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15 - The Natural-Philosophical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (Excerpt)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2024

Guido Bacciagaluppi
Affiliation:
Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
Elise Crull
Affiliation:
City College, City University of New York
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Summary

This is a translation of the excerpts published in Naturwissenschaften of Grete Hermann’s 1935 essay on philosophy of quantum mechanics, recently translated into English. Her main thesis, in line with her natural-philosophical training and neo-Kantian commitments, is to argue that quantum mechanics does not refute the principle of causality. Quantum mechanics cannot be completed by, hidden variables, because it is already causally complete (albeit retroductively). In establishing this provocative thesis, she makes important use of Bohr’s principles of correspondence and complementarity and of Weizsäcker's version of the gamma-ray microscope, arguing that the lesson of quantum mechanics is the impossibility of an absolute description of nature independent of the context of observation.

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The Einstein Paradox
The Debate on Nonlocality and Incompleteness in 1935
, pp. 235 - 243
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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