When champions meet: rethinking the Bohr-Einstein debate

DOI10.1016/J.SHPSB.2005.10.002zbMATH Open1222.81072arXivquant-ph/0507220OpenAlexW2014054878MaRDI QIDQ640263FDOQ640263

Klaas Landsman

Publication date: 17 October 2011

Published in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Part B. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Einstein's philosophy of physics (as clarified by Fine, Howard, and Held) was predicated on his Trennungsprinzip, a combination of separability and locality, without which he believed objectification, and thereby "physical thought" and "physical laws", to be impossible. Bohr's philosophy (as elucidated by Hooker, Scheibe, Folse, Howard, Held, and others), on the other hand, was grounded in a seemingly different doctrine about the possibility of objective knowledge, namely the necessity of classical concepts. In fact, it follows from Raggio's Theorem in algebraic quantum theory that - within an appropriate class of physical theories - suitable mathematical translations of the doctrines of Bohr and Einstein are equivalent. Thus - upon our specific formalization - quantum mechanics accommodates Einstein's Trennungsprinzip if and only if it is interpreted a la Bohr through classical physics. Unfortunately, the protagonists themselves failed to discuss their differences in this constructive way, since their debate was dominated by Einstein's ingenious but ultimately flawed attempts to establish the "incompleteness" of quantum mechanics. This aspect of their debate may still be understood and appreciated, however, as reflecting a much deeper and insurmountable disagreement between Bohr and Einstein on the knowability of Nature. Using the theological controversy on the knowability of God as a analogy, Einstein was a Spinozist, whereas Bohr could be said to be on the side of Maimonides. Thus Einstein's off-the-cuff characterization of Bohr as a 'Talmudic philosopher' was spot-on.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0507220

zbMATH Keywords

EPRBohr-Einstein debatecompleteness of quantum mechanicsobjectificationRaggio's theorem

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

General and philosophical questions in quantum theory (81P05)

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Cited In (7)

• The Primacy of the Classical? Saul Kripke Meets Niels Bohr
• On the limits of quantum theory: contextuality and the quantum-classical cut
• Einstein completeness as categoricity
• Einstein's photon box revisited
• Refocusing Bohr's quantum postulate
• Uncertainties in quantum measurements: a quantum tomography
• Quantum dynamical semigroups and decoherence

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