Time&Eternity

notes to chapter 3 295
208. “Ikke desto mindre må vi fra atomteorins nuværende standpunkt betragte selve
denne resignation som et væsentligt led i fremskridtet af vor erkendelse.” Thus said Bohr
in his 1929 lecture entitled “Atomteorien og Grundprincipperne for Naturbeskrivelsen.”
Bohr, Atomteori og naturbeskrivelse, 94; trans., Bohr, Collected Works, vol. 6, 249.
209. This formulation is inspired by Bohr’s 1929 lecture entitled “Atomteorien og
Grundprincipperne for Naturbeskrivelsen,” which he ended with the words “.l.l. at den i
fysikken foreliggende, nye situation på så eftertrykkelig måde minder os om den gamle
sandhed, at vi såvel er tilskuere som deltagere i tilværelsens store skuespil.” Bohr, Atomteori
og naturbeskrivelse, 96; trans., Bohr, Collected Works, vol. 6, 253.
210. Heisenberg, Ordnung der Wirklichkeit, 115. Cf. also Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology,
237–54 (“Death of the Spectator”).
211. From Bohr’s presentation to the Convention of Physicists in Como in 1927 entitled
The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory, in Bohr, Collected
Works, vol. 6, 114.
212. “Som vi har set, kræver jo enhver iakttagelse et indgreb i fænomenernes forløb,
der efter sin art berøver os grundlaget for årsagsbeskrivelsen,” Bohr, Atomteori og
naturbeskrivelse, 94; trans., Bohr, Collected Works, vol. 6, 249.
213. Coveney and Highfield, The Arrow of Time, 139ff.
214. In The Undivided Universe, Bohm and Hiley advocate a view that goes a long way
in eliminating the difference between the observer/measurement instrument and the observed
object (6). They speak of the “undivided wholeness” of measuring arrangement and
object: “Indeed it may be said that the measuring apparatus and that which is observed
participate irreducibly in each other, so that the ordinary classical and common sense idea
of measurement is no longer relevant.”
215. The fate of Schrödinger’s cat has been repeatedly discussed. Among other things,
it has been emphasized that quantum physics cannot be extrapolated indiscriminately into
the macroscopic region. See also Audretsch and Mainzer, Wieviele Leben hat Schrödingers
Katze?
216. Even more sensational conclusions are suggested by, for example, the so-called
EPR paradox, which appears to indicate that particles communicate more rapidly with one
another than with the speed of light, and by Alain Aspect’s experiment that suggests the
physical unity of two quantum particles in areas of the universe that are very remote from
each other (Coveney and Highfield, The Arrow of Time, 136ff.). There have also been experiments
that give the impression that under certain conditions, an observer can
influence past reality. In any case, however, exact time data are impossible in quantum
physics because exactly when an event will occur can never be precisely observed. Davies,
About Time, 168–77.
217. Grib, “Quantum Cosmology.”
218. Cf. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality.
219. Grib, “Quantum Cosmology,” 180.
220. Ibid., 167f. Grib’s reference to the Communist rulers in the former U.S.S.R. who
banned scientific work within the field of relativistic cosmology is interesting. According
to Grib their motive was that Big Bang theories allowed the conception of a divine creation
out of nothing. For this reason, preference was given to the classical cosmological
model of the nineteenth century, since its concept of infinity does not leave any place for a
creator God (165f.).
221. On this, cf. also Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity, 28–34 and 47ff.
222. “.l.l. eine Art Lebenserinnerungen in der Form platonischer Dialoge,” von
Weizsäcker, “Notizen,” 11.
223. Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond, 138; thus, also Heisenberg himself: Heisenberg,