Quantum Drama: From the Bohr-Einstein Debate to the Riddle of Entanglement

Jim Baggott and John L. Heilbron. Oxford Univ., $32.99 (384p) ISBN 978-0-19-284610-5

In this stimulating if daunting study, science writer Baggott (Quantum Reality) and UC Berkeley historian Heilbron (The Incomparable Monsignor) recap the origins of the ongoing scientific disagreement over the nature of quantum physics. Starting in the 1920s, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and other physicists argued that the uncertainties inherent in quantum mechanics meant that physics as a discipline could only hope to calculate statistical probabilities, rather than elucidate rigid laws that produce certain outcomes. This embrace of indeterminacy led to mind-bending ideas, such as the notions that objective reality doesn’t exist and that light and matter are simultaneously discrete particles and diffuse waves. Among the dissidents who pushed back against this scientific consensus were Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger, who insisted that science should seek out deterministic theories and criticized the bizarre implications of Bohr’s ideas. (The famous “Schrödinger’s cat” thought experiment aimed to highlight the absurdity that, according to quantum physics, a feline test subject could be simultaneously alive and dead.) Baggott and Heilbron provide astute historical context, suggesting that quantum mechanics’s “emphasis on the uncontrollable, acausal... behaviour of the microworld” reflected the uncertainties of a generation still reeling from WWI, though the substantial doses of math and arcane detail on scientific experiments will be heavy going for casual readers. It’s an enlightening but dense overview of an open-ended scientific dispute. Photos. (July)