Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

emergence of the new concepts of space and time in the context of the two relativity
theories are being complemented by similar research on the emergence of new no-
tions of matter and causality established in the context of quantum theory.
The History and Foundations of Quantum Physics
The quantum revolution emerges from a series of crises of the classical mechanical
world view from the late 19th century to the 1920s. These crises were caused in part
by conflicts between theoretical expectations and experimental results, but also im-
portantly by the difficulty of integrating relatively newly established physical theories
such as electrodynamics and thermodynamics into the mechanical world view. Simi-
lar to the case of relativity theory, conflicts between theories necessitated a reorgani-
zation and re-evaluation of the most fundamental concepts of these theories.
Central to this process of re-evaluation was not only a large amount of undoubted
empirical knowledge accumulated over a long period of time but also the persistence
of certain theoretical structures and methods. Theoretical physicists were therefore
confronted with critical decisions about which concepts and theoretical structures
could be maintained in the emerging theory and could thus serve as a guide for the
development of the theory. As in the case of relativity, it turned out that it was of-
ten high-level and abstract structures that survived, although frequently with a new
physical interpretation.
Differently from the case of relativity, a consensus about the physical reinterpretation
of the abstract structures was not easily attained. Famous dissenters, such as Einstein
and Schrödinger, while accepting the new theoretical structure, disagreed about its
meaning and its connection to the traditional mechanical world view. Later on, the
establishment of quantum field theory, including the unification with the theory of
relativity, has turned out to be at odds with the traditional demands on an interpreted
physical theory. These disagreements have persisted up to this day, even though quan-
tum mechanics is a highly successful predictive theory by all counts.
Most importantly for the historian, this lack of closure of the theoretical structure
has also affected the historiography of quantum theory, which can be divided into
three periods:
Reorganizing Knowledge in Developed science / the history and Foundations of Quantum Physics
· A first generation of historical works was written mainly by physicists who
had participated in the quantum revolution themselves or witnessed it
closely. Not surprisingly, these accounts have a rather whiggish character:
they present the history as the triumph of good scientific practice and
especially of good epistemology.
· A second generation of historical work refrained from the high-level
disputes of the previous generation altogether and concentrated on the
collection and presentation of large amounts of historical material.
Examples are especially the Archives for the History of Quantum Physics
and the monumental monograph by Mehra and Rechenberg.
· Only in a third generation of more recent publications one finds a more
critical distance from the founders of quantum mechanics and their
account of the course and meaning of the events. Also, the scope of the
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