John Bell

John Stewart Bell (1928-1990) doesn’t figure directly into the story of Niels Bohr. Bell and Bohr never met, and Bohr died before Bell did any of his foundational work. Nonetheless, Bell plays a central role in the reception of, and response to, Bohr’s work. In particular, Bell considered Bohr to be an enemy of “good” (clear, rigorous, etc.) physics.

There are two possible explanations for Bell’s negative feelings about Bohr:

1. (Internal) Bell considered Bohr’s ideas and arguments, and he judged them to be weak.

2. (External) Bell’s sociological context made him feel that physics needed a reform — and, due to Bohr’s dominant stature in physics, Bell believed that Bohr was the source of the problems.

The reason I put the dilemma like this is because never before in history has one thinker been more critical of the other without ever having talked to the other person, and without anything resembling a close study of that person’s work. For Bell, Bohr is more of an archetype than a human being who was in a context, had a way of thinking, and wrote some things.

(Halvorson and Butterfield 2023)