Abstract
Prior analyses of Grete Hermann’s 1935 essay on the philosophical foundations of quantum mechanics have taken her central aim to be the recovery of an appropriately Kantian notion of causality from this new indeterministic physics. I argue that if one instead reads this essay as primarily an investigation into the meaning and implications of the relative nature of quantum mechanics—not only for physics, but also for fields as different as ethics—certain dimensions of her work appear with greater clarity. Among these are her particular Kantian interpretation of Bohr’s complementarity and correspondence principles , her unique understanding of the quantum-classical divide , the failure of Kant’s a priori categories of space, time and causality to apply literally—even for obtaining classical natural knowledge, and the splitting of truth.
Work for this chapter was carried out in part while I was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Hebrew University’s Edelstein Center for the academic year 2013–2014. I wish to thank the Edelstein Center for their generous support.
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- 1.
Consider Einstein’s own description of separability in his famous letter to Schrödinger, written after Hermann’s paper (and also the EPR paper) was published—on 19 June 1935: ‘the second [system], together with everything that pertains to its contents, is independent of what happens with respect to the first [system] (separate subsystems)’ (Einstein 1935).
- 2.
I have relied on Chevalley (1994) for the following subsection; if there are misunderstandings of Kant, the fault is solely mine.
- 3.
Chevalley cautions that one must not understand Kant’s ‘symbol’ to be on a par with what mathematicians or logicians usually mean by the term: the latter typically refer to ‘the conventional designation of concepts by signs or words’ (Chevalley 1994, p. 44).
- 4.
Note, however—as Chevalley does—that in Bohr (and so too in Hermann, as we shall see) this divide is not intended to coincide with the object–instrument divide. On Bohr’s position, see Howard (1994).
- 5.
Although I will not discuss it here, the final section of Heisenberg’s draft response to EPR is dedicated to a discussion of the relative context of observation, and Heisenberg cites Hermann’s 1935 paper as his primary source for these considerations (Bacciagaluppi and Crull 2011). It would be most interesting to compare in greater detail, side-by-side, Hermann and Heisenberg on this point of overlap/interaction.
- 6.
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Crull, E. (2016). Hermann and the Relative Context of Observation. In: Crull, E., Bacciagaluppi, G. (eds) Grete Hermann - Between Physics and Philosophy. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 42. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-0970-3_10
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