Quantum Dialogue. The Making Of A Revolution

"Science is rooted in conversations," wrote Werner Heisenberg, one of the twentieth century's great physicists. In Quantum Dialogue, Mara Beller shows that science is rooted not just in conversation but in disagreement, doubt, and uncertainty. She argues that it is precisely this culture of dialogue and controversy within the scientific community that fuels creativity. Beller begins with the emergence of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, Born's probabilistic interpretation, and Bohr's complementarity principle, demonstrating how theoretical concerns, experiment, logic, emotions, and ambitions all play a crucial role in the emergence of novelty. From there she proceeds to construct a radical new reading of the history of the quantum revolution, especially the development of the Copenhagen interpretation. One of several competing approaches, this version triumphed largely due to the rhetorical skills of Niels Bohr and his colleagues. Beller makes extensive use of original correspondence, notebooks, and successive drafts of talks and published papers to show how Bohr and others promoted their views, misrepresenting and dismissing their opponents as "unreasonable" and championing their own not always coherent or well-supported position as "inevitable." Quantum Dialogue will fascinate every-one interested in how "scientific revolutions" constructed and "scientific consensus" achieved.