Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T07:42:01.289Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Quantum Mechanics, Amplifying Processes, and Living Matter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Walter M. Elsasser
Walter M. Elsasser*
Affiliation:
University of Utah
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A quarter of a century has elapsed since quantum mechanics was discovered. Perhaps it is not too much to say, in retrospect, that the time was ripe for this particular development. This is attested, not only by the speed with which the edifice of the theory was completed immediately following the basic discoveries of Heisenberg and Schrödinger, but also by the rapidity, well-nigh unprecedented in the history of science with which the new results were applied to almost every branch of physics and chemistry. A mental readiness on the part of the scientists involved might have had much more to do with this than the facilities of modern communication systems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , October 1951 , pp. 300 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © 1951, The Williams & Wilkins Company

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

∗

First printed in Proceedings of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, vol. 26, 1951.

References

1. Bohr, N., Nature, 131, 421, 457 (1933).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. Schrödinger, E., What is Life, Cambridge University Press, Macmillan, New York, 1945.Google Scholar
3. Neumann, J. von, Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik, Springer, Berlin, 1933, Dover, New York, 1943.Google Scholar
4. Margenau, H., Philosophy of Science 2, 48, 164 (1935); 4, 337 (1937); The Nature of Physical Reality, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1950.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. Jordan, P., Philosophy of Science, 16, 269 (1949).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6. Elsasser, W. M., Physical Review, 52, 987 (1937).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7. Rosenblueth, Wiener, and Bigelow, , Philosophy of Science, 10, 18 (1943).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8. Wiener, N., Cybernetics, John Wiley, New York, 1948.Google ScholarPubMed
9. Conant, and Blatt, , The Chemistry of Organic Compounds, 2nd edition, Macmillan, New York, 1947; chapter 20.Google Scholar
10. Tolman, R. C., Statistical Mechanics, Oxford University Press, 1938; chapter 5.Google Scholar
11. Franck, J. and Livingston, R., Reviews of Modern Physics, 21, 505 (1949).Google Scholar