Jim Farmelant
Thu, 30 Jan 2003 11:54:36 -0800
The following is a response to someone who wrote to me offlist concerning Marxist views concerning quantum mechanics.
On Sun, 26 Jan 2003 02:54:12 -0500 hw wrote: > This is very good; your comments are, as usual, polemically > evenhanded and kindly. Of course, here there is little with which > you disagree. > > What is the Marxist mainline view of Heisenberg himself (as well as > his version of Quanta and the statistical view) ? Or, who best > propounds this view (I am sure it embodies serious, technical > critique)? I am not sure that there is any one Marxist mainline position concerning Heisenberg and quantum mechanics. In the former USSR, quantum mechanics (and for that matter relativity too) was originally strongly attacked as being idealist. And it was certainly easy to pick out quotes from the writings of Heisenberg and Bohr to back up that charge. And for that matter it should be noted that Einstein likewise criticized the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics along those lines as well. In his "Reply to Criticisms" in the Schilpp book *Albert Einstein: Philosopher - Scientist* he criticized the Copenhagen School's understanding of wave function collapses, as representing a species of Berkeleyian idealism because it represented such behavior as being oberver-dependent. As Einstein put it: "When a person such as a mouse observes the universe, does that change the universe?" Later in the Soviet Union, official attitudes towards quantum mechanics changed, primarily as a result of the Stalin's decision to purse an A-bomb project. (See http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/1994/nd94/nd94Holloway.html) This enabled the pro-quantum mechanics physicists to make the argument that QM was really compatible with dialectical materialism, since among other things you couldn't do nuclear weapons research without QM. In fact I have a late Soviet-era textbook on quantum mechanics, in which the author quotes extensive passages from Bohr's writings to make the argument that his Copenhagen Interpretation was consistent with the principles of materialist dialectics. Now I have previously made mention of alternative interpretations of QM which challenge the Copenhagen Interpretation. One of these alternative views, the causal interpretation or hidden- variables interpretation, developed by David Bohm was in its origins at least, Marxian inspired. As he wrote in private correspondence: "People's ideas are in the long run fundamentally influenced by their concepts of the fundamental nature of matter and the idea that the properties of matter are understandable in a natural way as well of much interest and intellectual beauty, will help move people's ideas away from the confusion and mysticism in which they are now mixed up." In his view the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics by undermining faith in the principle of causality had very reactionary and pernicious implications. In his view, human progress depended on confidence in causality, in the notion that all of reality, from subatomic particles up to living organisms including humans, and human societies were all rationally comprehensible in terms of natural laws which could be used to bring natural phenomena (including human society) under rational control. Thus, in his view progress in the political and social spheres (i.e. the eventual attainment of socialism) was dependent on acceptance of the idea that everything is ultimately comprehensible in causal terms. Since the Copenhagen Interpretation seemed to deny this in relation to atomic and subatomic particles, he rejected it. (It should be noted that Bohm was a Marxist up to 1956, when he became disillusioned by events like the Khruschchev speech denouncing Stalin, and by the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary). After drifting away from Marxism, he himself became attracted to religious mysticism, first becoming an associate of Krishnamurti and later of the Dalai Lama). Some writings by Bohm that might be of interest include *Causality and Change in Modern Physics* (London, 1957) in which he presents a philosophy of nature in support of the hidden-variable interpretation of QM, that is broadly consonant with Friedrich Engels' philosophy of nature as presented in *Anti-Durhing* and *The Dialectics of Nature*. In that book, Bohm argued there are new laws at each level of organization of matter that cannot be reduced to the laws that apply at the lower levels. For example, one cannot explain temperature of a gas in terms of individual gas molecules, since it is a property only of a collection of gas molecules and has no meaning for a single molecule. Yet the temperature of a gas rests on two aspects of the individual molecule, ignoring all its other aspects, namely its relative independence of the other molecules except when it collides with another, and its elasticity when it bounces off another. Probably, Bohm's best known later book is *Wholeness and the Implicate Order* (London, 1980). Jim F. ________________________________________________________________ Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today Only $9.95 per month! Visit www.juno.com _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis