9. WERNER HEISENBERG: The Copenhagen Interpretation

Filip Grygar

The article focuses on the misleading story of the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The interpretation was allegedly created as unitary or consistent and shared by its founders in 1927 by virtue of the so-called Copenhagen spirit of quantum theory. The paper is based on the role which two leading figures, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, played in this story. The first part of the article introduces variations of what is considered to be Copenhagen interpretation. The second part reveals that while quantum mechanics had originated in the 1920s, the Copenhagen interpretation was mainly a problematic Heisenbergʼs product of the 1950s. One of his main motivations for the introduction of Copenhagen interpretation was to set up a defence against increasing criticism of the supporters of quantum theory. Since there was no unitary or consistent interpretation of quantum mechanics among members of the so-called Copenhagen school, the last part of the paper focuses on several differences primarily between Bohr and Heisenberg’s interpretation.

Gerald Holton

Roland L. Omnes

L'interprétation de CopenhagueLa pièce Copenhagen se joue actuellement à Londres à guichets fermés.Cette nouvelle pièce captivante imagine un dialogue entre les fantômes des pionniers de la physique quantique Niels Bohr etWerner Heisenberg.Copenhagen à Londres -Une pièce sur la physique avec Matthew Marsh en Werner Heisenberg (au premier plan), Sara Kestelman en Margrethe Bohr (assise) et David Burke en Niels Bohr (photo Conrad Blakemore).

Herbert Hörz

Gerald Holton

Internist. Horandstrasse, DE-26441 Jever, Germany, Ilija Barukčić

The political attitude and the ideology of a very small elite of physicists (Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and view other) played a major role in the construction of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics in the 1920s.Lastly, the hegemonic standard acausal Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics abandoned the principle of causality in quantum mechanics and opened a very wide door to mysticism, logical fallacies and wishful thinking in physics and in science as such.Historically, the Second International Congress for the Unity of Science (Copenhagen, June 21-26, 1936) tried to solve the problem of causality within physics but without a success.Thus far, 80 years after the Second International Congress for the Unity of Science this publication will expel Bohr's and Heisenberg's dogma of non-causality out of quantum mechanics and re-establish the unrestricted validity of the principle of causality at quantum level and under conditions of relativity theory by mathematizing the relationship between cause and effect in the form of the mathematical formula of the causal relationship k.In contrast to Bohr, Heisenberg and other representatives of the Copenhagen interpretation quantum mechanics, a realistic interpretation of quantum theory grounded on the unrestricted validity of the principle of causality will expel any kind of mysticism from physics and enable a quantization of the gravitational field too.