Niels Bohr's Philosophy of Physics

By Dugald Murdoch

Book Overview

Murdoch describes the historical background of the physics from which Bohr's ideas grew; he traces the origins of his idea of complementarity and discusses its meaning and significance. Special emphasis is placed on the contrasting views of Einstein, and the great debate between Bohr and Einstein is thoroughly examined. Bohr's philosophy is revealed as being much more subtle, and more interesting than is generally acknowledged.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 052137927X
• ISBN13: 9780521379274
• Release Date: March 1989
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Sophisticated Philosophy and Physics

This book is concerned with the philosophical interpretation of quantum physics that Bohr developed over his career (and thus, over the development of quantum physics), but there are fairly explicit physical arguments (Gedanken experiments) that clearly expose the issues at hand. This is very appropriate for Bohr's work. The presentation of Bohr's argument with Einstein on the time/energy uncertainty inequality is the clearest I have ever seen. For people interested in the meaning of quantum mechanics: You will need to know the quantum physics. There are also a couple of very detailed chapters on other philosophers' views of Bohr and quantum physics, including fairly recent commentary.

Comprehensive but difficult

As a nuclear engineering graduate student, I expected to understand most of what was discussed, but the book is highly technical and really requires a further understanding of quantum mechanics. If you haven't had an introduction to modern physics course, or have equivalent knowledge, you won't be able to appreciate the philosophical points. With some knowledge, an understanding of the original philosophical considerations of quantum mechanics is gained by reading this book. Additionally, expect this book to take a very long time to read--I took more than four months to finish and I can usually read even technical things of comparable length in less than a week. Finally, I like the portrait of Bohr that is presented in this book. Usually he is shown as extremely abstracted and highly intelligent, but largely as a caring person--more the human side. This book helped me understand the level of his genius without showing him as inhumanly scientific or emphasizing his assistance to other scientists during the WWII.