Abstract
The question in the title is answered by analyzing a specific case, Max Planck’s discovery of the radiation law. Trial and error as method of research and a rather moderate enlargement of the “knowledge space” of classical physics had been sufficient to unravel the secrets of quantum phenomena.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
M. Planck, Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie (Barth, Leipzig, 1948) [my translation]
Université Stanford, Evolutionary Epistemology, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (First published 2001- substantiverevision 2020)
G. Vollmer, How is it that we can know this world? New arguments in evolutionary epistemology, in Darwinism & Philosophy, edited by V. Hösle and C. Illies (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 2005)
L. Boltzmann, Populäre Schriften (Vieweg, Braunschweig, 1979) [my translation]
G. Vollmer, Im Lichte der Evolution, Darwin in Wissenschaft und Philosophie (Hirzel, Stuttgart, 2017)
D. Campell, The Philosophy of Karl R. Popper, edited by P.A. Schilpp (Open Court, LaSalle, IL, 1974)
M. Planck, Die Naturwissenschaften 31, 153 (1943)
M. Planck, Letter to the American physicist Robert Williams Wood,dated October 7, 1931, in A. Hermann Frühgeschichte der Quantentheorie (Physik Verlag, Mosbach, 1969) [my translation]
Acknowledgments
Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
The EPJ Publishers remain neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
About this article
Cite this article
Hüfner, J. Why was it possible to understand the quantum world?. Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 229, 3311–3317 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2020-000104-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2020-000104-4