Uncertainty relations

1. Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg had an intense debate about the derivation of the uncertainty relations (winter 1926).

2. Bohr prefers the phrase “indeterminacy (ubestemthed) relations” instead of “uncertainty relations”. This apparently minor linguistic point corresponds to a large issue in Bohr’s overall understanding of what the equations and predictions of QM mean. In fact, the Danish word “bestemt”, derived from “at bestemme”, picks up on Bohr’s intentional blurring of the line between what’s inside and outside the physicist’s head.

3. TO DO: What do we know about the conversation between Bohr and Heisenberg in the spring of 1927?

References

The number of references about the uncertainty principle is truly enormous. We focus here on the historical (i.e. discussions between Bohr, Heisenberg, and Einstein; but we also bring in a few contemporary references that focus on conceptual clarification.

(Tanona 2004)

• Busch, P., Heinonen, T., & Lahti, P. (2007). Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Physics reports, 452(6), 155-176.
• Busch, P., Lahti, P., & Werner, R. F. (2014). Heisenberg uncertainty for qubit measurements. Physical Review A, 89(1), 012129.
• Hilgevoord, Jan, and Jos Uffink. “The uncertainty principle.” (2001). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

External resources

• Popper’s experiment