Fundamental Concepts of Quantum Mechanics  from the meeting between Heisenberg and Kant

Vinícius Carvalho da Silva; Judikael Castelo Branco

doi:10.38128/cienciayfilosofa.v15i17.132

Authors

Carvalho da Silva https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1061-2727
Judikael Castelo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4551-2531

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.38128/cienciayfilosofa.v15i17.132

Keywords:

Quantum Mechanics, Causality, Indetermination

Abstract

Abstract: In this article, we analyze the German physicist Werner Heisenberg’s understanding and use of Kantian philosophy. Heisenberg was the winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics and the formulator of the uncertainty principle. In addition to being a remarkable physicist, he was one of the most prolific physicist-philosophers of the generation that founded quantum mechanics. Heisenberg appears to adopt a Neo-Kantian understanding of the nature of science, according to which science does not deal with reality in itself, but only with the way it presents itself—which inevitably depends on the interaction between the subject and the object of knowledge. Ultimately, there is no break with realism, for reality in itself is there, existing in and of itself, even though scientific theories are merely—and always—approximations. In this article, we will examine how Heisenberg addresses the principle of causality in modern physics, scientific determinism, and the impossibility of knowing “nature in itself.” Heisenberg draws on Kant not to follow him, but to develop his own philosophical thought and apply it to the foundational problems of physics characteristic of his time.

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Author Biographies

Carvalho da Silva, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1061-2727

ID. 0000-0002-1061-2727

Judikael Castelo , https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4551-2531

ID. 0000-0002-4551-2531

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