The Philosophy of Quanta
Physicist Carlo Rovelli has offered up his
philosophical review of the quantum revolution largely through the eyes of
Werner Heisenberg. We see the 23-year-old Heisenberg in 1925 on the barren
North Sea Island of Helgoland where he develops probabilistic matrix equations
that explains the movement of electrons. Rovelli takes it one step further
where in the physics of small particles everything is relational. That harks
back to Einstein’s 1905 Theory of Special Relativity.
Heisenberg is challenged by a wave theory authored by
Erwin Schrodinger which eventually fall by the wayside. His discussion of
Schrodinger’s famous cat thought experiment is, to my mind, is marred by him
viewing the cat has asleep or awake, when in fact Schrodinger was discussing
whether or not his cat was dead or alive.
In the book we meet the great physicists of that age,
Plank, Bohr, Dirac and Born. Where Rovelli loses me is where veers off into a
host of philosophical notion to explain the interdependence of all objects. Nevertheless,
you get a sense of the importance of Heisenberg did on Helgoland in 1925 and
that underpins much of modern electronics today.
For the full Amazon Review see: The Philosophy of Quanta (amazon.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment