Paul dirac and the Einstein-Bohr debate

Perspectives on Science 16 (1):103-114 (2008)
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Abstract

: Although Dirac rarely participated in the interpretational debates over quantum theory, it is traditionally assumed that his views were aligned with Heisenberg and Bohr in the so-called Copenhagen-Göttingen camp. However, an unpublished—and apparently unknown—lecture of Dirac's reveals that this view is mistaken; in the famous debate between Einstein and Bohr, Dirac sided with Einstein. Surprisingly, Dirac believed that quantum mechanics was not complete, that the uncertainty principle would not survive in the future physics, and that a deterministic description of the microworld would be recovered. In this paper I show how we can make sense of this unpublished lecture in the context of Dirac's broader philosophy of quantum mechanics, and how our present understanding of Dirac's philosophical views must be revised.

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Alisa Bokulich
Boston University

Citations of this work

Reason, causation and compatibility with the phenomena.Basil Evangelidis - 2020 - Wilmington, Delaware, USA: Vernon Press.

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References found in this work

Niels Bohr’s Generalization of Classical Mechanics.Peter Bokulich - 2005 - Foundations of Physics 35 (3):347-371.
Heisenberg Meets Kuhn: Closed Theories and Paradigms.Alisa Bokulich - 2006 - Philosophy of Science 73 (1):90-107.
Open or closed? Dirac, Heisenberg, and the relation between classical and quantum mechanics.Alisa Bokulich - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 35 (3):377-396.

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