.
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: It sems possible that Heisenberg may have had
> some rightwing political
> conscoiusness, I believe.
Heisenberg was fairly right wing. In his autobiography
he recalls serving in the militai that helped put down
the Spartakus rebellion, and of course, though no
Nazi, he later stayed in Nazi Germany at more or less
nominally, depending on who you believe, headed up the
Nazi atomic weapons project (which never went
anywhere).
All of this is totally irrelevant to the truth of H's
contributions to quantum physics, notably the
uncertainty principle, but not just that, his other
work too. Right wingers can do great science -- von
Neumann and Teller are others who come to mind.
It is possible that he was
> aware of the political
> aspects of the struggle between materialism and
> idealism.
I don't think that would have interested H. Btw,
Lenin's explanation of the rationale behind that
struggle is uncharcteristically dumb -- he argues that
"idealism" implies "fideism" (theism), which is right
wing.
Perhaps
> Heisenberg framed his
> scientific discovery in terms of indeterminancy
> with a certain intent to
> fight Leninist theory of knowledge.
Well, if he did, which I doubt -- I know no reason to
think he knew that Lenin had writen on theory of
knowledge -- he was nonetheless demonstrably right. If
the "Leninist theory of knowledge" -- and M&EC was
writen almost 20 years before H framed the uncertainty
principle -- is inconsistent with that principle, then
it is refuted by science. The uncertainty principle
is mathematically provable -- you get contradiction if
you deny it. I don't know if the "Leninist theory of
knowledge" is consistent with quantum uncertainty, but
if it is worth anything, it better be.
Whether quantum uncertainty is in some sense
"idealist" is a tricky question. Earlier this week I
posed a challenge to explain what was meant by
materialism and what was at stake in the debate, no
one took this up. That was a mistake, these terms are
slippery and cannot be taken for granted.
Q-uncertainty does make facts about the physical world
observer dependent -- we choose whether a particle has
a determinate velocity or a determinate position by
our decicion about which to measure. Q uncertainty
says it cannot have both. (Note: not that we cannot
_know_ both, it cannot _have_ both.) This is true
whether or it is idealist.
It is important to distinguish between the hard core
of the theory, the mathematics, predictions, and
confirmable observations, and the philosophical
interpretions that the theory seems to call for. It is
not obvious that if q-uncertainty is idealist in some
sense that it therefore right wing. All modern
physicists, including Marxists, Communists,
socialists, and anarchist physicists, accept it.
Certaintly nothing about q physics is particularly
theistic,a lthough there are Christian physicists who
have tried to make the connection.
__________________________________________
Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about.
Just $16.99/mo. or less.
dsl.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
Marxism-Thaxis mailing list
Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
