Chapter 17
THE NO-MAN’S-LAND BETWEEN LOGIC AND PHYSICS
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hilosophy, Paul Dirac once observed, “is just a way of talking about discoveries which have already been made.” That captures the hostility of most physicists, who do not take kindly to philosophers telling them what theories mean, still less to those who dare to tell them how to conduct their business. Yet Heisenberg, late in life, offered a remark to the effect that Bohr was at heart more of a philosopher than a physicist. Whether this was meant as criticism or merely observation is hard to tell. Heisenberg himself, once he had gotten over his youthful passion for ontological rambles with his Pfadfinder brethren, evinced little interest in attempts to construct a helpful philosophy of the quantum world. But Bohr was not like other physicists. Unmathematical, he moved forward on a spiderweb of concepts, principles, and riddles
