Abstract
When I first began to take a serious interest in theoretical physics I was attracted by quantum field theory, a mysterious subject which — at least in the form of quantum electrodynamics — nevertheless seemed to be extraordinarily successful in predicting experimental results. It was an obvious challenge to try to develop a formulation of this theory which would be both mathematically satisfactory and, from a physical point of view, self-contained in the sense of not depending for its interpretation on prior physical theories. However, I soon found that this task was far from easy; so much so that it seemed advisable first to aim at a fully satisfactory account of ordinary quantum mechanics, a subject of which quantum electrodynamics might be described as a very sophisticated descendent.
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© 1978 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Hooker, C.A. (1978). Formal Languages and the Foundations of Physics. In: Hooker, C.A. (eds) Physical Theory as Logico-Operational Structure. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9769-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9769-1_2
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