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The Observable: Heisenberg’s Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics
Patrick Aidan Heelan’s The Observable offers the reader a completely articulated development of his 1965 philosophy of quantum physics, Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity. In this previously unpublished study dating back more than a half a century, Heelan brings his background as both a physicist and a philosopher to his reflections on Werner Heisenberg’s physical philosophy. Including considerably broader connections to the contributions of Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, and Albert Einstein, this study also reflects Heelan’s experience in Eugene Wigner’s laboratory at Princeton along with his reflections on working with Erwin Schrödinger dating from Heelan’s years at the Institute for Advanced Cosmology in Dublin.
A contribution to continental philosophy of science, the phenomenological and hermeneutic resources applied in this book to the physical and ontological paradoxes of quantum physics, especially in connection with laboratory science and measurement, theory and model making, will enrich students of the history of science as well as those interested in different approaches to the historiography of science. University courses in the philosophy of physics will find this book indispensable as a resource and invaluable for courses in the history of science.
A contribution to continental philosophy of science, the phenomenological and hermeneutic resources applied in this book to the physical and ontological paradoxes of quantum physics, especially in connection with laboratory science and measurement, theory and model making, will enrich students of the history of science as well as those interested in different approaches to the historiography of science. University courses in the philosophy of physics will find this book indispensable as a resource and invaluable for courses in the history of science.
185 pages, Hardcover
First published November 30, 2015
About the author
Patrick A. Heelan
7 books1 followerPatrick Aidan Heelan, S.J was an Irish-American Jesuit priest, physicist, and philosopher of science. He was William A. Gaston Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University.
He joined the Society of Jesus at 16, received his B.A. in 1947 and his M.A. in 1948, all with first-class Honors, in mathematics and mathematical physics at University College, Dublin during which time he also worked with Erwin Schrödinger and John Synge at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies both mathematicians famous for their work in General Relativity and Cosmology. In 1948, he won a prestigious fellowship (a Travelling Studentship that paid for doctoral studies abroad anywhere in the world) and his superior directed him to take his doctorate in geophysics and seismology at the Institute of Geophysics at St. Louis University as a junior Jesuit scholastic, where he specialised in the philosophy of science with a concentration in the philosophy of modern physics with a novel approach from the phenomenological and hermeneutical perspective of Husserl and Heidegger.
He then taught physics at UCD for several years before being asked by the Archbishop of Dublin to teach philosophy of science. Patrick Heelan's sense that he needed more philosophy for this brought him, in two steps, first to an encounter with Bernard Lonergan's 1957 book Insight (starting with the original notes in Latin), and then after a two-year post-doc working with Eugene Wigner at Princeton University (1960–62) at the Institute for Advanced Studies, which also gave him, at the start his first experience at Fordham University, Dr Heelan returned to Europe to pursue a second doctorate in philosophy (September 1962 – 1964) at the Catholic University of Louvain at Leuven (in Belgium) where he worked with Jean Ladrière, studying both logic and Husserlian philosophy (Ladrière would write the biographical entries on Patrick Heelan, including his first book, for the French Encyclopédie Philosophique Universelle). He defended his dissertation (with félications du jury) and published and Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity in 1965. During the same period he began his visits and correspondence with Werner Heisenberg himself Max-Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Munich, a contact Heelan maintained until Heisenberg's death in 1976.
In 1965, Heelan joined the philosophy department at Fordham University. He would leave in 1970 at the invitation of John Toll, then the president of State University of New York at Stony Brook, to chair (and to build) the department of philosophy where over the next 22 years he would also fill several major positions in the administration of the University. He published his second major study, Space Perception and the Philosophy of Science with the University of California Press in 1983, which examines the geometry of vision including the space of art and experience and draws on Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. He came to Georgetown University as Executive Vice-President for the Main Campus in 1992 and in 1995, he became the William A. Gaston Professor of Philosophy. The year of 2002, saw the publication of a festschrift, edited by Babette Babich, Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science, Van Gogh's Eyes, and God: Essays in Honor of Patrick A. Heelan, S.J. which appeared as Volume 225 in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. His third book, The Observable, completed in Heisenberg’s living years, and dealing with both Heisenberg and Bohr in addition to Einstein, is due out in mid-2015, Patrick Heelan, who continued to write and to teach until he retired from the philosophy department in 2013, returned to Dublin in 2014. He died in Dublin in 2015.
He joined the Society of Jesus at 16, received his B.A. in 1947 and his M.A. in 1948, all with first-class Honors, in mathematics and mathematical physics at University College, Dublin during which time he also worked with Erwin Schrödinger and John Synge at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies both mathematicians famous for their work in General Relativity and Cosmology. In 1948, he won a prestigious fellowship (a Travelling Studentship that paid for doctoral studies abroad anywhere in the world) and his superior directed him to take his doctorate in geophysics and seismology at the Institute of Geophysics at St. Louis University as a junior Jesuit scholastic, where he specialised in the philosophy of science with a concentration in the philosophy of modern physics with a novel approach from the phenomenological and hermeneutical perspective of Husserl and Heidegger.
He then taught physics at UCD for several years before being asked by the Archbishop of Dublin to teach philosophy of science. Patrick Heelan's sense that he needed more philosophy for this brought him, in two steps, first to an encounter with Bernard Lonergan's 1957 book Insight (starting with the original notes in Latin), and then after a two-year post-doc working with Eugene Wigner at Princeton University (1960–62) at the Institute for Advanced Studies, which also gave him, at the start his first experience at Fordham University, Dr Heelan returned to Europe to pursue a second doctorate in philosophy (September 1962 – 1964) at the Catholic University of Louvain at Leuven (in Belgium) where he worked with Jean Ladrière, studying both logic and Husserlian philosophy (Ladrière would write the biographical entries on Patrick Heelan, including his first book, for the French Encyclopédie Philosophique Universelle). He defended his dissertation (with félications du jury) and published and Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity in 1965. During the same period he began his visits and correspondence with Werner Heisenberg himself Max-Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Munich, a contact Heelan maintained until Heisenberg's death in 1976.
In 1965, Heelan joined the philosophy department at Fordham University. He would leave in 1970 at the invitation of John Toll, then the president of State University of New York at Stony Brook, to chair (and to build) the department of philosophy where over the next 22 years he would also fill several major positions in the administration of the University. He published his second major study, Space Perception and the Philosophy of Science with the University of California Press in 1983, which examines the geometry of vision including the space of art and experience and draws on Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. He came to Georgetown University as Executive Vice-President for the Main Campus in 1992 and in 1995, he became the William A. Gaston Professor of Philosophy. The year of 2002, saw the publication of a festschrift, edited by Babette Babich, Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science, Van Gogh's Eyes, and God: Essays in Honor of Patrick A. Heelan, S.J. which appeared as Volume 225 in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. His third book, The Observable, completed in Heisenberg’s living years, and dealing with both Heisenberg and Bohr in addition to Einstein, is due out in mid-2015, Patrick Heelan, who continued to write and to teach until he retired from the philosophy department in 2013, returned to Dublin in 2014. He died in Dublin in 2015.
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