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Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance
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232 pages, Hardcover
First published February 15, 2015
About the author
Max Born
149 books37 followersMax Born (was a German-British physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 30s. Born won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared with Walther Bothe).
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May 6, 2022
Perforce, the architects of the quantum revolution in the first half of the twentieth century took their philosophy of science seriously, as theirs was the strenuous task of altogether reinventing the way we look at the world (rather like Einstein, too, with respect to his theory of relativity). The shut-up-and-calculate mentality took over only after the second world war. Known for inaugurating the statistical interpretation of the wavefunction amplitude in a brilliant series of papers in 1926, Max Born was among the more philosophically adept scientists of his generation. He sparred both with Erwin Schrödinger, who continued to promote a non-statistical view of the wavefunction as the density of a real fluid in configuration space, and later on with Albert Einstein over the question of the completeness of the quantum-mechanical description of nature. The present volume contains the Wayneflete lectures on the natural philosophy of cause and chance Born delivered at Oxford in 1948, as well as, in an appendix, an essay from 1964 on symbol and reality.
The level of the lectures, meant for a general audience, is very approachable. There are more equations than usual in popular expositions nowadays, but nobody should be scared off on this account. The author knows how not to get lost in the trees and lose sight of the forest (apart from a digression on superfluidity on pp. 117-119, which may be excusable as he was then engaged in exciting laboratory work on it). For those with training in theoretical physics and who can absorb more technical detail, the appendices give Born’s elegant synopses of three dozen topics in physics of his day – but read these for culture as one wouldn’t learn the relevant subjects for the first time from him here. Born’s lecturing style is appealingly clear and direct – which reflects the way a man given to serious thought sees the world in his mature years after he has had the occasion to boil down a lifetime’s worth of observations. See pp. 34-38 for an illustration of his logicality; on how Carathéodory finds an integrating factor yielding an absolute scale of temperature from the theory of Pfaffian systems. Another good specimen of Born’s physical insight can be found in his discussion of the kinetic theory of gases, historically the first paradigmatic problem in which chance and statistics enter in an essential way into theoretical physics [pp. 44-48].
Let us turn to the content. Born understands causality in physics (which he distinguishes from determinism) as a phenomenon of experience, characterized by the Humean properties of repeatability, contiguity and antecedence. Determinism, on the other hand, designates a lawlike connection between states of a system at different times. Physicists are accustomed to specify a system under study by its initial conditions and to predict the future, but as Born properly points out, final conditions and retrodiction of the past would serve just as well. Quantum mechanics is often – all too casually – viewed as having overthrown the principle of causality through its introduction of a necessary indeterminacy. But, Born rejoins,
To this last question I answer that not causality, properly understood, is eliminated, but only a traditional interpretation of it, consisting in its identification with determinism….Causality in my definition is the postulate that one physical situation depends on another, and causal research means the discovery of such dependence. This is still true in quantum physics, though the objects of observation for which a dependence is claimed are different: they are the probabilities of elementary events, not those single events themselves. [pp. 101-102]
Thus, the researcher, in setting up an experiment in the laboratory, grasps the dependence of one factor on another and merely the outcome of the experiment is uncertain, in the sense that an ensemble of outcomes obtained from a collection of systems prepared under identical conditions will lead to a pattern obeying a probabilistic distribution calculable in advance. For instance, one can bombard a crystal with x-rays and observe the scattered rays due to interaction with the lattice. Here, the causal dependence consists in the fact that a periodic array establishes the possibility of constructive interference of incident radiation at a wavelength comparable to the interparticle spacing and scattering into certain angles. The actual direction into which a given incident photon may scatter is indeterminate, but this lack of perfect determination in no way undermines our physical understanding of the causal factors at play.
Born comments on what is novel about quantum mechanics:
We have the paradoxical situation that observable events obey laws of chance, but that the probability for these events spreads out according to laws which are in all essential features causal laws. Here the question of reality cannot be avoided. What really are those particles which, as it is often said, can just as well appear as waves? It would lead me far from my subject to discuss this very difficult problem. I think that the concept of reality is too much connected with emotions to allow a generally acceptable definition. For most people the real things are those things which are important for them. The reality of an artist of a poet is not comparable with that of a saint or prophet, nor with that of a business man or administrator, nor with that of the natural philosopher or scientist. So let me cling to the latter kind of special reality, which can be described in fairly precise terms. It presupposes that our sense impressions are not a permanent hallucination, but the indications of, or signals from, an external world which exists independently of us. Although these signals change and move in a most bewildering way, we are aware of objects with invariant properties. The set of these invariants of our sense impressions is the physical reality which our mind constructs in a perfectly unconscious way. This chair here looks different with each movement of my head, each twinkle of my eye, yet I perceive it as the same chair. Science is nothing else than the endeavor to construct these invariants where they are not obvious. [pp. 103-104]
I personally like to regard a probability wave, even in 3N-dimensional space, as a real thing, certainly as more than a tool for mathematical calculations. For it has the character of an invariant of observation; that means it predicts the results of counting experiments, and we expect to find the same average numbers, the same mean deviation etc., if we actually perform the experiment many times under the same experimental condition. [pp. 105-106]
By the way, Born roundly dismisses Bohmianism [p. 109]. The final lecture on metaphysical conclusions quotes from Born’s correspondence with Einstein (q.v. our review here) and briefly addresses the problem of freedom of the will. For Born, in effect, free will is emergent; you can buy some scope for freedom with quantum indeterminism but not too much in as much as statistical regularities still have to be respected [p. 126].
In closing, Born more or less acknowledges that the Neokantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer has written the book he ought to have: namely, Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik (1937). Appendix three on symbol and reality [pp. 215-234] amounts to a barely passable essay, by no means even close to the profundity with which the great Hermann Weyl understands the issue of symbolism in mathematical physics (in this regard Born is perhaps about on the level of Niels Bohr). To justify this last statement, let us quote a passage from Born:
Bohr’s principle of complementarity is another new method of thinking. Discovered in physics, it is applicable to many other fields. It is another loosening of traditional methods of thought which promises important results. But this leads me beyond the framework of these considerations. [p. 233]
Here Born rather exaggerates the scope of complementarity as it is known in physics; in any case, its ‘application’ to other fields must be pretty loose indeed. In the past seventy years have there been any significant important results coming from the principle of complementarity, such as Born foresees? The question answers itself. To give these scientific authors some credit, though, we could say that what must have happened is that the role of complementarity in atomic physics triggered in their minds an awareness of a central issue in the humanities, that of hermeneutics – which is also vital to theology founded as it is upon the exegesis of scripture, which came to prominence with Schleiermacher in the early nineteenth century and by the twentieth had been wrought into a refined art. But certainly one will find in scattered comments by Bohr and Born nothing comparable to, say, Hans Georg Gadamer. So unfortunately, we are faced with a missed opportunity. The quantum physicists like Bohr and Born were not energetic enough, perhaps owing to advanced age, to pursue the topic with anything like the depth and rigor it deserves and, on the other hand, humanists generally speaking are not comfortable enough with modern mathematical physics to engage it or to learn very much from it.
Cassirer would be a stellar exception to the rule. That is why it behooves us to begin to review his work next. As for Born, we recommend a quick scan through these lectures on cause and chance to gain some familiarity with his style of thought, not much more. The interested reader could follow up with an exchange between Schrödinger and Born in the journal literature: Erwin Schrödinger, Are there quantum jumps? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 3(10), Part I, August 1952, pp. 109-123; 3(11), Part II, November 1952, p. 233-242; Max Born, The interpretation of quantum mechanics, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 4(14), August 1953, pp. 95-106. This latter article also contains extensive calculations supporting Born’s public reply to Einstein’s objection to the completeness of quantum mechanics.
The level of the lectures, meant for a general audience, is very approachable. There are more equations than usual in popular expositions nowadays, but nobody should be scared off on this account. The author knows how not to get lost in the trees and lose sight of the forest (apart from a digression on superfluidity on pp. 117-119, which may be excusable as he was then engaged in exciting laboratory work on it). For those with training in theoretical physics and who can absorb more technical detail, the appendices give Born’s elegant synopses of three dozen topics in physics of his day – but read these for culture as one wouldn’t learn the relevant subjects for the first time from him here. Born’s lecturing style is appealingly clear and direct – which reflects the way a man given to serious thought sees the world in his mature years after he has had the occasion to boil down a lifetime’s worth of observations. See pp. 34-38 for an illustration of his logicality; on how Carathéodory finds an integrating factor yielding an absolute scale of temperature from the theory of Pfaffian systems. Another good specimen of Born’s physical insight can be found in his discussion of the kinetic theory of gases, historically the first paradigmatic problem in which chance and statistics enter in an essential way into theoretical physics [pp. 44-48].
Let us turn to the content. Born understands causality in physics (which he distinguishes from determinism) as a phenomenon of experience, characterized by the Humean properties of repeatability, contiguity and antecedence. Determinism, on the other hand, designates a lawlike connection between states of a system at different times. Physicists are accustomed to specify a system under study by its initial conditions and to predict the future, but as Born properly points out, final conditions and retrodiction of the past would serve just as well. Quantum mechanics is often – all too casually – viewed as having overthrown the principle of causality through its introduction of a necessary indeterminacy. But, Born rejoins,
To this last question I answer that not causality, properly understood, is eliminated, but only a traditional interpretation of it, consisting in its identification with determinism….Causality in my definition is the postulate that one physical situation depends on another, and causal research means the discovery of such dependence. This is still true in quantum physics, though the objects of observation for which a dependence is claimed are different: they are the probabilities of elementary events, not those single events themselves. [pp. 101-102]
Thus, the researcher, in setting up an experiment in the laboratory, grasps the dependence of one factor on another and merely the outcome of the experiment is uncertain, in the sense that an ensemble of outcomes obtained from a collection of systems prepared under identical conditions will lead to a pattern obeying a probabilistic distribution calculable in advance. For instance, one can bombard a crystal with x-rays and observe the scattered rays due to interaction with the lattice. Here, the causal dependence consists in the fact that a periodic array establishes the possibility of constructive interference of incident radiation at a wavelength comparable to the interparticle spacing and scattering into certain angles. The actual direction into which a given incident photon may scatter is indeterminate, but this lack of perfect determination in no way undermines our physical understanding of the causal factors at play.
Born comments on what is novel about quantum mechanics:
We have the paradoxical situation that observable events obey laws of chance, but that the probability for these events spreads out according to laws which are in all essential features causal laws. Here the question of reality cannot be avoided. What really are those particles which, as it is often said, can just as well appear as waves? It would lead me far from my subject to discuss this very difficult problem. I think that the concept of reality is too much connected with emotions to allow a generally acceptable definition. For most people the real things are those things which are important for them. The reality of an artist of a poet is not comparable with that of a saint or prophet, nor with that of a business man or administrator, nor with that of the natural philosopher or scientist. So let me cling to the latter kind of special reality, which can be described in fairly precise terms. It presupposes that our sense impressions are not a permanent hallucination, but the indications of, or signals from, an external world which exists independently of us. Although these signals change and move in a most bewildering way, we are aware of objects with invariant properties. The set of these invariants of our sense impressions is the physical reality which our mind constructs in a perfectly unconscious way. This chair here looks different with each movement of my head, each twinkle of my eye, yet I perceive it as the same chair. Science is nothing else than the endeavor to construct these invariants where they are not obvious. [pp. 103-104]
I personally like to regard a probability wave, even in 3N-dimensional space, as a real thing, certainly as more than a tool for mathematical calculations. For it has the character of an invariant of observation; that means it predicts the results of counting experiments, and we expect to find the same average numbers, the same mean deviation etc., if we actually perform the experiment many times under the same experimental condition. [pp. 105-106]
By the way, Born roundly dismisses Bohmianism [p. 109]. The final lecture on metaphysical conclusions quotes from Born’s correspondence with Einstein (q.v. our review here) and briefly addresses the problem of freedom of the will. For Born, in effect, free will is emergent; you can buy some scope for freedom with quantum indeterminism but not too much in as much as statistical regularities still have to be respected [p. 126].
In closing, Born more or less acknowledges that the Neokantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer has written the book he ought to have: namely, Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik (1937). Appendix three on symbol and reality [pp. 215-234] amounts to a barely passable essay, by no means even close to the profundity with which the great Hermann Weyl understands the issue of symbolism in mathematical physics (in this regard Born is perhaps about on the level of Niels Bohr). To justify this last statement, let us quote a passage from Born:
Bohr’s principle of complementarity is another new method of thinking. Discovered in physics, it is applicable to many other fields. It is another loosening of traditional methods of thought which promises important results. But this leads me beyond the framework of these considerations. [p. 233]
Here Born rather exaggerates the scope of complementarity as it is known in physics; in any case, its ‘application’ to other fields must be pretty loose indeed. In the past seventy years have there been any significant important results coming from the principle of complementarity, such as Born foresees? The question answers itself. To give these scientific authors some credit, though, we could say that what must have happened is that the role of complementarity in atomic physics triggered in their minds an awareness of a central issue in the humanities, that of hermeneutics – which is also vital to theology founded as it is upon the exegesis of scripture, which came to prominence with Schleiermacher in the early nineteenth century and by the twentieth had been wrought into a refined art. But certainly one will find in scattered comments by Bohr and Born nothing comparable to, say, Hans Georg Gadamer. So unfortunately, we are faced with a missed opportunity. The quantum physicists like Bohr and Born were not energetic enough, perhaps owing to advanced age, to pursue the topic with anything like the depth and rigor it deserves and, on the other hand, humanists generally speaking are not comfortable enough with modern mathematical physics to engage it or to learn very much from it.
Cassirer would be a stellar exception to the rule. That is why it behooves us to begin to review his work next. As for Born, we recommend a quick scan through these lectures on cause and chance to gain some familiarity with his style of thought, not much more. The interested reader could follow up with an exchange between Schrödinger and Born in the journal literature: Erwin Schrödinger, Are there quantum jumps? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 3(10), Part I, August 1952, pp. 109-123; 3(11), Part II, November 1952, p. 233-242; Max Born, The interpretation of quantum mechanics, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 4(14), August 1953, pp. 95-106. This latter article also contains extensive calculations supporting Born’s public reply to Einstein’s objection to the completeness of quantum mechanics.
June 13, 2016
This is a thought provoking book on the role of cause and chance in the development of physical theories. The author focuses on the development of Physics in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. He nicely explains how the role of chance was increasingly realized with the development of statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics. Though some parts are technical, the author's writing makes it suitable for anyone introduced to college-level physics.
November 30, 2021
I've read this little book many many years ago, from its Greek translation.
Prof. Born explains with a great writing style and exposing in a very lucid way his thoughts on the philosophy of Physics. How importance should we give to experiments? How much to theory? Which one is most important? Must read book for anyone that feels that something is going wrong with physics lately, where everyone follows the dogma "shut up and calculate". Physics without philosophy is simply calculation.
Prof. Born explains with a great writing style and exposing in a very lucid way his thoughts on the philosophy of Physics. How importance should we give to experiments? How much to theory? Which one is most important? Must read book for anyone that feels that something is going wrong with physics lately, where everyone follows the dogma "shut up and calculate". Physics without philosophy is simply calculation.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews