Kausalität, Anschaulichkeit, and Individualität, or How Cultural Values Prescribed the Character and the Lessons Ascribed to Quantum Mechanics *
Paul Forman
Quantum mechanics is the fundamental theory of atomic and subatomic physics. Overwhelmingly, however, the creation of quantum mechanics was an enterprise of Germans and Austrians. Consequently, as a product of Germany it may appropriately be considered in relation to German culture. The "quantum mechanical variables" which Werner Heisenberg conceived, and which Max Born recognized as matrices, were probabilities of atomic transitions, or algebraic combinations and derivatives of such probabilities more precisely, probability amplitudes. The factors operating on the originators of quantum mechanics so as effectively to prescribe their representation of their theory as anschaulich were largely those presents in the discussion of Kausalitat. As regards Anschaulichkeit, the true character of the theory ran counter to the Zeitgeist, rather than, as with causality, offering physicists an opportunity to sail with the intellectual currents. Where Kausalitat was the pejorative code word in the antiintellectualist "philosophy of life," Anschauung, Anschaulichkeit, etc. were among the principal shibboleths of this Lebensphilosophie.
Routledge eBooks•Jul 5, 2017•7 citations