Abstract
According to Reichenbach in the analysis of physical theories, the philosopher is interested only in the context of justification. Philosophy of science should, and could, ignore history of science. A theory has a structure but no cognitively relevant history; the context of its discovery is without any philosophical interest. This is one distinct position on which logical analyses of physical theories in philosophy of science have been based.
Parts of this material were presented at a talk given to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science. This paper is dedicated to Herbert Hörz on the occasion of his 60th birthday; it is based on research supported by the Academy of Science of the GDR, the Center for Philosophy of Science at the Pittsburgh University and the Center for History and Philosophy of Science in Berlin. I would like to thank Th. Uebel for his valuable suggestions.
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Notes
This letter is in The Hans Reichenbach Collection (HR 037–25–73), University of Pittsburgh Libraries. Quoted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh. All rights reserved.
Cf. even the ‘Preface’ to H. Reichenbach (1944) which indicates a quite common belief in analytic tradition: “Historical remarks are best of all suitable to introduce a systematic investigation”. Whereas Reichenbach described in this publication only what really happened stepwise in the development of quantum mechanics he also discussed in the letter to Hook quoted above a more speculative question (“Had Planck ...”). This short private text to a nonphysicist demonstrates better than anything else Reichenbach’s understanding of the history of quantum mechanics.
I am now interested only in the picture of the development of the theory given by Reichenbach. That this is relevant for his interpretation of quantum mechanics will be shown otherwise.
This will be discussed in my paper ‘Did They Just Misunderstand Each Other? Logical Empiricists and Bohr’s Complementarity Argument’ (forthcoming).
I hope that we will soon find in the Einstein edition a reconstruction of his earlier ideas on the structure of atoms from which we can understand his interesting remark about the similarity in Bohr’s and his own ideas. Until now the only way of taking serious the strange sounding statement that he himself “had no pluck to develop it” is to analyze the structure of Bohr’s theory.
And in this respect Bohr was more critical than many other physicists using his theory.
Harald Høffding, Bohr’s teacher in philosophy and later on his fatherly friend, believed in the progress of science; for him the development of scientific ideas must be a continuous process without sharp jumps or, as we say with Kuhn, without scientific revolutions. He characterized his own philosophy as a philosophy of continuity, and he declared an irrational number as the symbol for such a philosophy. You can calculate such a number step by step with increasing exactness, and you can refine a philosophy of continuity like Høffding’s step by step. —There are, of course, other philosophies, also named by Høffding as philosophies of discontinuity’, and among them Søren Kierkegaard’s, the Danish philosopher who criticized Hegel for trying to harmonize dialectical contradictions, and who conceptualized the discontinuities in thought as leaps; see Høffding (1955).
Bohr was aware that according to his first theoretical description of events in the world of atoms there did exist points which could not be understood in a traditional way as taking place in physical space and time (“jumps” between stationary states and the movement of electrons around the nucleus itself). Nevertheless Bohr was searching for a theory which describes the atomic world in its own — may be specific — categories. Unlike other physicist of his time even the young Bohr saw the problem of knowledge in general. As a student of Høffding he thought even to write a book about this subject. Nevertheless his searching in physics was until the middle of the 1920’s a searching for a specific ontology of nature. In this time Bohr’s thought about the epistemological concept of ‘physical reality’ did not differ so much of Einstein’s as later when Bohr had learned the epistemological lesson of quantum’ mechanics. In the earlier phase of the Einstein-Bohr debate both men had differences about the adequate ontology of modern physics (are there really quanta of radiation?), they had no differences about the need and the possibility of an ontology itself.
Whereas Bohr never thought that the structure of the ‘final’ theory would be in this way inconsistent too, Sommerfeld seemed to be ready to change the ideal of a physical theory. He got in the early 20s the feeling that the framework for the new theory is ready and that in further refinements probably should be included in it more parameters, may be even some new assumptions.
What was really done by Bohr since 1913 (without any recourse to Hegel or other kind of dialectical thought) is discussed by Ludwig (p. 4 f) and other authors as an important point characteristic for the development of physics in general. — In philosophy and history of science exist, obviously, different ways of reflections on contradictions in systems of statements. To avoid them under all circumstances (a demand in many logical analyses) or to learn at least temporally “to life” with them, “to manage” them is until now the alternative. Rational reconstructions of the history have to reconstruct the existing in the past contradictions too. Ahistorical judgments on contradictions are one of the reason why reconstructions could fail the historicity of history. A remarkable example gives Lakatos’ case-study on Bohr.
But there is, as far as I know, no such formulation in Bohr’s texts.
Whereas the first sort of concepts seem to be the invariants of a historical development, the second sort seem to bring the characteristical innovations of the new theory. If the first will represent historicity in a trivial sense (no changes) the second should mark a conceptual leap (radical changes) which according to an analytic understanding of scientific development could and should be analyzed without any recourse to the context of its discovery. But, unfortunately, this wasn’t the case!
In this paper I will not discuss the more biographical question of Bohr’s intellectual preparation to become a philosopher. This should be done in my forthcoming book, Contraria sunt comnplementa: Niels Bohr und die Philosophie. Quite different positions about this subject are hold by Favrholdt (1992), and Faye (1991).
Starting with Reichenbach complementarity was often seen as a new ontology only. There are formulations in which Bohr used an ontological language even after his complementarity-argument, too. So in declaring 1958: “The main point of the lesson given us by the development of atomic physics is, as is well known, the recognition of a feature of wholeness in atomic processes, disclosed by the discovery of the quantum of action” (APHK, v). Otherwise Bohr even wrote “that the viewpoint of complementarity may be regarded as a rational generalization of the very ideal of causality” (APHK, 41). Even if this and other quotations may be misinterpreted as ontological statements they all are embedded in a context with Bohr’s message: Complementarity is the end for an ontology isolated from the epistemology. It is not my task to say that this must be the truth. But this was Bohr’s position at least since 1927. Other readings of his texts — I think — are misreadings. My argumentation here is compatible with Howard (1979).
And he did not use the word ‘ontology’ either. But whereas the hidden historicity in Bohr’s philosophical thought can be reconstructed only via a rational reconstruction of the theory development to use the words ‘ontology’ and ‘epistemology’ for characterizing the complementarity mode of description seemed to be legitimated, among others, even by Bohr’s usage of literary motives like “we are both onlookers and actors in the great drama of existence” (ATDN, 119).
But he was sure to make progress. So he wrote in the Preface to his second volume of essays: “In the papers, collected here, this approach [complementarity] is further developed in logical formulation and given broader application” (APHK, 1). Bohr was often criticized for bringing into philosophy a “mysticism foreign to the spirit of science”. And especially at the Second International Congress for the Unity of Science in Copenhagen he tried, as he said, “to clear up such misunderstandings”. But he was afraid that he “had in this respect only little success in convincing my listeners, for whom the dissent among the physicists themselves was naturally a cause of scepticism about the necessity of going so far in renouncing customary demands as regards the explanation of natural phenomena”. In his discussion with Einstein he “was strongly reminded of the importance of utmost caution in all questions of terminology and dialectics”. And later in the same paper we read: “I entered more directly on questions of terminology” (Ibid., 63). These quotations clearly show in what respect Bohr was looking for further progress’.
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Röseberg, U. (1994). Hidden Historicity: The Challenge of Bohr’s Philosophical Thought. In: Faye, J., Folse, H.J. (eds) Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 153. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8106-6_15
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