The logic of modern physicsBridgman, P. W. (Percy Williams)
Philosophy
The logic of modern physics
Bridgman, P. W. (Percy Williams)
Physics -- Philosophy
It seems then that we must give up the idea that in the quantum domain
the usual concepts of space and time may fail, in the specific sense
that they may become discontinuous. What may we understand by the
failure of these concepts in a more general sense? No one of course
would expect that even eventually the concepts will have the same
operational significance for the inside of an atom that they have on the
ordinary scale; it must be a modified sort of concept with which we are
concerned, such as we have already seen is given by the field equations
of electrodynamics. If now the number of operationally independent
concepts on the quantum level turns out to be the same as on the level
of ordinary experience, and if there is also the possibility of
continuous transition from the operations of the quantum domain to those
of ordinary experience, then it seems to me that we should say that our
usual concepts of space and time still apply in the quantum domain. But
if the number of operationally independent concepts is either greater or
less than on the ordinary level, then I believe we must say that the
ordinary concepts of space and time cannot apply. One might still look
for the possibility of separating out from the complex of concepts on
the quantum level a group which might change continuously to those of
space and time on the ordinary level, but I think that such a
possibility is very remote when one considers that the total number of
concepts changes, and that in the zone where the number changes the
definitions are not unique by which one extrapolates a concept from one
domain to another.
If Bohr's idea is true that space and time cannot be used in describing
ultimate quantum phenomena, one of the most immediate implications in
terms of experiment might be that phenomena corresponding to
intermediate positions of the electron between stable orbits do not
exist.
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