QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

instruments, has been difficult to understand and conceptualise. The Copenhagen group
described it as something inherent in nature, something that could not be overcome by better
instruments or observation techniques. Because of it, interaction between the measuring
instruments and the object under observation could no longer be either neglected or totally
controlled. When referring to this phenomena, members of the Copenhagen group often spoke of
it as quantum mechanics demonstrating the calamity of the causality principle, or of the "failure"
of space-time descriptions. Philosophers of science have with good reason often criticized these
unclearly stated and often annoying claims relating to the foundations of physics. 555
Physicists familiar with mechanical determinism were not perhaps fully conversant with the
terminology of the philosophy of science, or simply did not know the long and twisted history of
the causality problem; that the word ’causality’ is in fact used to designate three principal
meanings. 556 Even for philosophers, it is by no means easy to answer the question of whether
quantum theory entails restrictions on determinism or on causality, because the answer depends
not only on the definition of both of these terms but also on the interpretation of quantum theory
that is chosen. It is, however, a common view that quantum mechanics drastically restricts the
Newtonian form of determinism, according to which all physical processes boil down to changes
of position of the point masses in space-time. Quantum theory incorporates a statistical
component which cannot be eliminated. It is indeterministic in the important sense that its statedescription
is associated with a statistical interpretation and that its predictions are based on
statistical assumptions. The theory naturally does not sweep out causes and effects, but it
somehow alters the rigid causal nexus among them. 557
555 For example Nagel 1961, 298-303.
556 In short, causation means a causal connection in general and the causal principle states the form of the causal
bond, whereas causal determinism or causalism asserts that everything happens according to a causal law. Bunge
1959,3-4.
557 Bunge 1959, 14-15. Nagel 1961, 308.
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