Description
Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive philosophical and historical account of the experimental foundations of Niels Bohr’s practice of physics.
Trade Review"Perovic offers a novel and refreshingly unorthodox interpretation of Bohr's seminal contributions to quantum physics and their philosophical implications. Adopting a method of historically sensitive analysis, he argues convincingly that the great Dane came to his overarching hypotheses, including the complementarity principle, by inductive reasoning inherently based on experiments. He skillfully defends Bohr against the charges that his epistemological and methodological views were amateurish armchair philosophy. Perovic's book on Bohr's vision is recommendable from a scientific, historical, and philosophical perspective."--Helge Kragh, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen
Table of ContentsIntroduction Part 1: Preliminaries 2 From Laboratory to Theory 3 From Classical Experiments to Quantum Theory Part 2: Bohr’s Vision in Practice: the Old Quantum Theory 4 Spectral Lines, Quantum States, and a Master Model of the Atom 5 The Correspondence Principle as an Intermediary Hypothesis 6 Reception 7 The Scientific Moderator Part 3: Toward Quantum Mechanics 8 Quantum Corpuscles, Quantum Waves, and the Experiments 9 The Uncertainty Principle as an Intermediary Hypothesis 10 Metaphysical Principles and Heuristic Rules 11 New Formalisms and Bohr’s Atom 12 Complementarity Established and Applied Part 4: Aftermath 13 Bohr and the “Copenhagen Orthodoxy” 14 Bohr’s Response to the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument 15 The Mature Bohr and the Rise of Slick Theory and Theoreticians Acknowledgments Bibliography Index
