Newsletter of Phenomenology

Keeping phenomenologists informed since May 2002

Repository | Book | Chapter

213317

(1996) Physics and national socialism, Basel, Birkhäuser.

On Heisenberg's uncertainty relations and their epistemological significance [June 29, 1934]

Max von Laue

pp. 82-86

Two years ago I indicated in this journal*[1]that the conclusions drawn from the formalism of quantum mechanics, and in particular from the uncertainty relations,[2]do not seem to necessarily indicate a failure of the causality principle, because the conceptual structures on which these conclusions are based stem from Newton's mechanics and, like all of classical mechanics, are of empirical origin. In my opinion this reasoning only refutes applying those [classical] concepts to atomic processes. There is one argument in the discussion of this subject, however, that I had not commented on at the time, which initially sounds quite convincing.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-0348-9008-3_31

Full citation:

von Laue, (1996)., On Heisenberg's uncertainty relations and their epistemological significance [June 29, 1934], in K. Hentschel (ed.), Physics and national socialism, Basel, Birkhäuser, pp. 82-86.