The Bohr-Einstein Dialogue

Martin J. Klein

G. C. Ghirardi

Dugald R. Murdoch

David Böhm, F. David Peat

The uItimate failure of Bohr and Einstein to continue their dialogues together symbolizes the degree of fragmentation that exists in physics today. Despite their close friendship and the energy they brought to their encounters, the two men eventually reached the point where they had nothing more to say to each other. In the previous chapter it was suggested that this break in communication was a resuIt of the different and incompatible ways in which the informal language of physics was being used. Each protagonist was using certain terms in particular ways and laying stress on different aspects of the interpretation. A deeper analysis of this whole question shows that what was really at issue was the different notions of order involved . Bohr and Einstein both held to subtly different ideas of what the order of physics, and of nature, should be and this led to an essential break in their dialogue, a break which is reflected in the distance that lies between relativity and the quantum theory even today. In particular, Bohr believed that the order of movement of a particle would admit ambiguity while Einstein feIt that such a possibility was too absurd to contemplate. The source of this failure in communication between the two giants of modem physics therefore lay in their incompatible notions of order.

A. Pais

Abstract In January 1924, Niels Bohr, Hendrik Anton Kramers, and John Clarke Slater submitted to the Philosophical Magazine an article [Bl] that contained drastic theoretical proposals concerning the interaction of light and matter. It was written after Compton’s discovery, yet it rejected the photon. It was also written after Einstein and Bohr had met. This chapter on the BKS proposal serves a twofold purpose. It is a postscript to the story of the photon and a prelude to the Bohr Einstein dialogue which will occupy us more fully later on. I have already mentioned that Einstein was immediately and strongly impressed by Bohr’s work of 1913. The two men did not yet know each other at that time. A number of years were to pass before their first encounter; meanwhile, they followed each other’s published work.