Umberto Boccioni was a central figure in the Futurist movement, distinguished by his unique ability to grasp the emergent consciousness of his time—both its promises and perils. His role in shaping the Futurist manifestos, which aimed for a radical overhaul of Italian art, is well documented. However, for Boccioni, this shift was not solely political; it was deeply philosophical, particularly in its engagement with the concept of time. His writings and artworks were influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and his work fused new conceptualisations of intuition, matter and duration (i.e., dimensional time). While Bergson’s ideas permeated Boccioni’s manifestos and other writings, Boccioni’s work was not directly connected to contemporary physics. Rather, Boccioni and his Futurist peers drew heavily on Bergson’s philosophical theories. As mentioned in a previous chapter, the resulting work anticipated the evolution of quantum mechanics.
Umberto Boccioni was a central figure in the Futurist movement, distinguished by his unique ability to grasp the emergent consciousness of his time—both its promises and perils. His role in shaping the Futurist manifestos, which aimed for a radical overhaul of Italian art, is well documented. However, for Boccioni, this shift was not solely political; it was deeply philosophical, particularly in its engagement with the concept of time. His writings and artworks were influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and his work fused new conceptualisations of intuition, matter and duration (i.e., dimensional time). While Bergson’s ideas permeated Boccioni’s manifestos and other writings, Boccioni’s work was not directly connected to contemporary physics. Rather, Boccioni and his Futurist peers drew heavily on Bergson’s philosophical theories. As mentioned in a previous chapter, the resulting work anticipated the evolution of quantum mechanics.
The influence of cultural and scientific events on artists’ styles has long intrigued theorists and historians, especially concerning the art movements of the 20th century in Europe. One such connection often discussed is the relationship between Einstein’s theory of relativity and Picasso’s exploration of space and time. Scholars such as Henderson (1983) and Miller (2001) have documented these connections, speculating on whether Picasso drew inspiration from the scientific community of his time or whether his work shaped perceptions of four-dimensional space. While such conjectures are insightful, they also prompt us to consider the broader range of influences affecting artists at any given moment.
This overview introduces the book’s aim of showing how quantum theory marks a radical break from previous scientific theorizing: We are warranted in accepting the fundamental status within contemporary physics of a theory that posits no new physical entities or magnitudes of its own. By contrast with existing interpretations that attempt to say how the world could possibly be the way quantum theory says it is, a pragmatist takes understanding quantum theory to be a matter of knowing how it is applied, and how the theory’s various elements function in these applications. So Part I of the book offers a simple, self-contained presentation of quantum theory, emphasizing applications; while Part II says why the quantum revolution matters for philosophy. Coming to terms with the quantum revolution involves adopting views of scientific theorizing, probability, causation, explanation, objectivity, meaning, and fundamentality that philosophers should have arrived at without its prompting.
In The Conceptual Development of Quantum Physics, Max Jammer observes that “certain philosophical ideas of the late nineteenth century not only prepared the intellectual climate for, but contributed decisively to, the formation of the new conceptions of the modern quantum theory”—specifically, “contingentism, existentialism, pragmatism, and logical empiricism,” which, argues Jammer “united in rejecting causality though on different grounds” and “prepared, so to speak, the philosophical background for modern quantum mechanics.” Regarding this same rejection of causality in physics in Weimar Germany—a rejection central to the quantum interpretation—Paul Forman argues that “substantive problems in atomic physics played only a secondary role in the genesis of this acausal persuasion, [and] that the most important factor was the social-intellectual pressure exerted upon the physicists as members of the German academic community.” Along these same lines, in an interview with Einstein in 1932, James Gardner Murphy said, “scientists live in the world just like other people…. They cannot escape the influence of the milieu in which they live. And that milieu at the present time is characterized largely by a struggle to get rid of the causal chain in which the world has entangled itself.” In all of these cases, the development of quantum physics is attributed to the zeitgeist of the time, with the critics adopting a “hypodermic” model wherein intellectual currents have a direct influence on scientific discovery.
David Bohm was one of the foremost scientific thinkers and philosophers of our time. Although deeply influenced by Einstein, he was also, more unusually for a scientist, inspired by mysticism. Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s he made contact with both J. Krishnamurti and the Dalai Lama whose teachings helped shape his work. In both science and philosophy, Bohm's main concern was with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular. In this classic work he develops a theory of quantum physics which treats the totality of existence as an unbroken whole. Writing clearly and without technical jargon, he makes complex ideas accessible to anyone interested in the nature of reality.
Many of the pioneers of quantum mechanics – notably Planck, Einstein, Bohr, de Broglie, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Born, Jordan, Landé, Wigner, and London – were seriously concerned with philosophical problems. In each case one can ask a question of psychological and historical interest: was it a philosophical penchant which drew the investigator towards a kind of physics research which is linked to philosophy, or was it rather that the conceptual difficulties of fundamental physics pulled him willynilly into the labyrinth of philosophy? I shall not undertake to discuss this question, but shall cite an opinion of Peter Bergmann, which I find congenial: he learned from Einstein that “the theoretical physicist is … a philosopher in workingman's clothes” ([1], q. v.). The problems with which I am preoccupied concern the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics – either epistemological, bearing on the extent, validity, and character of human knowledge; or metaphysical, bearing on the character of reality. Although quantum mechanics is not a system of philosophy, one can wonder whether it is susceptible to coherent incorporation in a philosophical system. I propose to examine the thought of three masters of quantum mechanics – Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger – not with a critical or historical intention, but in hope of finding some enlightenment concerning the problems posed by contemporary physics. I can say in advance that enlightenment will continue to elude us; nevertheless, the ideas of Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrödinger are rich and evocative for new studies.
Niels Bohr and the Philosophy of Physics: Twenty-First-Century Perspectives examines the philosophical views, influences and legacy of the Nobel Prize physicist and philosophical spokesman of the quantum revolution, Niels Bohr. The sixteen contributions in this collection by some of the best contemporary philosophers and physicists writing on Bohr’s philosophy today all carefully distinguish his subtle and unique interpretation of quantum mechanics from views often imputed to him under the banner of the “Copenhagen Interpretation.” With respect to philosophical influences on Bohr’s outlook, the contributors analyse prominent similarities between his viewpoint and Kantian ways of thinking, the views of the Danish philosopher Harald Høffding, and themes characteristic of American pragmatism. In recognizing the importance of Bohr’s epistemological naturalism they examine his defence of the indispensability of classical concepts from a variety of different perspectives. This collection shows us that Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, now nearly a century old, still has