The logic of modern physicsBridgman, P. W. (Percy Williams)
Philosophy
The logic of modern physics
Bridgman, P. W. (Percy Williams)
Physics -- Philosophy
We are not content, however, to stop with dimensions of atomic order,
but have to push on to the electron with a diameter of the order of
10^-18 cm. What is the possible meaning of the statement that the
diameter of an electron is 10^-18 cm.? Again the only answer is found by
examining the operations by which the number 10^-18 was obtained. This
number came by solving certain equations derived from the field
equations of electrodynamics, into which certain numerical data obtained
by experiment had been substituted. The concept of length has therefore
now been so modified as to include that theory of electricity embodied
in the field equations, and, most important, assumes the correctness of
extending these equations from the dimensions in which they may be
verified experimentally into a region in which their correctness is one
of the most important and problematical of present-day questions in
physics. To find whether the field equations are correct on a small
scale, we must verify the relations demanded by the equations between
the electric and magnetic forces and the space coordinates, to determine
which involves measurement of lengths. But if these space coordinates
cannot be given an independent meaning apart from the equations, not
only is the attempted verification of the equations impossible, but the
question itself is meaningless. If we stick to the concept of length by
itself, we are landed in a vicious circle. As a matter of fact, the
concept of length disappears as an independent thing, and fuses in a
complicated way with other concepts, all of which are themselves altered
thereby, with the result that the total number of concepts used in
describing nature at this level is reduced in number. A precise analysis
of the situation is difficult, and I suppose has never been attempted,
but the general character of the situation is evident. Until at least a
partial analysis is attempted, I do not see how any meaning can be
attached to such questions as whether space is Euclidean in the small
scale.
It is interesting to observe that any increased accuracy in knowledge of
large scale phenomena must, as far as we now can see, arise from an
increase in the accuracy of measurement of small things, that is, in the
measurement of small angles or the analysis of minute differences of
wave lengths in the spectra. To know the very large takes us into the
same field of experiment as to know the very small, so that
operationally the large and the small have features in common.
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