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Heisenberg's Concept of Matter as Potency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Michael Jerome Carella
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Extract

Does the success of quantum mechanics require that we abandon the notion of complete scientific explanation? Or does it represent a breakthrough in the explanatory scope of physical theories? Ever since Werner Heisenberg formulated the theory of matrix mechanics in 1925, this issue has been the topic of a continuing philosophical debate. In this essay I propose to explain Heisenberg's rejection of the mechanistic philosophy associated with classical physics and the significance of his return to Aristotle's concept of matter as potency.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 24 , Issue 96 , December 1976 , pp. 25 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 Heisenberg, " Über quantentheorische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechani scher Beziehungen ", Zeitschrift für Physik, vol. 30 (1925), pp. 879-93.

* The part which follows in brackets contains technical explanations intended only for specialists. The reader who so desires may pick up the thread of the article again on page 28.

2 For Heisenberg's view of atomism and classical physics see Heisenberg's Philosophical Problems of Nuclear Science, New York, 1952; The Physicist's Conception of Nature, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1958; and Physics and Philo sophy, New York, Harper and Row, 1958.

3 Heisenberg, "Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Ki nematik und Mechanik "; Zeitschrift für Physik, vol. 43 (1927), 177.

4 For Aristotle's account of matter as potency see Aristotle's Physics, translated by Richard Hope; Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1961, especially Book Beta.

5 Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, p. 160.