The Origin of Quantum Theory

Wolfgang Smith. Eugene O' Neill [CC BY-SA 4.0]

This is the second of my posts reviewing Dr Wolfgang Smith's 2019 monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality. (Angelico Press, 2019, also available on Amazon Kindle)
For further reading on this and related material, see the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

Smith introduces the quantum theory in Chapter 1, explaining that since the days of Sir Isaac Newton  (1643-1727) it had been supposed that matter reduces ultimately to Democritean[1] atoms. With the refinement of experimental means, these would eventually present themselves as objects to be observed and measured.

As the experimental means achieved further refinement, however, it became apparent that these so-called atoms are not in fact tiny “particles” at all. What came to light is something that exhibits both particle and wave characteristics, which is to say that it is actually neither a particle nor a wave.

“One was left thus with something,” writes Smith, “that can no longer be pictured or conceived at all—except possibly in mathematical terms. By the time the 'smoke had cleared,' physicists were obliged to accept the fact that their near-perfect Newtonian science had, in a sense, vanished into thin air... the most perfect physics the world had ever seen turned out to be 'a kind of mystic chant over an unintelligible universe,' in Whitehead’s telling words.”[2] 

Werner Heisenberg. Bundesarchiv. CC-BY-SA 3.0

What was needed was a brand new physics and this was discovered in 1925 by three scholars, independently. The greatest genius among them was Werner Heisenberg.[3] He noted that physicists seemed to work on the assumption that a physical system owned its own dynamic attributes - a position or momentum, say - prior to the act of measurement by the scientist. This, he argued, was an unverifiable hypothesis. He recalled Lord Kelvin’s definition of physics as “the science of measurement”—and realized in a flash that the mystery of quantum physics resides precisely in the act of measurement itself.

Smith summarizes Heisenberg's discovery in the following terms:

“...what a quantum system owns in place of actual dynamic attributes, according to Heisenberg’s theory, is an array of probabilities, which could be represented as the elements of an infinite matrix.”

The resultant “matrix mechanics” has now been in direct or indirect use for close to a century and has never yet yielded a false result. Despite the apparent perfection of quantum theory,  Smith observes that no one seems to have so much as the slightest notion what in plain fact it means—whether, for example, there actually exists a “quantum world” or not.

This is the fascinating enigma that, together with related questions, the author will explore in subsequent chapters.


[1] Democritus (c. 460 – c. 370 BC) was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher remembered today for his formulation of an atomic theory of the universe.
[2] Alfred North Whitehead (1861 – 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on mathematics, logic, and physics. His most notable work in these fields is the three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910–1913), which he wrote with former student Bertrand Russell.
[3]  Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901 – 1976), a German theoretical physicist and one of the key pioneers of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent series of papers with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, during the same year, this matrix formulation of quantum mechanics was substantially elaborated. He is known for the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which he published in 1927. Heisenberg was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the creation of quantum mechanics".