Speaker
Description
Shortly before his discovery of QM was published, Werner Heisenberg said in his letter to Ralph Kronig: “What I really like in this scheme is that one can really reduce all interactions between atoms and the external world to transition probabilities.” This statement reflects a revolutionary transformation—physical, mathematical, and philosophical—that Heisenberg’s theory brought with it. First and foremost, one needed a theory that could predict these probabilities. The invention of this theory, QM, was Heisenberg’s greatest invention, and the driving force, mathematical in nature, of this revolution. His invention could be compared the invention of the mathematics of classical physics by Descartes, Galileo, and, especially calculus, by Newton, in the emergence of the new culture of their own time, the culture of modernity as a mathematical and scientific culture. QM brought the role of mathematics in physics to a new level and initiated a new epoch of the relationships among mathematics, physics, philosophy, and culture, by making quantum culture part of our culture. Our culture is still coming to terms with quantum culture, in part because the resistance to it, not the least by physicists and philosophers, have been strong and never subsided. By contrast, I shall suggest, modernist literature and art, such as Joyce’s novels and Kandinsky’s abstract painting, made thinking akin to that of Heisenberg leading to QM a creative force of literature and art, and played key roles in advancing quantum culture.
