The Observable

Heisenbergs Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics

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• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781433130625
• eBook ISBN:
  9781453917138
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Historiography

Patrick Aidan Heelan's The Observable offers the reader a completely articulated development of his 1965 philosophy of quantum physics, Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity. In this previously unpublished study dating back more than a half a century, Heelan brings his background as both a physicist and a philosopher to his reflections on Werner Heisenberg's physical philosophy. Including considerably broader connections to the contributions of Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, and Albert Einstein, this study also reflects Heelan's experience in Eugene Wigner's laboratory at Princeton along with his reflections on working with Erwin Schrödinger dating from Heelan's years at the Institute for Advanced Cosmology in Dublin.
A contribution to continental philosophy of science, the phenomenological and hermeneutic resources applied in this book to the physical and ontological paradoxes of quantum physics, especially in connection with laboratory science and measurement, theory and model making, will enrich students of the history of science as well as those interested in different approaches to the historiography of science. University courses in the philosophy of physics will find this book indispensable as a resource and invaluable for courses in the history of science.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Foreword (Michel Bitbol)
• Foreword (Babette Babich)
• Author’s Foreword
• Abbreviations
• Preface (1970)
• Chapter One: Observation, Description and Ontology: Strategy
• Chapter Two: Relativity: Model of a Scientific Revolution
• Chapter Three: Quantum Mechanics 1925: Revolution
• Chapter Four: Wave Mechanics 1926: Reaction
• Chapter Five: Search for a Paradigm
• Chapter Six: The Uncertainty Relations: Paradigm or Ontology of Nature?
• Chapter Seven: The Philosophical Differences Between Heisenberg and Bohr
• Chapter Eight: Complementarity
• Chapter Nine: The Chicago Lectures 1929: Complementarity Adopted
• Chapter Ten: “Observation”
• Chapter Eleven: Observation and Description in Quantum Mechanics
• Chapter Twelve: The a Priori Role of Classical Physics
• Chapter Thirteen: The Gifford Lectures 1955–56 and the New Aristotelianism
• Chapter Fourteen: The Logical Status of Potentia
• Chapter Fifteen: Objectivity and Realism in Quantum Mechanics
• Chapter Sixteen: Observation, Description, and Ontology: Summary
• Bibliography and References
• Appendix: Correspondence with Professors Werner Heisenberg and Francis Zucker
• Patrick Aidan Heelan: Brief Biography Including Select Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index