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Edinburgh University Press eBooks

Reply to Desmet

Gary L. Herstein

Published Feb 1, 2020• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this short chapter, Gary Herstein replies to Ronny Desmet’s critique of his earlier chapter, arguing that his discussion of the fifth Solvay conference highlights the underestimated maelstrom of confusion in physics at the time, and that it is not clear that Bohr even understood or adequately responded to Einstein’s arguments, and that his interpretation is based on a wilful acceptance of incoherence at the base of reality. He also argues that Lewis Ford, not being a mathematician, was heavily ‘reading in’ the concept of temporal atomism into Whitehead’s philosophy without any clear understanding of Whitehead’s mathematical habits of thought.

DOI
10.3366/edinburgh/9781474461351.003.0011

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Cambridge University Press eBooks•Oct 22, 2009•0 citations
In this short chapter, Gary Herstein replies to Ronny Desmet’s critique of his earlier chapter, arguing that his discussion of the fifth Solvay conference highlights the underestimated maelstrom of confusion in physics at the time, and that it is not clear that Bohr even understood or adequately responded to Einstein’s arguments, and that his interpretation is based on a wilful acceptance of incoherence at the base of reality. He also argues that Lewis Ford, not being a mathematician, was heavily ‘reading in’ the concept of temporal atomism into Whitehead’s philosophy without any clear understanding of Whitehead’s mathematical habits of thought.
Abstract This conference was lauded by Heisenberg as, “officially, the completion of the quantum theory,” while Langevin remarked it was, “where the confusion of ideas reached its peak.” The conference was held just as the theory had reached maturity, only two years after Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics was invented. De Broglie argued for his pilot wave theory, which was shot down by Pauli using an incorrect argument and in later years was re-introduced as the de Broglie–Bohm theory. Heisenberg and Dirac debated the meaning of superposition and the “collapse” of the wave function. Bohr and Einstein engaged in their legendary debate. In the conference proceedings, we see the main contributors to the new theory attempt to come to terms with its enigmas.
As Quine wrote in 1961, what strikes us in a paradox is its initial air of absurdity, which develops into a sort of psychological discomfort when we compare the conclusions of the reasoning with the apparently irrefutable arguments on which it is based. However, as he went on to observe, ‘More than once in history the discovery of paradox has been the occasion for major reconstruction at the foundations of thought’. Catastrophe may therefore lurk even in the most innocent-seeming of paradoxes and force us to recognize the arbitrary nature ‘of a buried premise or of some preconception previously reckoned as central to physical theory, to mathematics or to the thinking process’. More recently, ideas of this kind have been used to assert in general that the role of paradox in the growth of knowledge is to generate category switches and to construct new universes of discourse. It could also be argued that paradoxes constitute elements of the logic of discovery capable of amplifying and thus making intelligible the still obscure phases accompanying paradigm shifts. Paradoxes would thus represent points of accumulation for the tension created between a given system of conceptual representation and a theory or empirical discovery that violates it. Historians of science have tried different interpretative approaches in their attempts to unravel the thought process that was to lead Einstein in 1905 to the formulation of special relativity and the simultaneous demolition of the classical conception of space and time.
The founding fathers of quantum mechanics had already perceived the essence of the difficulties of quantum mechanics; today, after almost a century, the discussions are still lively and, if some very interesting new aspects have emerged, at a deeper level the questions have not changed so much. What is more recent, nevertheless, is a general change of attitude among physicists: until about 1970 or 1980, most physicists thought that the essential questions had been settled, and that “Bohr was right and proved his opponents to be wrong”. This was probably a consequence of the famous discussions between Bohr, Einstein, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Pauli, de Broglie, and others (in particular at the Solvay meetings [1–3], where Bohr's point of view had successfully resisted Einstein's extremely clever attacks). The majority of physicists did not know the details of the arguments. They nevertheless thought that the standard “Copenhagen interpretation” had clearly emerged from the infancy of quantum mechanics as the only sensible attitude for good scientists. This interpretation includes the idea that modern physics must contain indeterminacy as an essential ingredient: it is fundamentally impossible to predict the outcome of single microscopical events; it is impossible to go beyond the formalism of the wave function (or its generalization, the state vector ∣ψ) and complete it.
Abstract: Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics has been criticized as incoherent and opportunistic, and based on doubtful philosophical premises. If so Bohr’s influence, in the pre-war period of 1927-1939, is the harder to explain, and the acceptance of his approach to quantum mechanics over de Broglie’s had no reasonable foundation. But Bohr’s interpretation changed little from the time of its first appearance, and stood independent of any philosophical presuppositions. The principle of complementarity is itself best read as a conjecture of unusually wide scope, on the nature and future course of explanations in the sciences (and not only the physical sciences). If it must be judged a failure today, it is not because of any internal inconsistency. Despite the expenditure of much effort, I have been unable to obtain a clear understanding of Bohr’s principle of complementarity (Einstein). Bohr’s point- and the central point of quantum mechanics- is that no elemen-
The fifth Solvay conference is usually remembered for the clash that took place between Bohr and Einstein, supposedly concerning in particular the possibility of breaking the uncertainty relations. It might be assumed that this clash took the form of an official debate that was the centrepiece of the conference. However, no record of any such debate appears in the published proceedings, where both Bohr and Einstein are in fact relatively silent. The available evidence shows that in 1927 the famous exchanges between Bohr and Einstein actually consisted of informal discussions, which took place semiprivately (mainly over breakfast and dinner), and which were overheard by just a few of the participants, in particular Heisenberg and Ehrenfest. The historical sources for this consist, in fact, entirely of accounts given by Bohr, Heisenberg and Ehrenfest. These accounts essentially ignore the extensive formal discussions appearing in the published proceedings. As a result of relying on these sources, the perception of the conference by posterity has been skewed on two counts. First, at the fifth Solvay conference there occurred much more that was memorable and important besides the Bohr–Einstein clash. Second, as shown in detail by Howard (1990), the real nature of Einstein's objections was in fact misunderstood by Bohr, Heisenberg and Ehrenfest – for Einstein's main target was not the uncertainty relations, but what he saw as the non-separability of quantum theory.