The Significance for Natural Philosophy of the Move from Classical to Modern Physics
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The Significance for Natural Philosophy of the Move from Classical to Modern Physics Grete Hermann1
© The Author(s) 2020
SUMMARY—This study shows how, despite the changes it has introduced, modern physics preserves certain fundamental ideas of classical physics (Bohr’s correspondence principle). While it gives up much of the ideal of a mechanistic physics, it still remains tied to Kant’s thesis that the forms of intuition and the categories are the necessary presuppositions for the knowledge of nature. 1. The development of modern physics has two distinctive aspects: on the one hand the demand for a revision of almost all fundamental assumptions on which the knowledge of nature has been based until now, and indeed for a revision based on experience; on the other hand the upholding of certain fundamental conceptions of classical physics, which finds its strongest expression in Bohr’s correspondence principle. Modern physics presents us with the problem within natural philosophy of reconciling these two aspects. 2. The dualism between the wave and particle picture in quantum mechanics, with its consequences for [our] causal command of natural phenomena represents the strongest departure from the classical picture of nature. But this departure is closely connected to a series of earlier transformations in the picture of nature. The first step in this direction is taken in Maxwell’s theory, which detaches the wave picture from the presupposition of a material support until then taken for granted. A further stage is the theory of relativity, with the demonstration that one cannot ascribe to matter a definite state of motion with respect to the ‘ether’. Finally, while the steps up to now have brought the wave and particle picture more and more into opposition, quantum mechanics leads one to applying them again to one and the same atomic process.
Written by Grete Hermann, translated by Guido Bacciagaluppi, from the reprint in Herrmann, K. (Ed.) (2019). Grete Henry-Hermann: Philosophie—Mathematik—Quantenmechanik. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 379–381. Originally published in German (with French summary) as ‘Die naturphilosophische Bedeutung des Übergangs von der klassischen zur modernen Physik’, Chapter XVII in Bayer, R. (Ed.) (1937). Travaux du IXe Congrès International de Philosophie—Congrès Descartes. Vol. VII, Causalité et Déterminisme. Actualités Scientifiques et Industrielles, n. 536. Paris: Hermann et Cie, pp. 99–101. Thanks to the editors for a careful reading of the translation. Grete Hermann—deceased (1901–1984). * Grete Hermann [email protected] 1
Østrupgård, Denmark
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3. The starting point of this development is characterised by the abandonment of an old expectation, which in the Enlightenment dominated research in both physics and natural philosophy, namely the expectation that in the end physics would reduce completely to classical mechanics. What distinguishes this discipline is in fact its intuitive spatiotemporal modelling of natural phenomena. The construction of
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