Abstract
Niels Bohr devoted many of his reflections to epistemological and philosophical matters, though he declared that he did not consider himself a philosopher. The philosophical sides of his work were differently evaluated by scientists and philosophers: highly estimated by scientists (Heisenberg, Rosenfeld, Weizsacker, etc.), severely criticised1 by epistemologists such as Popper, Margenau, Park, etc.
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Notes
Popper [1967], Park & Margenau [1968], Park [1968]. A revaluation of Bohr’s philosophy is presented in: Freundlich [1968]; Honner [1982].
Jammer [1974] 60.
Jammer [1974] 98.
Rudinger [1976–1986], henceforth NBCW [1976–1986].
Krajewski [1977]. In 1922 Bohr himself affirmed that in his 1913 papers there are the first germs of the Cr Principle(Bohr [1922]. On Bohr’s interpretations of Cr between 1918 and 1925, see: Petruccioli[1988].
Jammer [1974] 111 note 94, 110.
Born & Pauli, as reported by Jammer [1974] 116.
NBCW [1984] 273–280; NBCW [1976–1986] Also; Bohr [1935] 845–852.
“While Einstein’s theory of heat radiation gives support to the postulates, it accentuates the formal nature of the frequency condition” (Bohr NBCW [1984] 275).
The contradiction is inherent in the definition of the photon energy hv. It was first presented in: Bohr, Kramers, Slater, [1924] 787, and then stated by Bohr in: Bohr [1925].
NBCW [1984] 276.
NBCW [1984] 276, 277.
NBCW [1984] 277.
NBCW [1984] 277. As a matter of fact, in Bohr’s essay, the list of the difficulties precedes in part that of the successes of classical theories. The logic of my presentation has suggested the reversal; however, this change does not introduce any element of unfaithfulness to Bohr’s ideas.
(Bohr to Pauli 25 November 1925, reprinted in: NBCW [1984] 224). The failure of the Bohr-Kramers- Slater theory of virtual oscllators is, of course, a turning point in the development of the meaning of Cr. A useful factual account of the Bohr-Kramers-Slater theory and the so-called Kramers-Heisenberg dispersion formula is presented by Tagliaferri [1985] 334 ff..
NBCW [1984] 277.
NBCW [1984] 276, ff..
NBCW [1984] 280. The long quotation is justified by the meaning I attribute to the restriction as a first step, which will be generalised in the limitation of Cm. See: Holton [1973] 130.
Heisenberg [1925].
However it should be remarked that, as a matter of fact Heisenberg’s mathematical scheme for constructing the new QT was not limited to frequencies and amplitudes, but it included the Heisenberg-Born derivation rule as well as the matrix substitution for spacial coordinates.
NBCW [1984] 280.
NBCW [1984] 276.
I have found no explicit mention in the consulted literatureof my thesis that the new meaning of Bohr’s Cr in 1925 was influenced by Heisenberg’s 1925 paper.
Kalchar, Introduction, in: NBCW [1985] 21.
NBCW [1985]; Bohr [1926–1932] 91–99. Also: Archive for History of Quantum Physics (AHQP), microfilm, no 36.
Heisenberg [1927].
NBCW [1985] 91.
The “indispensability” had however been proposed as early as 1922: “Every description of natural processes must be based on ideas which have been introduced and defined by the classical theory” (my underlining). N. Bohr, “On the Quantum Theory of Line Spectra”, Zeitung für PhyslK, 9, 1922, 1; my italics).
Concerning the interpretation of Bohr’s conception of theory as a symbolic expression, consult: Chevalley [1993].
Bohr, “Atomic Theory and mechanics”, in: NBCW [1984] 276 ff.
These ideas are presented in: Bohr [1958]. See also: Honner [1982].
Kalckar, Introduction, NBCW [1985] 26–27. Notice that in this passage Cm concerns the antinomy [superposition principle/conservation principle]. In this form it remains closer to the wave-particle antinomy of electrodynamics and to the Boh-Kramers-Slater interpretation of optical dispersion.
NBCW [1985] 92.
Jammer [1974] 93, 65.
See: Archive for History of Quantum Physics [1963], interview with Heisenberg, 25 February 1963.
“These reciprocal uncertainty relations were given in a recent paper by Heisenberg [Zeit. für Phys., 49, 1927, 172–198] as the expression of the statistical element which, due to the feature of discontinuity implied in the quantum postulate, characterises any interpretation of observation by means of classical concepts” (NBCW [1985] 93, my italics). Bohr refers to discontinuity (the quantum finite-ness) as something characterising Heisenberg’s approach to IR, not his (Bohr’s) own approach, which, I have shown, is based on the link which the quantum of action establishes between ondulatory and particulate features. The point of the difference is taken up again by Bohr some lines later, when he discusses the “gradual spreading of the wave fields” (NBCW [1985] 94), and “the statistical character of the quantum theoretical description” (NBCW [1985] 98).
Bohr, “The Quantum Postulate and the recent Development of Atomic Theory”, Nature, Supplement [14 April 1928], 580–590; reprinted in NBCW [1985] 147
NBCW [1985] 151. For Bohr’s and Heisenberg’s views of the X -ray microscope, see the interesting paper in: Kalckar [1985] 16 ff.
Bohr, “The Quantum Postulaten”, NBCW [1985] 151.
NBCW [1985].
Bohr’s concern about his Cm also involved the visualisation problem (an aspect of his problem with ST description). This aspect has been rightly emphasised by Hendry [1984], by Miller & Hendry [1984], and by Miller [1984].
According to Jammer, this type of criticism of Heisenberg’s interpretation seems to have been raised explicitly for the first time by Ch.R. von Liechtenstern in 1954. However, I think that it amounts to the same type of argument presented by Popper in 1934 (Jammer [1974] 345).
Jammer [1974] 73.
“There seems to me a fairly obvious connection between Bohr’s ‘principle of complementarity’ and this metaphysical view of an unknowable reality [i.e. Heisenberg’s interpretation of the uncertainty Relations] a view that suggests the ‘renunciation’ (to use a favourite term of Bohr’s) of our aspiration to knowledge, and the restriction of our physical studies to appearances and their interrelations”; (Popper, “Quantum Mechanics without the observer”in: Bunge [1967] 7–44; Also: Popper [1968] 454).
Popper[1967].
Hans Reichenbach was in 1929 one of the first to stress this genuine aspect of Bohr’s ontology. He emphasised that the source for Bohr’s Cm is primarily the structure of the theory presented by QT and not the interpretation of IR as disturbance to an otherwise undisturbed ST description. (H. Reichenbach, “Wiele und Wege der physikalischen Erkentniss”, Handbuch der Physik, Vol. 4, ed. H. Seiger and K. Schee, Springer, Berlin 1929, 78; reported by Jammer, [1974] 160). This view is also more generally confirmed by such an acute epistemologist as Eino Kaila (Kaila [1950]). The fact that quantisation can be explained without referring to quantum was shown, of course, by Schrodinger’s wave-theory (see my following chapter).
Jammer [1966] 117. The “inclusion” view, Cr(l), was not, at any rate that of Bohr, at least, after 1924, point proved by Bohr’s 1924 statement quoted by Jammer Jammer [1966] 118). Perhaps Cr(l) had this function in the early stages of the “logic of discovery” of QT.
Jammer [1966] 88.
Tagliaferri [1985] 240.
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D’Agostino, S. (2000). Correspondence and Complementarity in Niels Bohr’s Papers: 1925–1927. In: A History of the Ideas of Theoretical Physics. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 213. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9034-6_12
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