Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962), French philosopher, followed a period of ruptures, that is, of conceptual and methodological changes in contemporary physics. He is one of several thinkers who presented important reflections for the understanding of contemporary atomistics. This article highlights the main philosophical reflections of Gaston Bachelard about the foundations of quantum mechanics. For that, it uses important concepts of its epistemology without which its ideas become incomprehensible. Thus, this work highlights how this science breaks with traditional scientific and philosophical ideas in the first half of the 20th century by presenting a new object of knowledge, namely, the quantum corpuscles. Furthermore, in order to characterize the philosophy of bachelardian quantum physics, according to the author, the nature of atomic particles stands out, as the scientific activity of this science in the creation of new phenomena is emphasized and its rationalism applied as philosophy is emphasized best suited to the new physics. Finally, it is emphasized in this work that Bachelard's ideas are different from other interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962), French philosopher, followed a period of ruptures, that is, of conceptual and methodological changes in contemporary physics. He is one of several thinkers who presented important reflections for the understanding of contemporary atomistics. This article highlights the main philosophical reflections of Gaston Bachelard about the foundations of quantum mechanics. For that, it uses important concepts of its epistemology without which its ideas become incomprehensible. Thus, this work highlights how this science breaks with traditional scientific and philosophical ideas in the first half of the 20th century by presenting a new object of knowledge, namely, the quantum corpuscles. Furthermore, in order to characterize the philosophy of bachelardian quantum physics, according to the author, the nature of atomic particles stands out, as the scientific activity of this science in the creation of new phenomena is emphasized and its rationalism applied as philosophy is emphasized best suited to the new physics. Finally, it is emphasized in this work that Bachelard's ideas are different from other interpretations of quantum mechanics.
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.
At the beginning of the twentieth century it would be unthinkable, among european scientists, to separate natural science and philosophy. Physicists-philosophers were scientists such as Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, among others, who refounded physics by laying the foundations of quantum mechanics and special and general relativity. In this paper we briefly review how some of these thinkers have looked at the issues of the value of science, the relationship between science and philosophy, and the importance of Greek philosophy to nuclear physics and quantum theory.
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.
In this magisterial work, Roland Omnès takes us from the academies of ancient Greece to the laboratories of modern science as he seeks to do no less than rebuild the foundations of the philosophy of knowledge. One of the world's leading quantum physicists, Omnès reviews the history and recent development of mathematics, logic, and the physical sciences to show that current work in quantum theory offers new answers to questions that have puzzled philosophers for centuries: Is the world ultimately intelligible? Are all events caused? Do objects have definitive locations? Omnès addresses these profound questions with vigorous arguments and clear, colorful writing, aiming not just to advance scholarship but to enlighten readers with no background in science or philosophy. The book opens with an insightful and sweeping account of the main developments in science and the philosophy of knowledge from the pre-Socratic era to the nineteenth century. Omnès then traces the emergence in modern thought of a fracture between our intuitive, commonsense views of the world and the abstract and--for most people--incomprehensible world portrayed by advanced physics, math, and logic. He argues that the fracture appeared because the insights of Einstein and Bohr, the logical advances of Frege, Russell, and Gödel, and the necessary mathematics of infinity of Cantor and Hilbert cannot be fully expressed by words or images only. Quantum mechanics played an important role in this development, as it seemed to undermine intuitive notions of intelligibility, locality, and causality. However, Omnès argues that common sense and quantum mechanics are not as incompatible as many have thought. In fact, he makes the provocative argument that the "consistent-histories" approach to quantum mechanics, developed over the past fifteen years, places common sense (slightly reappraised and circumscribed) on a firm scientific and philosophical footing for the first time. In doing so, it provides what philosophers have sought through the ages: a sure foundation for human knowledge. Quantum Philosophy is a profound work of contemporary science and philosophy and an eloquent history of the long struggle to understand the nature of the world and of knowledge itself.
This work presents a historical-epistemological analysis of the foundations of quantum mechanics. From a philosophical point of view, the relationships between quantum mechanics and scientific realism are highlighted, as well as the influence of the neo-positivist philosophy of the first decades of the 20th century. The great significance of measurement in the context of quantum mechanics is underlined, as an essential element in providing a coherent description of reality moving from the microcosm to the macrocosm, as well as the role that the measurement apparatus and the consciousness of the observer assume during the act of measurement, the ontological problem, the problem of the objectification of the wave function and the problem of the definition of discernibility. This is followed by an overview of the most important alternative proposals to the standard interpretation (Copenhagen interpretation), with particular reference to hidden variable theories, and other alternatives to standard quantum mechanics that profoundly modify the vision of reality, such as the Everett’s many-worlds theory, the QBism, the unified holistic approach.
ABSTRACT The paper aims to bridge the history of quantum theory with its philosophical implications. The focus is not only on the scientific underpinnings of quantum mechanics (these theories emerged as ‘ad hoc’ responses to experimental anomalies) but also on the philosophical ramifications of its probabilistic nature and indeterminacy, which differ from classical realism. The paper examines Dirac's, Bell's, and modern views, focusing on how quantum mechanics (QM) challenges traditional notions of causality, objectivity, and truth while embracing epistemological and metaphysical perspectives. Debates over collapse theories and hidden variables are discussed, as well as Putnam's philosophical outlook, which includes his trenchant involvement with realism, logic, and the measurement problem. Finally, the paper proposes that QM represents a philosophical revolution that renews our understanding of reality, knowledge, and scientific explanation, rather than simply serving as a physical theory for assessing the prospects of quantum philosophy by connecting it to broader aspects such as relativity, causality, and scientific realism.