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Theoretical Chemistry and More: Personal Annotations to Hans Primas and His Work

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From Chemistry to Consciousness

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Abstract

In the mid 1960s, Hans Primas concentrated on research into the enigmatic relation between chemistry and quantum mechanics: How can a molecule exhibit purely classical features as in stereochemical ball-and-stick models alongside purely quantal properties as in chemical spectroscopy? Due to the discovery of superselection rules in the 1950s Primas was able to propose a solution in terms of classical observables. In this vein he contributed to the theory of chirality and to the measurement problem of quantum mechanics. In addition, he initiated research on elementary systems and the construction of observables in general. At the end of the 1970s, a permanent discussion topic in the Primas group was reductionism: How can a given theoretical description be related to more fundamental lower-level theories? Primas’ magnum opus Chemistry, Quantum Mechanics and Reductionism of 1981 addresses this question, which is difficult and controversial at the same time. After his retirement, Primas restarted earlier work on time and irreversibility. This culminated in a seminal paper on “Time-Entanglement between Mind and Matter” in 2003 that explores Wolfgang Pauli’s idea that mind and matter are complementary aspects of the same reality.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Roughly speaking, an observable is called classical if there is no other observable such that their joint dispersion-free measurement is impossible. Otherwise it is quantum mechanical (“quantal”).

  2. 2.

    The electronic single-particle Green’s function of a molecular system can be directly calculated from an integro-differential equation, which avoids having to solve the electronic Schrödinger equation.

  3. 3.

    The postulate implies that for each observable there is a least one other non-commuting observable making their joint dispersion-free measurement impossible. This excludes the existence of classical observables.

  4. 4.

    For details on superselection rules see the contribution by Domenico Giulini in this volume.

  5. 5.

    The interpretation of a theory is epistemic if the theory is regarded as dealing with the knowledge of the experimenter on systems he deals with; it is ontic if it tells how the world is. The proper place for epistemic theories is engineering, the objective of ontic theories is to understand the fundamental nature of things.

  6. 6.

    Optical heterodyning, for example, is equivalent to an optimal measurement of the Schrödinger pair (P, Q) or, equivalently, of the photon annihilation operator \(Q + iP\).

  7. 7.

    Known for Stiefel-Whitney cohomology, work on Lie groups and the early establishment of numerical mathematics and computer sciences at the ETH in 1949.

  8. 8.

    In 1996, Amann moved from the ETH to the University of Innsbruck in Austria and from theoretical to analytical chemistry. He started a medical research program on breath gas analysis, published some 150 papers on it, founded the International Association for Breath Research, served as its president, and headed the Institut für Atemgasforschung of the Austrian Academy of Science until his untimely death.

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Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge linguistic help from Ursula Lindenberg (UK) and technical support by Werner Angst and Andreas Fischlin (Zurich)

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  1. Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Ulrich Müller-Herold

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  1. Ulrich Müller-Herold
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Correspondence to Ulrich Müller-Herold .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Collegium Helveticum, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Harald Atmanspacher

  2. CHN E 24, ETH Zentrum, Zürich, Switzerland

    Ulrich Müller-Herold

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Müller-Herold, U. (2016). Theoretical Chemistry and More: Personal Annotations to Hans Primas and His Work. In: Atmanspacher, H., Müller-Herold, U. (eds) From Chemistry to Consciousness. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43573-2_3

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