The Quantum Moment by Robert P. Crease

Author:Robert P. Crease [Crease, Robert P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Reception

Many of Bohr’s colleagues, too, did not react well to the idea. It seemed to them to be philosophy—a term of opprobrium among physicists—unnecessary at best and confusing and obstructive at worst. Jammer summarizes the general reaction of the Como audience to Bohr’s talk as that it “will not induce any of us to change his opinion about quantum mechanics.”10 Schrödinger thought that Bohr was attempting to sweep difficult philosophical problems under the rug, writing that “Bohr wants to ‘complement away’ all difficulties.”11 The philosopher Karl Popper wrote, “I do not doubt that there is an interesting intuitive idea behind Bohr’s principle of complementarity. But neither he nor any other member of this school has been able to explain it.”12 Only a handful of other scientists were enthusiastic. J. Robert Oppenheimer remarked that complementarity was among the things that atomic physics has taught that “provide us with valid and relevant and greatly needed analogies to human problems lying outside the present domain of science.”13 On the other hand, Oppenheimer also remarked that we have better and more traditional sources of insight to help us understand irresolution in the human world than quantum mechanics: “Hamlet has said it better than Planck’s constant.”14

What were those supposedly relevant and needed analogies? Bohr was the first, and most diligent, at trying to identify them. He had a deep appreciation for philosophy and psychology, yet was frustrated by the inability of professionals in those fields to take what he thought was a serious interest in the new physics discoveries. He planned to write what some of his colleagues came to call “The Book,” which would have been “a comprehensive presentation of complementarity and its implications” throughout all aspects of human life.15 Historians have struggled to produce a clear picture of what might have been the contents of that book. In his biography of Bohr, Pais was stymied by his attempt to describe the significance of complementarity. He proceeded by writing a question and answer account of what generally happens when he attempts to teach complementarity to physicists. It includes the following exchange:

Q. All this about complementarity is very interesting. But of what use is it to me?

A. It will neither help you in your quantum mechanics calculations nor in setting up your experiment. In order to do physics you should not only assimilate and develop facts, however. In between you had better reflect on the meaning of what you are doing. In that respect Bohr’s considerations are extremely significant. Don’t you agree it ought to matter to you what, for example, a modern scientist means or should mean when he talks about “a phenomenon”? Note also that insights like these may serve to explain to interested laymen and to remind scientists what your profession is about.16

In the last line of his Nature article, Bohr spoke of complementarity as addressing a “general difficulty” in human ideas, hinting it had a wider application to other fields in which human beings are both actors and spectators. Noting this

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