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Some Consequences of the Positivistic Interpretation of Physics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

A. V. Bushkovitch
A. V. Bushkovitch*
Affiliation:
College of Charleston, Charleston, S. C.
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Abstract

The prevailing philosophical mood among those physicists today whose interests are mainly in the field of modern atomic theory, is some form of positivism. This is true not only of the leaders in the field of quantum mechanics, as for instance Heisenberg, Jordan, and Dirac, in whose writings on the philosophical aspects of the recent revolutionary advances in physics the positivistic tendency is clearly visible, but also of the rank and file of competent students of the modern quantum theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , January 1940 , pp. 97 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1940

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References

Notes

1 Cf. e.g. his “Anschauliche Quantentheorie”, Berlin, 1936, Chap. 5.

2 Dirac, P.A.M., “The Principles of Quantum Mechanics”, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1935, p. 5.

3 Planck, M. “Positivismus und reale Aussenwelt”, Leipzig, 1931.

4 Some, however, should now rather be attracted to pure mathematics and logic where the manipulation and creation of concepts appears in its purest form. It must be confessed that the influence of positivism has had something of this effect on the present writer.

5 Heisenberg, W. “Wandlungen in den Grundlagen der Naturwissenschaft”, Leipzig, 1935.