Abstract
To quote Lenin, the crisis in physics was that “matter has disappeared”. First the electron theory and later the theory of relativity demanded a fundamental transformation of the concept of mass, which did not agree with the concepts in classical physics.
TN: This was the 2nd Russian edition, translated by P. S. Tartakovsky from the 3rd German edition. It was published by the State Scientific and Technical Publishers, Moscow and Leningrad, 1931. The original German book was also translated into English in 1928 as Wave Mechanics and the New Quantum Theory, Haas (1928).
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Notes
- 1.
TN: Materialism and Empirio-criticism in Lenin (1977). Chapter 5, Sect. 2 is entitled “Matter Has Disappeared”. That the limit of our current knowledge of matter had disappeared rather than matter itself is on p. 260.
- 2.
TN: The English translation given in Lenin, V.I., Philosophical Notebooks in Lenin (1976, p. 222), is “In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics, but it requires explanations and development.” Hessen omits the last phrase.
- 3.
TN: “La physique due discontinu” in Langevin (1923, p. 190). French original (the first sentence is paraphrased by Hessen):
“Il est probable même que la plupart de ces lois ne pourront pas s’exprimer dans le langage du calcul différentiel et intégral, créé pour traduire analytiquement la notion de continuité.
Cet admirable instrument ne convient qu’à l’étude des systèmes accessible à nos sens et qui sont en général composés d’un nombre énorme d’éléments. Les grandeurs qu’atteignent nos moyens de mesure intéressent d’ordinaire tant d’éléments à la fois par somme ou par moyenne de grandeurs individuelles, que nous pouvons, sans erreur sensible, les traiter comme continues.”
- 4.
- 5.
BH: Jordan, Charakter der Quantenphysik. Die Naturwissenschaften No. 41, 1928. TN: Jordan (1928, p. 771). The German original is:
“...heute schon ein anderes Gesicht gewonnen hat, als in der Zeit der LORENTZ-schen Theorie, wo die Elektronen gewissermaßen als Fremdkörper im Äther schwammen”.
- 6.
TN: Hessen presumably refers to Eddington (1928). This was an update of the Gifford Lecture Eddington gave the previous year to take into account Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Eddington writes of the “Principle of Indeterminacy” (p. 220 and p. 294). There is no exact reference to the sentence in quotes, but Eddington states that “the greatest triumphs of physical prediction have been furnished by admittedly statistical laws which do not rest on a basis of causality” (p. 298).
- 7.
TN: This exact phrase does not appear in Eddington (1928) but see previous footnote.
- 8.
BH: E. Schrödinger. “Was ist Naturgesetz”, Die Naturwissenshaften, No. 1, 1929. TN: “What is a Law of Nature?” Schrödinger’s Inaugural Address at the University of Zurich, December 9th, 1922. This address was not printed on the occasion of its delivery. The English text here follows the original manuscript from which the address was read: Schrödinger (1935, p. 115).
- 9.
BH: See p. 141 below. TN: Hessen is referring to the Russian translation. English translation taken from Haas (1928, p. 83 and p. 85). Hessen’s italics.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
TN: Freudenthal and McLaughlin (2009, p. 67, n. 57), give the reference “Newton allowed Him the ‘first impulse’ but forbade Him further interference in his solar system” (Dialectics of Nature, Engels (1988, p. 480)). They point out that only the second clause of the sentence is in quotes in the Russian. See Chap. 4, p. 50, n. 23.
- 17.
BH: Plekhanov, The Role of the Individual in History, Vol. 8, p. 274 (In Russian). TN: English translation Plekhanov (1976, p. 284). Available via https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1898/xx/individual.html, cited 13.03.20. See Chap. 4, p. 50, n. 25.
- 18.
BH: The initial impulse is the tangential component, of which Engels accused Newton. TN: See n. 14 above.
- 19.
TN: Henry More. English seventeenth century Cambridge Platonist philosopher.
- 20.
TN: See Chap. 4, p. 50, n. 28.
- 21.
TN: Einstein (1927)—an English translation appeared in the Smithsonian Annual Report for 1927 (see https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/einstein-on-newton/).
- 22.
BH: Maxwell looks into the problem of necessity and chance applied to physics in a small article published by Campbell and Garnett—Maxwell’s paper was given to a philosophical group at Cambridge (Club of Seniors). The article is titled “Does the progress of Physical Science tend to give any advantage to the opinion of Necessity (or Determinism) over that of the Contingency of Events and the Freedom of the Will?” TN: See Campbell and Garnett (1882, pp. 209–213). The original English is taken here from p. 210. See also Chap. 4, p. 57, n. 45.
- 23.
TN: Hessen is referring to Planck’s speech, entitled “Dynamical and Statistical Laws”, which he gave as rector of Berlin University, two days after the outbreak of World War One. Planck (1914). Cf. Mehra and Rechenberg (2000, p. 3), where the following translation into English is given: “...the dualism between dynamical and statistical [physical] laws seems to be most closely connected with the microscopic and macroscopic worlds, which we have to accept as an experimentally established fact. ...hence we cannot but concede to the statistical laws the position which they deserve in the whole system of theoretical physics”.
- 24.
TN: English translation taken from Haas (1928, p. 83). Hessen’s italics.
- 25.
TN: This paragraph is quoted by Josephson (1991, p. 268).
- 26.
BH: Dialectics of Nature, Archive of Marx and Engels, v. 2, p. 193. TN: Dialectics of Nature, Engels (1988, pp. 480, 499).
- 27.
TN: This sentence together with the previous two paragraphs are quoted by Josephson (1991, p. 268).
- 28.
TN: Bacciagaluppi and Valentini (2009, p. 495). The adjective “free” is not in the original.
- 29.
BH: Electrons et Photons. Rapport et Discussion du Cinquième Conseil de Physique, de l’Institut International de Physique Solvay (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1928). TN: English translation taken from Bacciagaluppi and Valentini (2009, pp. 497–498).
- 30.
BH: Schrödinger, E., Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1929. TN: Schrödinger (1984, p. 304). German Original:
“Eine der brennendsten Fragen, die uns in deisem Zusammenhang heute beschäftigen, ist die, ob mit der klassischen Mechanik auch ihre Methode aufzugeben sei, der Grundsatz, daß feste Gesetze im Verein mit den zufälligen Anfangsbedingungen das Geschehen im Einzelfall eindeutig bestimmen.
Es ist die Frage nach der Zweckmäßigkeit des unverbrüchlichen Postulates der Kausalität.
Praktisch hatt man auf die Kausalität allerdings schon im Rahmen der klassisch-mechanischen Naturerklärung verzichten müssen.
...
Die Unbestimmtheit entspringt dabei nur aus der praktischen Unmöglichkeit, den Anfangszustand eines aus Billionen von Atomen zusammengesetzten Körpers genau festzustellen.
Heute dagegen werden Zweifel an der eindeutigen Bestimmtheit des Naturgeschehens in ganz anderem Sinne laut.
Die Schwierigkeit bei der Festellung des Anfangzustandes soll nicht nur eine praktische, sondern eine prinzipielle sein, sie soll nicht nur für ein kompliziertes Gebilde, sondern schon für das einzelne Atom oder Moleküle vorliegen.
Da das prinzipiell nicht Beobachtbare für den Naturforscher als Naturforcher nicht existiert, ist der Sinn dieser Meinung: schon der Zustimmte Einwirkung ein ganz bestimmtes Verhalten des Gebildes nach sich zieht”.
- 31.
TN: Hessen puts the following two paragraphs in quotes also. They are translated here from the Russian and only follow the original German loosely.
- 32.
TN: Bohr’s lecture on the present state of the quantum theory delivered on Sept. 16, 1927, at the Volta celebration in Como. Its contents were published in the next reference.
- 33.
BH: Die Naturwissenschaft, 16, 245 1928. Russian translation in Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, v. 8, 3. TN: The English translation used here is Bohr (1928, p. 580).
- 34.
TN: Beller (1999, pp. 92–95) suggests that the work of Zernike and Ising, demonstrating the limits of accuracy in real measurements, “provided Heisenberg with the crucial clue [in his uncertainty paper]: he would pursue an intuitive interpretation of quantum mechanics through an analysis of the limits of measurement in his thought experiments (p. 95)”.
- 35.
BH: Ibid. TN: English translation taken from Bacciagaluppi and Valentini (2009, pp. 478–9).
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Hessen, B. (2021). On the Question of the Causality Problem in Quantum Mechanics. Preface to the 1931 Russian Translation of Arthur Haas, Materiewellen und Quantenmechanik. In: Talbot, C., Pattison, O. (eds) Boris Hessen: Physics and Philosophy in the Soviet Union, 1927–1931. History of Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70045-4_11
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