Niels Bohr's Philosophy of Physics

by Dugald Murdoch

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.

Genres: Science, Philosophy, Physics

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 1989

Reviews

[Valentin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvelous book. The author presents the development of Bohr's concepts in the historical order, i.e. how Bohr first observed, needed, and used them. Through this approach, one feels Bohr's struggle to crystallize his concepts in accordance with his vision of physics, as the difficulties to interpret qunatum mechanics, from a classical point of view, rises. The concepts are represented also from a variety of modern perspective, enlightening not only the explanation, but also the difficulty and complexity of the problems involved in the qunatum mechanical interpretation. This makes the book rather difficult to read for a newcomer in quantum mechanics, but a joy for someone already familiar with the topic.