Quantum Phenomena and the Double-Slit Experiment

Abstract

This book offers an exploration of the relationships between epistemology and probability in the work of Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schro¨- dinger, and in quantum mechanics and in modern physics as a whole. It also considers the implications of these relationships and of quantum theory itself for our understanding of the nature of human thinking and knowledge in general, or the ‘‘epistemological lesson of quantum mechanics,’’ as Bohr liked to say.1 These implications are radical and controversial. While they have been seen as scientifically productive and intellectually liberating to some, Bohr and Heisenberg among them, they have been troublesome to many others, such as Schro¨dinger and, most prominently, Albert Einstein. Einstein famously refused to believe that God would resort to playing dice or rather to playing with nature in the way quantum mechanics appeared to suggest, which is indeed quite different from playing dice. According to his later (sometime around 1953) remark, a lesser known or commented upon but arguably more important one: ‘‘That the Lord should play [dice], all right; but that He should gamble according to definite rules [i.e., according to the rules of quantum mechanics, rather than by merely throwing dice], that is beyond me.’’2 Although Einstein’s invocation of God is taken literally sometimes, he was not talking about God but about the way nature works. Bohr’s reply on an earlier occasion to Einstein’s question whether ‘‘we could really believe that the providential authorities took recourse to dice-playing’’ in the same ‘‘humorous spirit that animated the discussions’’ is nevertheless worth recalling: ‘‘I replied by pointing at the great caution, already called for by ancient thinkers, in ascribing attributes to Providence in everyday language’’ (Bohr 1949; PWNB 2, p. 47). Einstein was reluctant to believe that nature, at the ultimate level of its constitution, would behave in this way. In other words, he was unwilling to accept that quantum mechanics, or any theory of the same (epistemological) type, ultimately reflects nature. Nor did he think that an alternative theory that would be more philosophically palatable and, by his criteria (essentially derived from classical physics), more complete could not eventually be found. He often said that quantum mechanics revealed a beautiful element of truth in nature, but not its ultimate truth, and he thought that ‘‘it offers no useful point of departure for future de…