Thesis ID: CBB001562244

From Correspondence to Complementarity: The Emergence of Bøhr's Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (2002)

unapi

Tanona, Scott Daniel (Author)


Indiana University
Friedman, Michael


Publication Date: 2002
Edition Details: Advisor: Friedman, Michael
Physical Details: 257 pp.
Language: English

I develop a new analysis of Niels Bøhr's Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics by examining the development of his views from his earlier use of the correspondence principle in the so-called old quantum theory to his articulation of the idea of complementarity in the context of the novel mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics. I argue that Bøhr was motivated not by controversial and perhaps dispensable epistemological ideas---positivism or neo-Kantianism, for example---but by his own unique perspective on the difficulties of creating a new working physics of the internal structure of the atom. Bøhr's use of the correspondence principle in the old quantum theory was associated with an empirical methodology that used this principle as an epistemological bridge to connect empirical phenomena with quantum models. The application of the correspondence principle required that one determine the validity of the idealizations and approximations necessary for the judicious use of classical physics within quantum theory. Bøhr's interpretation of the new quantum mechanics then focused on the largely unexamined ways in which by precisely this process of approximation. Significant consistency between his later interpretive framework and his forms of argument with the correspondence principle indicate that complementarity is best understood as a relationship among the various approximations and idealizations that must be made when one connects otherwise meaningless quantum mechanical symbols to empirical situations or experimental arrangements described using concepts from classical physics. We discover that this relationship is unavoidable not through any sort of a priori analysis of the priority of classical concepts, but because quantum mechanics incorporates the correspondence approach in the way in which it represents quantum properties with matrices of transition probabilities, the empirical meaning of which depend on the situation but in general are tied to the correspondence connection to the spectra. For Bøhr, it is then the commutation relations, which arise from the formalism, which inform us of the complementary nature of this approximate representation of quantum properties via the classical equations through which we connect them to experiments.

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Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 63 (2003): 4343. UMI order no. 3075965.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001562244/

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Authors & Contributors
Camilleri, Kristian
Freire, Olival, Jr.
Leyla Joaquim
Becker, Adam
Greco, Pietro
Stenholm, Stig
Concepts
Physics
Quantum mechanics
Philosophy
Theoretical physics
Philosophy of science
Complementarity
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
19th century
21st century
20th century, late
Places
Copenhagen (Denmark)
United States
Denmark
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