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Heisenberg’s Umdeutung: A Case for a (Quantum-)Dialogue Between History and Philosophy of Science

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The Philosophy of Historical Case Studies

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science ((BSPS,volume 319))

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Abstract

Mara Beller (1999) argued that Heisenberg’s declared heuristics of eliminating unobservables was, more than anything else, a rhetoric strategy to defend his theoretical proposal, lacking as it did, a proper physical justification. Beller’s conclusions may be right to a considerable extent. However, they make us miss out on the opportunity to use the historical case for a refinement of our notion of observability. I conclude with a sketch of what kind of enterprise we embark on when we try to seize the opportunity that the case offers.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Heisenberg (1925). English translation: (van der Waerden 1968, 261–276).

  2. 2.

    See, e.g., Duncan and Janssen (2007), Aitchison et al. (2004), Lacki (2002, pp. 67–68), Weinberg (1994).

  3. 3.

    The German original reads: “In der Arbeit soll versucht werden, Grundlagen zu gewinnen für eine quantentheoretische Mechanik, die ausschließlich auf Beziehungen zwischen prinzipiell beobachtbaren Größen basiert ist” (Heisenberg 1925, 879). The above translation is mine. (I thank Tilman Sauer for suggesting some amendments to my translations and also for giving other detailed feedback that helped me improve the present text.)

  4. 4.

    The German original reads: “Ein Grundsatz von großer Tragweite und Fruchtbarkeit besagt, daß in die wahren Naturgesetze nur solche Größen eingehen, die prinzipiell beobachtbar, feststellbar sind” (Born and Jordan 1925b, 493). The above translation is mine.

  5. 5.

    German original: Der Teil und das Ganze: Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik (1969). For a critical review of, especially, the English translation (Heisenberg 1971), see Forman (1971). I will use my own translations from the German original.

  6. 6.

    (Heisenberg 1969, 91). The German original reads: “Die Bahnen der Elektronen im Atom kann man nicht beobachten”, habe ich wohl erwidert, “aber aus der Strahlung, die von einem Atom bei einem Entladungsvorgang ausgesandt wird, kann man doch unmittelbar auf die Schwingungsfrequenzen und die zugehörigen Amplituden der Elektronen im Atom schließen. Die Kenntnis der Gesamtheit der Schwingungszahlen und der Amplituden ist doch auch in der bisherigen Physik so etwas wie ein Ersatz für die Kenntnis der Elektronenbahnen. Da es aber doch vernünftig ist, in eine Theorie nur die Größen aufzunehmen, die beobachtet werden können, schien es mir naturgemäß, nur diese Gesamtheiten, sozusagen als Repräsentanten der Elektronenbahnen, einzuführen.”

  7. 7.

    (Heisenberg 1969, 92). The German original reads: “Vielleicht habe ich diese Art von Philosophie benützt”, antwortete Einstein, “aber sie ist trotzdem Unsinn. Oder ich kann vorsichtiger sagen, es mag heuristisch von Wert sein, sich daran zu erinnern, was man wirklich beobachtet. Aber vom prinzipiellen Standpunkt aus ist es ganz falsch, eine Theorie nur auf beobachtbare Größen gründen zu wollen. Denn es ist ja in Wirklichkeit genau umgekehrt. Erst die Theorie entscheidet darüber, was man beobachten kann.”

  8. 8.

    (Heisenberg 1969, 93). The German original reads: “Der Gedanke, daß eine Theorie eigentlich nur die Zusammenfassung der Beobachtungen unter dem Prinzip der Denkökonomie sei, soll doch von dem Physiker und Philosophen Mach stammen; und es wird immer wieder behauptet, daß Sie in der Relativitätstheorie eben von diesem Gedanken Machs entscheidend Gebrauch gemacht hätten.”

  9. 9.

    (Beller 1999, 55). Beller is not explicit about what she takes the “programmatic point” to be. I understand her to mean the plan of applying virtual oscillator models to the hydrogen atom, which she describes on p. 53, where she refers to Hendry (1984) and Darrigol (1992). MacKinnon (1977, 161–162) mentions explicitly such a “new program for quantum theory”, but Duncan and Janssen (2007, 615–616) point out that MacKinnon ’s account is not entirely adequate at this point.

  10. 10.

    Heisenberg to Pauli, Göttingen, July 9, 1925 (Hermann et al. 1979, 231). The original German passage reads: “daß [Heisenbergs Arbeit], wenigstens im kritischen d.h. negativen Teil wirkliche Physik enthält.” Translation by A.W.

  11. 11.

    For a discussion of Pauli’s influence on Heisenberg, cf. Beller (1999, 54–55), Hendry (1984, 63–66), and Serwer (1977, 237–248).

  12. 12.

    Wolff (2014, 25). The letters are dated June 21 and 24, 1925, and published in Hermann et al. (1979, 219–221, 225–229). The Zeitschrift für Physik received Heisenberg’s Umdeutung paper July 29, 1925.

  13. 13.

    Nickles (1995, 158) proposes to regard the development of knowledge as a kind of bootstrapping procedure. Schickore (2011, 472) erroneously attributes this proposal to another of Nickles’s articles.

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Acknowledgments

My reflections on the relation between the history and the philosophy of science have profited much from discussions with Tilman Sauer and Raphael Scholl as well as with the participants of the workshop “the philosophy of historical case studies”, which they organized. The choice of the particular case was prompted by an invitation to give a lecture in the series Geschichte der Physik (“history of physics”), run by Stefan Lüders and other students of the University of Göttingen in 2013. Martin Jähnert provided valuable feedback on my manuscript. I wrote the present article during a visit to the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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  1. Institut für Philosophie, Literatur-, Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte, Technische Universität Berlin, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, Berlin, Germany

    Adrian Wüthrich

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Institute of Mathematics, Mainz, Germany

    Tilman Sauer

  2. Department of History and Phil of Scienc, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Raphael Scholl

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Wüthrich, A. (2016). Heisenberg’s Umdeutung: A Case for a (Quantum-)Dialogue Between History and Philosophy of Science. In: Sauer, T., Scholl, R. (eds) The Philosophy of Historical Case Studies. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 319. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30229-4_14

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