Translation of Three Short Papers by Grete Hermann
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Translation of Three Short Papers by Grete Hermann Guido Bacciagaluppi1
© The Author(s) 2020
After a number of years of relative neglect, it is now becoming apparent that Grete Hermann (1901–1984) was one of the most accomplished neo-Kantian philosophers of the last century—in part thanks to the recent publication of two volumes on and of her work, one in English (Crull and Bacciagaluppi 2017) and one in German (Herrmann 2019), both reviewed in this issue. The latter in particular contains Hermann’s entire output on modern physics and philosophy of science. Below I translate the three shortest papers by Hermann in that volume, which I introduce here. They provide quick but fascinating glimpses into some of Hermann’s ideas on philosophy of science, quantum mechanics and transcendental idealism. They are: from 1935 a book review of Popper’s Logik der Forschung (the original German edition of The Logic of Scientific Discovery), from 1936 a comment on Schlick’s posthumously published talk ‘Quantentheorie und Erkennbarkeit der Natur’ (‘Quantum Theory and Knowability of Nature’) and from 1937 a short summary of Hermann’s ideas on the relation between Kant’s philosophy and modern physics (specifically electrodynamics, the special and general theories of relativity and quantum mechanics) presented at the Congrès Descartes in Paris.1
1 Popper Review Popper had published Logik der Forschung in late 1934 (with the impressum of the following year, Popper 1935). The physics journal Physikalische Zeitschrift had originally commissioned a review from Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, who had however declined and recommended Hermann instead, because he had just been involved in a controversy with Popper in the pages of Die Naturwissenschaften (Popper and Weizsäcker 1934). Weizsäcker had pointed out a technical error in an ill-fated attempt by Popper to show the incompleteness of quantum mechanics. A thought experiment was supposed to allow one to reconstruct both the position and the momentum of one particle by appropriate measurements on another particle that had collided with it (but without being able to select 1 Herrmann (2019, 269–271, 273–274 and 379–381, respectively). Translations in this introduction are mine and all emphases within them are original.
* Guido Bacciagaluppi [email protected] 1
Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
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which particle of an ensemble had these precise values). Thus—much like EPR the following year (Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen 1935)—Popper wanted to show that quantum mechanics was correct (because ensembles violating the uncertainty relations could not be prepared) but incomplete (because individual particles within these ensembles had precise values of position and momentum).2 Hermann singles out two elements that play a crucial role in Popper’s philosophy of science: Popper’s falsificationism (which she summarises with some sensitivity) and his notion of t
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