Document Type

Article

Keywords

Public Objectivity, formal objectivity, empirical objectivity, complementarity, quantum mechanics, measurement, subjectivity, perturbation, wave function, wave-particle duality, theoretical entities, Kant, Reichenbach, Hempel, Von Neumann, Wigner, Bohr

Abstract

"Orthodox" accounts of the quantum mechanical measuring­ process insists on the presence of an inescapable "subjective element" in it and accordingly in the heart of quantum mechanics as a physical science. Heelan distinguishes three kinds of objectivity: empirical objectivity (characteristic of the objects of classical physics), public objectivity (characteristic of objects of scienc) and formal objectivity (characterizing objects in the strict or formal sense). Heelan defends the public objectivity of quantum me­chanics, and then attempt to separate in the public physical object the elements which belong respectively to human scientific method, and to the content of the object in the strict sense. He shows that the di­vision between causal (or deterministic) theory and statistical theory is one of human scientific method, and that quantum mechanics is a new kind of theory in which both kinds of theories are united or­ganically and inseparably. Quantum me­chanics takes as its object in the strict or sense the individual instance of an ideal norm; that is, reality in its concrete manifestations. Heelan infers, moreover, an intrinsic matter-form structure in the strict object of quantum mechanics.

Article Number

1017

Publication Date

1965

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