Abstract
It is true that all previous considerations presuppose that microphysical indeterminacy has an objective status and therefore is not a mere result of temporary technological limitations of our present measurements. I discussed this particular problem at length in a chapter entitled `The End of the Laplacean Illusion’1 in my previous book in which I listed all the facts supporting the objective status of indeterminacy: not only the general bankruptcy of all the ideas constituting the classical deterministic model of the physical reality, but also the peculiar character of radioactive explosions, whose statistical character and indeterminacy cannot by their very nature depend on the intervention of the observer. I also pointed out that this character is not confined to radioactive processes only. The emissions of photons have essentially the same ‘radioactive’ character, and this is true of spontaneous disintegrations of all recently discovered “particles” as well. I also pointed out that resistance to the concept of the objective contingency of microphysical events is due mainly to the tenacity of certain classical beliefs, including the belief in the LaplaceanSpinozist concept of causality, which is still wrongly regarded as the only type of rational order.
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Notes
The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics, Ch. XVI.
L. de Broglie, Continu et discontinu en physique moderne (Paris, 1940), p. 61.
Ibid., p. 64.
L. de Broglie, Physics and Microphysics, pp. 199–200.
L. de Broglie, `Léon Brunschwicg et l’évolution des sciences’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale 50 (1945) 72–76. Here the author gently, but firmly rejected the deterministic interpretation of the Heisenberg’s uncertainty relations in Brunschwicg’s book La physique nouvelle et la philosophie, Hermann, Paris, 1936.
Cf. To the Memory of Émile Meyerson’ in de Broglie’s book Matter and Light. New Physics (transi. by W. H. Johnston), Dover, New York, 1939, p. 286.
Physics and Microphysics, p. 193.
Ibid., pp. 191–192.
The quotation from Bergson is from T.F. W., p. 212. The footnote of de Broglie is not translated in Davidson’s translation: its full text is in the French original version Physique et microphysique, Paris, 1947, p. 211.
Matter and Light, p. 255.
Physics and Microphysics, pp. 189–200.
Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie (séance du 25 avril 1953). Cf. also Nouvelles perspective en microphysique,Paris, 1956, pp. 199–201.
Physique et microphysique,pp. 181–190. (In the English translation the term ‘conversion finale’ is translated rather obscurely as `final transformation’, p. 156).
Nouvelles perspectives en microphysique,p. 140.
Ibid., p. 116.
Cf. La physique quantique restera-t-elle indeterministe?, Gauthiers-Villars, Paris, 1953, esp. pp. 65–111 with several contributions of J.-P. Vigier. On Einstein’s satisfaction with which he reacted to the attempts ro revive the deterministic interpretation of quantum physics cf. Nouvelles perspectives en microphysique, pp. 200–201.
Cf. Note 6 of Chapter 11 of this part; also The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics, pp. 316–322.
Nouvelles perspectives en microphysique,pp. 142–143.
D. Bohm, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, Harper Torchbook, 1961, pp. 158–160.
Cf. Salzi’s intervention in the discussion following de Broglie’s lecture in Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie. See Note 12 of this chapter.
Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie 34 No. 5 (octobre-december 1934), 172–183.
Edouard le Roy in his article ‘Ce que la microphysique apporte et suggère a la philosophie’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale 42 (1935), 345–347 rejects - like Brunschwicg - any “reification” of quantum indetermination.
Brand Blanshard, The Nature of Thought, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1948, I1, p. 493. Russell’s attitude to this problem was far from consistent; while in the passage quoted by Blanshard he claimed the principle of indeterminacy has to do with measurement not with causation (Scientific Outlook, 109–110), he was far more cautious in Analysis of Matter where he conceded that “there may be the limits to physical determinism” and that this possibility `interposes a veto on materialistic dogmatism“ (p. 393). In Human Knowledge, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1962, he explicitly concedes the objective character of microphysical uncertainty, but belittles its significance since it, according to him, does not affect the macrophysical determinism. (Cf. pp. 23–24.)
L. de Broglie, op. cit. in Note 18, p. 141, J. Ullmo, La crise de la physique quantique, Paris, 1955, accuses Heisenberg of “pure subjectivism” (p. 36) and the language of certain passages of Heisenberg’s Physics and Philosophy,New York, Harper & Brothers 1958, easily yields to this interpretation (see in particular pp. 133, 144.)
L. de Broglie, Physics and Microphysics, p. 7.
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Čapek, M. (1991). Bergson and Louis de Broglie. In: The New Aspects of Time. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 125. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2123-8_15
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