![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Bohr’s work in quantum mechanics posed a challenge to philosophers of science, who struggled with the question of whether and to what degree his theories and methods could be considered rational. This paper focuses on Popper, Feyerabend, Lakatos and Kuhn, all of whom recognized some irrational, dogmatic, paradoxical or even inconsistent features in Bohr’s work. Popper, Feyerabend, and Lakatos expressed strong criticism of Bohr’s approach to quantum physics, while Kuhn argued that such criticism was unlikely to be fruitful: progress in science is generally not made through philosophical reflection. Feyerabend’s criticism of Bohr gradually weakened, as he gained a more detailed understanding of the development of Bohr’s views on quantum mechanics, and this went together with an increasingly critical view of normative philosophy of science and was instrumental to his conversion to ‘anarchism’. This paper aims to show that quantum mechanics played a central role in their debates and disagreements on the rationality of science and the possibility of a normative philosophy of science.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 In particular, it seems that Popper’s propensity interpretation does not solve the measurement problem. For a critical analysis of Popper’s constructive contributions to the field of the foundations of quantum mechanics, see Howard (Citation2012), Del Santo (Citation2019), Del Santo and Freire Jr (Citation2021).
2 Held (Citation1994) argues that in Bohr’s mature conception of complementarity, there is no complementary relation between waves and particles.
3 This division deviates from that given in Kuby and Fraser (Citation2022, 1). In particular, Kuby and Fraser distinguish an earlier phase during Feyerabend’s studies (1946-1951), and do not make a distinction between what I describe as the second and third phase.
4 On the relation between Popper and Feyerabend, see Collodel (Citation2016), Del Santo (Citation2022).
5 Feyerabend therefore argued that theories should be “developed in their strongest possible form, i.e. as descriptions of reality rather than as mere instruments of successful prediction” (Feyerabend Citation1964, 306).
6 Feyerabend (Citation1963, 191); Feyerabend (Citation1965, 218); on Einstein’s influence on Feyerabend, see also Oberheim (Citation2016).
7 On the account of measurement that Feyerabend proposed in this paper, see also Kuby and Fraser (Citation2022).
8 Kuby (Citation2021) argues that this presented a fundamental problem for Feyerabend, since it was not compatible with his methodological demand that scientific theories be interpreted realistically. I am not sure whether Feyerabend himself saw this as a problem: he could still hold on to the methodological requirement that scientists should aim to develop theories which do allow for a realist interpretation. In this case, physicists should develop an alternative theory of quantum physics.
9 Feyerabend argued that the writings of a number of quantum physicists, in particular Heisenberg, were misleading in this regard: they had a tendency defend their views through an appeal to positivist philosophy, so one could be led to think that one could argue against their accounts of quantum mechanics by refuting their positivistic arguments.
10 According to Feyerabend, the indeterminateness of state descriptions in quantum mechanics follows from a number of principles which are each based on experimental findings, namely the quantum postulate, the duality of light and matter, and the conservation of energy and momentum (Feyerabend Citation1962, 107–114; 1964). Therefore, in order to develop a theory of quantum mechanics that does not share the feature of indeterminateness of state descriptions, one has to deny at least one of these. Moreover, in order to develop a realist theory of quantum physics, it was needed to circumvent a theorem derived by Von Neumann in 1932, which was often interpreted as proving the impossibility of ‘hidden variable’ theories of quantum mechanics. Feyerabend argued that since Von Neumann’s derivation uses the postulates of quantum mechanics as premises, it could be circumvented by developing an alternative theory of quantum mechanics, based on different postulates (Feyerabend Citation1962, 167). As Dieks (2017) shows, this is actually in agreement with Von Neumann’s own views.
11 Feyerabend argues that “any attempt to give a realistic account of the behaviour of the elementary particles is bound to be inconsistent with some very highly confirmed theories” (Feyerabend Citation1964, 301).
12 On Feyerabend’s realism, see e.g. Preston (Citation1997); on its compatibility with pluralism, see Chang (Citation2021).
13 Del Santo (Citation2019) notes that also Popper had an intellectual relationship with Bohm.
14 Or at least in Feyerabend’s own view, this went beyond Popper; see Bschir (Citation2015) on the compatibility of Feyerabend’s pluralism with Popper’s critical rationalism.
15 References can be found in Collodel (Citation2016, footnote 50).
16 For a critical discussion, see Howard (Citation2012).
17 At least according to most readers. See Shaw (Citation2017) for a detailed discussion of Feyerabend’s anarchism.
18 Kragh (Citation2012, 366) has argued that Bohr did in fact address this issue, and that his atomic model was not internally inconsistent.
19 This observation has also been made by Freire Jr. (Citation2016).
20 See also Beller (Citation1999, 287), who argues that “close historical links exist between the notion of incommensurable paradigms and the ideology of the Copenhagen dogma”. Her claim is based on the fact that Kuhn, in developing his notion of paradigm, was influenced by N. R. Hanson, and that Hanson in turn was influenced by Heisenberg, who argued that quantum mechanics is a ‘closed theory’. But although there are indeed similarities between Heisenberg’s notion of closed theories and Kuhn’s notion of paradigms, there are significant differences as well. Furthermore, there is evidence that Kuhn was not aware of Heisenberg’s notion of closed theories when he developed the notion of paradigm (Bokulich Citation2006; see also Freire Jr. Citation2016).
21 And in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn compares Einstein’s and Bohm’s opposition to the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics to the opposition to Newton and Lavoisier in the eighteenth century, suggesting that their opposition will be equally futile in the long run (Kuhn Citation1970a, 163).
22 At some point, the plan was that Feyerabend would also be involved in this project. In the summer of 1961, Feyerabend wrote to Popper: “I was supposed to participate in a very interesting project to reconstruct the history of the quantum theory from interviews (…). However I was dropped from the project as it was discovered that mentioning my name leads to violent reaction in Copenhagen.” (Feyerabend to Popper, in Collodel and Oberheim Citation2020).