Posted by 
By Arkady Plotnitsky
Examining Bohr: Physics and Philosophy bargains a brand new point of view on Niels Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics as complementarity, and at the relationships among physics and philosophy in Bohr's paintings, which has had momentous value for our knowing of quantum conception and of the character of information normally. Philosophically, the publication reassesses Bohr's position within the Western philosophical culture, from Kant and Hegel on. bodily, it reconsiders the most concerns at stake within the Bohr-Einstein war of words and within the ongoing debates bearing on quantum physics. It additionally devotes larger cognizance than in so much commentaries on Bohr to the most important advancements and adjustments of his pondering referring to complementarity.Most major between them have been those who happened, first, below the impression of Bohr's exchanges with Einstein and, moment, below the impression of advancements in quantum idea itself, either quantum mechanics and quantum box concept. the significance of quantum box thought for Bohr's pondering has no longer been appropriately addressed within the literature on Bohr's, to the enormous detriment to our realizing of the historical past of quantum physics. Filling this lacuna is among the major contributions of the publication, which additionally permits us to teach why quantum box concept compels us to maneuver past Bohr with out, notwithstanding, easily leaving him in the back of.
Read or Download Reading Bohr: Physics and Philosophy PDF
Best quantum theory books
Professor E. U. Condon's the speculation of Atomic Spectra was once the 1st accomplished booklet at the electron constitution of atoms, and has turn into a world-renowned vintage. initially released in 1980, Atomic constitution was once the past due Professor Condon's ultimate contribution to the literature of this box. accomplished by means of his colleague and previous scholar Halis Odabşi, this ebook was once one of many first built-in debts of the topic to incorporate such advancements as team thought options and Racah tools.
This can be the 3rd, considerably increased variation of the excellent textbook released in 1990 at the idea and purposes of direction integrals. it's the first e-book to explicitly remedy course integrals of a large choice of nontrivial quantum-mechanical structures, specifically the hydrogen atom. The strategies became attainable by way of significant advances.
Quantum Field Theory I: Foundations and Abelian and Non-Abelian Gauge Theories
This textbook covers a large spectrum of advancements in QFT, emphasizing these points which are now good consolidated and for which passable theoretical descriptions were supplied. The ebook is exclusive in that it bargains a brand new method of the topic and explores many subject matters in basic terms touched upon, if coated in any respect, in ordinary reference works.
Additional resources for Reading Bohr: Physics and Philosophy
Example text
30 Complementarity, Epistemology, and Quantum Mechanics as an Information Theory The situation just described, sometimes also known as the quantum measurement paradox, is remarkable. Other standard locutions include strange, puzzling, mysterious (and sometimes mystical), and incomprehensible. The reason for this reaction is that, if one speaks in terms of particles themselves, in the interference picture the behavior of each particle appears to be “influenced” by the location of the slits. Or, even more radically, individually or (which is hardly less troubling) collectively, particles appear somehow to “know” whether both slits are or are not open, or whether there are or are not counting devices installed.
As Bohr says: This point is of great logical consequence, since it is only the circumstance that we are presented with a choice of either tracing the path of a particle or observing interference effects, which allows us to escape from the paradoxical necessity of concluding that the behavior of an electron or a photon should depend on the presence of a slit in a diaphragm through which it could be proved not to pass. We have here to do with a typical example of how the complementary phenomena appear under mutually exclusive experimental arrangements … and are just faced with the impossibility, in the analysis of quantum effects, of drawing any sharp separation between an independent behavior of atomic objects and their interaction with the measuring instruments which serve to define the conditions under which the phenomena occur.
Indeed, as a result, the statistical nature of quantum mechanics appears to be irreducible (PWNB 2, p. 34). It is itself an aspect of “the peculiar individuality of quantum effects,” the concept to be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. In other words, we do not know and, in Bohr’s view, ultimately cannot know why certain probability rules, say, those of Planck’s law or Born’s square moduli rule for calculating quantum-mechanical probabilities in fact apply, but they do. Whenever the interference pattern is found, one cannot assign probabilities to the two alternative “histories” of a “particle” passing through either one slit or another on its way to the screen.