Abstract
Operationalism is only one aspect of the philosophy developed by L.I. Mandelstam. This philosophy cannot be characterized without explaining his attitude to one of the most controversial problems of twentieth-century physics, namely to the problem of the interpretation of quantum mechanics.
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Notes
- 1.
Tamm spoke in favor of the Copenhagen interpretation in his early paper [331]. The Copenhagen approach to quantum theory was well known among Soviet physicists mainly due to [151].
- 2.
Blokhintsev’s book [51] was rather popular in the USSR.
- 3.
(1) Interview with S.M. Ryrtov; (2) The Archives of Lebedev Physics Institute (FIAN) contain a copy of the director 1937 order to give a bonus to Nikolsky for his contribution to the foundations of quantum mechanics.
- 4.
Objectivism in the philosophy of quantum mechanics should not be mixed with materialism and even realism. About the structure of the concept “objectivity” see [86].
- 5.
American proponents of the ensemble interpretation were also influenced by operationalism: see Kemble’s writings [175]. Slater prepared his Ph.D. thesis under Bridgman and attended Kemble’s lectures. Kemble also started under Bridgman [309]. Margenau criticized Bridgman’s operationalism, but he was also influenced by this philosophy. There are cross-references in American writings about the ensemble interpretation of quantum mechanics [122, 173–175, 319–321]. Kemble, Slater, Nikolsky implicitly proceeded from the ontology of particles (about this ontology see: [132]).
- 6.
As a matter of facts, the Soviet science is separated from Western science in the writings of Sovietologists (see, for example, [145, 146]). A. Vucinich provides a more tacit estimation: He points to the Soviet scientists’ opposition to dialectical materialism [378].
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Pechenkin, A. (2019). L.I. Mandelstam’s Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics in the Context of the Discussions of the 1930–1940s. In: L.I. Mandelstam and His School in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17685-3_15
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