg, the central element of Descartes' great influence in the natural sciences is the separation of "God," "man," and "world." The physicist philosopher analyzes this separation and proposes that from quantum mechanics, the split between subject and object, man and nature, has become unsustainable.

DOI
10.31977/grirfi.v18i2.964

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In this work we seek to investigate how the german physicist philosopher Werner Heisenberg understood the importance of cartesian philosophy in the construction of scientific thought of modernity. For Heisenberg, the central element of Descartes' great influence in the natural sciences is the separation of "God," "man," and "world." The physicist philosopher analyzes this separation and proposes that from quantum mechanics, the split between subject and object, man and nature, has become unsustainable.
In the present article we analyze the understanding and the use of the Kantian philosophy by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, Nobel Prize of Physics of 1932, formulator of the principle of uncertainty. Heisenberg seems to adopt a neo-Kantian understanding of the nature of science, according to which science would not deal with the real itself, but only with the way it appears, which inescapably depends on the interaction between the subject and the object of knowledge. However, in spite of this conception, Heisenberg considers that the Kantian definitions of "space", "time" and "causality" are not compatible with the developments of the quantum mechanics. In this opportunity we will see more carefully the conception of science and the problem of causality.
The ideas in Heisenberg's paper on quantum mechanics in 1925 mark the beginning not only of a new phase in modern physics, but also of Heisenberg's own philosophical journey. This thesis examines that journey between 1925 and the late 1950s by situating Heisenberg's philosophy of quantum mechanics in the context of his encounters with his contemporaries as well as the context of various strands of thought in the German-speaking world at the time. Heisenberg's early philosophical critique of the 'classical' viewpoint between 1925 and 1927 bears the decisive influence of Einstein's theory of relativity, more specifically, the positivism he saw as underpinning Einstein's emancipation from Newtonian physics. The positivist influence on Heisenberg's early attitude to quantum mechanics is evident in three ways: (a) his invocation of an observability principle in 1925 to justify the renunciation of the concept of the electron orbit, (b) an instrumentalist conception of understanding, which characterised Heisenberg's response to Schrodinger's demand for classical visualisation in space and time in 1926-7, and (c) the introduction of an operational definition of concepts such as position and velocity in 1927, in an attempt to replace the concepts of classical physics. But after discussions with Bohr and Einstein in 1926-7, Heisenberg soon recognised what we might term his `empiricist' viewpoint was problematic. In 1927 Heisenberg's thought undergoes a shift away from the `empiricist' viewpoint that had underpinned his early philosophy of quantum mechanics. The nature and scope of this transformation, which forms the central theme in this thesis, has, up until now, been poorly understood and often completely neglected. Through his discussions with Bohr, Heisenberg came to the realisation that despite their limitations, classical concepts were conditions for the possibility of the description of all experience. This marked the abandonment of his earlier attempt to replace classical concepts with quantum concepts. The recognition of the primacy of classical language forms the point of departure for much of Heisenberg's later thought, which brought him into contact with the attempts in the German-speaking world in the 1920s to reconstruct Kantian epistemology. By the mid-1930s, Heisenberg advocated a 'pragmatic transformation' of Kantian philosophy, in which classical concepts were held to be a priori in the sense that they remained the conditions for the possibility of experience, but were no longer held to be necessary or universal in a strict Kantian sense. After 1940 Heisenberg saw the paradoxes of quantum mechanics under the aegis of what can be termed a 'transcendental conception of language', according to which language is not a mere tool, but actively shapes, gives form, and objectifies, our 'reality'. The limits of a classical 'description' in quantum mechanics therefore came to signify for Heisenberg, the limits of 'objective reality'. While Bohr exerted perhaps the most important philosophical influence on Heisenberg, their intellectual relationship was characterised by disagreement and misunderstanding. This is most strikingly displayed in their respective views on wave-particle duality and complementarily. While after 1927 Heisenberg accepted Bohr's basic insight that our knowledge of the quantum world is mediated through classical language, he did not share Rohr's interpretation of complementarity. While Heisenberg certainly used terms such as 'complementarity' and wave-particle duality' in his writings, a close reading reveals that these terms had very different meanings for the two physicists. This is particularly evident in the contrast between Heisenberg's notion of wave-particle equivalence and Bohr's idea of complementarity. In bringing to light these divergences between Bohr and Heisenberg, this thesis lends further weight to the view - already advocated by scholars such as John Hendry and Mara Beller - that the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics should not be thought of as a unified philosophical position, but actually comprises a number of different strands.
The rupture established by quantum physics in relation to classical physics led to a redefinition of scientific objectivity, which has since relied on mathematical formalism for the knowledge of wave functions. This conception of a "weak objectivity" motivated Werner Heisenberg to resort to Plato's idealism to explain the internal constitution of the material world from geometric structures. However, faced with an idealist paradigm incompatible with modern science, Heisenberg conceived that Kant's philosophy would be the most acceptable reference for interpreting quantum phenomena within the empiricist limits of scientific research. This article presents Hegel's idealism of the absolute as a philosophical horizon for a possible overcoming of the rigidity of the Kantian limits, aiming at a metaphysical interpretation of quantum physics.
The quantum mechanics instituted a completely new mathematical language. This change in physics required physicists and philosophers to rethink the concepts by which reality could be represented, since classical notions were limited in the understanding of atomic phenomena. The French philosopher G. Bachelard and the German physicist W. Heisenberg are authors who have discussed the major changes that have occurred in physics and have dealt with the problem of language in quantum mechanics. In this article, the objective is to resort to the arguments of both authors to evidence relations between their ideas about the referred subject. It is noteworthy that Bachelard and Heisenberg criticize the application of the usual language and philosophical concepts of modernity in the new physics, but, through his notion of rupture, the French philosopher proposes that quantum mechanics be restricted to mathematical language. This idea runs counter to Bohr's principle of complementarity, which Heisenberg acknowledges in the understanding of quantum phenomena and an interpretation of quantum physics.
The article is devoted to the analysis of the concept of “reality” in the philosoph­ical and scientific works of the theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg. It ana­lyzes the Heisenberg’s works on the philosophy of natural science, a significant part of which is devoted to quantum theory and its basic concepts. The author shows that Heisenberg’s thought was formed in parallel with the development of relevant problems among neo-Kantian philosophers (N. Hartmann, B. Nicolescu, etc.) throughout the 20th century. According to the author, many European re­searchers focus their attention on the scientific side of Heisenberg’s work, that is, on the analysis of his physical argumentation. The philosophical aspects of Heisenberg’s works are mostly studied by Russian philosophers of science. The intellectual vector of Heisenberg’s work was the idea of the need for a new philosophical thinking that goes beyond the scope of rational activity and re­quires a reconception of the gnoseological categories used as an instrument for the cognition of the reality. It relies on the phenomenological tradition, as well as on the arguments of J.W. von Goethe that theory cannot “capture” reality; it re­quires a synthesis of “trust in experience” and “intelligent observation” (discre­tion) to understand it. It is also demonstrated in the article the Heisenberg's atti­tude to the formation of the language of science and to the comparative studies of the philosophical systems of such thinkers as Plato, Democritus, Aristotle.