In his book, A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics: Cutting the Chain of Correlations, Steven French argues that quantum mechanics, understood through the phenomenological lens of London and Bauer, turns physics into a "genuine science", and thus completes the project Edmund Husserl had started in his last major publication, The Crisis of European Sciences. What makes quantum mechanics a genuine science, according to French, is that it is fully grounded in the "lifeworld and transcendental subjectivity", just as Husserl dreamt. While we agree with French that London and Bauer's reading of quantum mechanics is inspired by and thus makes a step towards Husserl's phenomenology, we argue that a more encompassing phenomenological investigation is still needed if we are to avoid another crisis. More specifically, our claim is that French underestimates the "constitutional history" of the kinds of mathematical idealities that underlie quantum mechanics.
In his book, A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics: Cutting the Chain of Correlations, Steven French argues that quantum mechanics, understood through the phenomenological lens of London and Bauer, turns physics into a "genuine science", and thus completes the project Edmund Husserl had started in his last major publication, The Crisis of European Sciences. What makes quantum mechanics a genuine science, according to French, is that it is fully grounded in the "lifeworld and transcendental subjectivity", just as Husserl dreamt. While we agree with French that London and Bauer's reading of quantum mechanics is inspired by and thus makes a step towards Husserl's phenomenology, we argue that a more encompassing phenomenological investigation is still needed if we are to avoid another crisis. More specifically, our claim is that French underestimates the "constitutional history" of the kinds of mathematical idealities that underlie quantum mechanics.
In 1939 London and Bauer published a 'little book' that shaped the debate over the role of consciousness in resolving the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. Mistakenly understood as merely summarising von Neumann's account, both sides in the debate failed to appreciate its phenomenological underpinnings. London not only originally studied phenomenology but continued thinking about and discussing this approach in the years leading up to the publication of his work with Bauer, most notably with Gurwitsch, who likewise had a dual background in phenomenological philosophy and physics. In the book, A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics: Cutting the Chain of Correlations (French, 2023), the historical background to London and Bauer's work is set out prior to situating it within the context of Husserl's philosophy as a whole. It is concluded that the London and Bauer phenomenological account offers a potentially fruitful way forward through various dichotomies, such as that between psi-ontic and psi-epistemic accounts and between interpretational and reconstructive approaches more generally, as well as with regard to understanding quantum physics more generally. In this paper London and Bauer's insistence that quantum mechanics should be seen as a theory of knowledge in its own right is emphasized, where this must be taken as phenomenologically grounded. Hopefully this work will be viewed as contributing to a revised phenomenological understanding of modern physics, standing alongside Ryckman's The Reign of Relativity (Ryckman, 2005) and Berghofer and Wiltsche's edited collection Phenomenological Approaches to Physics (Berghofer & Wiltsche, 2020).
In his book A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics: Cutting the Chain of Correlations Steven French presents an interpretation of Fritz London's and Edmond Bauer's 1939 monograph La théorie de l'observation en mécanique quantique that acknowledges and engages with the phenomenological theorizing underlying their approach to the measurement problem. My aim in the following contribution is twofold. I will first offer some historical and systematic arguments for why it might indeed be worthwhile to explore the link between phenomenology and quantum mechanics. In the second part of the paper, I will then look closer at French's interpretation, especially his understanding of reflection, and express some reservations about a central argument of his.
Abstract The measurement problem remains one of the outstanding issues in the foundations of quantum theory: how do we go from the multiple options encoded in the wave-function to the definite outcome that we observe? One of the most well-known solutions to this problem maintained that it is the observer’s consciousness that somehow causes the wave-function to collapse. Now widely dismissed for introducing an irreducible element of subjectivity into science, both advocates and critics cited a ‘little book’, La Théorie de L’Observation en Mécanique Quantique, by Edmund Bauer and Fritz London (1938; English trans. 1983) as giving the clearest presentation of this solution. However, as well as being an extremely accomplished physicist, London was also trained in the phenomenological tradition that was initiated by the philosopher Edmund Husserl. This casts his work with Bauer in an entirely new and different light, and by assigning a very different and more profound role to consciousness in resolving the measurement problem, yields an understanding of quantum theory that has not hitherto been fully explored. The aim of this book is to initiate just such an exploration. It begins by setting London and Bauer’s ‘little book’ in its historical and philosophical context and then draws out the implications for not only quantum physics but our view of science and the world more generally.
Generally, there are two interpretative approaches to quantum theory: psi-ontic and psi-epistemic. According to the psi-ontic interpretations, quantum theory does/should describe or represent what the world is like. In contrast, according to the psi-epistemic interpretations, rather than representing the way the world is, quantum theory advises us on what to expect from the world and so helps us better navigate our surrounding world. In this paper, we will argue that Edmund Husserl’s philosophy of science especially his notion of lifeworld provides an appropriate framework for better understanding this shift from the psi-ontic to psi-epistemic interpretations of quantum theory. In particular, we analyse Richard Healey’s pragmatic approach to quantum mechanics from a phenomenological point of view.
Niels Bohr, considered one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, formulated a complex interpretation \nof quantum mechanics that guided his understanding of quantum experiments. The contemporary dispute \nbetween realism and anti-realism, the two main approaches to the interpretation of quantum mechanics, \nis often based on different attitudes towards or even readings of Bohr. We propose that a better \nunderstanding of Bohr’s philosophical thought can contribute to the contemporary reconciliation of \nthese opposing philosophical views and thus to a better understanding of the quantum world. Unfortunately, \nin many contemporary interpretations, Bohr’s philosophical approach to quantum mechanics \nhas been misunderstood, re-interpreted or labelled as ambiguous. This is mostly due to the dispersion \nof Bohr’s complex and unique interpretation through different texts, never united in a single systematically \nconceptualized work. To comprehensively explain Bohr’s philosophical approach and his main \nphilosophical concepts, we consider the many similarities between Bohr’s and Husserl’s philosophical \napproach to science. Husserl developed his philosophical standpoint in a cultural context similar to \nBohr’s and shared Bohr’s objects of philosophical consideration as well as his approach to these objects. \nParallel reading of Bohr’s and Husserl’s texts reveals the closeness between Bohr’s ontological realism— \nepistemological anti-realism standpoint and Husserl’s phenomenological standpoint. This explains \ntheir similar views on the relationship between mathematical language, scientific method and Nature. \nWhile Bohr’s use of the term phenomenon is not equal to Husserl’s, Husserl’s rigorous philosophical \nexplanation of the term helps us to better understand Bohr’s use. Furthermore, the parallel reading \nfacilitates better understanding of one of Bohr’s main philosophical theses, often labelled as ambiguous \nand interpreted in different ways, that it is necessary to use classical concepts to describe quantum phenomena. \nWe claim that the thesis is connected with the advance of epistemological reconsideration of \nscience at the time of Bohr’s writing. Thus, Bohr considers some parts of argumentation as self-evident, \nwhile they are not evident to the contemporary reader. Husserl’s analysis of the relationship between science and the life-world offers a much-needed background for a comprehensive understanding of \nBohr’s thesis. The insight into the similarities between Bohr’s and Husserl’s philosophical approach \nto science and scientific phenomena enables a philosophically rigorous reading of Bohr’s texts; it can \neliminate some of the disagreements between realists and anti-realists and provide a firmer philosophical \nground for a dialog between them.
While quantum mechanics has proven successful in its calculations and predictions, a debate persists regarding its understanding. This chapter considers the fundamental concepts of phenomenology and its connection to early quantum mechanics, including the exploration of quantum mechanics by F. London & E. Bauer using phenomenology. Phenomenological investigations of quantum mechanics in recent years have evolved. For instance, the informational interpretation of quantum mechanics, introduced by C. Rovelli in 1996 and advanced by Fuchs and C. M. Caves, offers a new perspective on quantum mechanics and possesses phenomenological tendencies which provide new insights into the problem of quantum measurement. Interestingly, phenomenology has its strong ties to hermeneutics. Therefore, this chapter sheds new light on quantum mechanics via hermeneutical analyses, and bridges the gap between the humanities and the natural sciences. In hermeneutics, interpretation encompasses two key aspects: Erklärung (Explanation) and Auslegung (Explication), where the former establishes clear and objective descriptions, similar to the “shuo ming” (说明) concept in Chinese, and the latter unveils deeper meanings and context, similar to the “chan shi” (阐释) concept in Chinese. The iterative process of explanation and explication plays a crucial role in the development of quantum mechanics. Hermeneutics allows us to view quantum matter with a new perspective, and new features are revealed such as “fusion of horizons” and “history of effects”, where the former is the merging of observer and observed realities in the context of quantum mechanics, while the latter means that the past, present, and future of a quantum system influence its overall reality. For this reason, the photon’s past, in the delayed-choice experiment, becomes an unfinished entity, a superposition waiting to be defined by measurement. This measurement collapses the possibilities and merges the photon’s past and present realities into a single, unified “whole”.