Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science

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Product Description
Werner Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” challenged centuries of scientific understanding, placed him in direct opposition to Albert Einstein, and put Niels Bohr in the middle of one of the most heated debates in scientific history. Heisenberg’s theorem stated that there were physical limits to what we could know about sub-atomic particles; this “uncertainty” would have shocking implications. In a riveting account, David Lindley captures this critical episode and explains one of the most important scientific discoveries in history, which has since transcended the boundaries of science and influenced everything from literary theory to television.

Customer Reviews: Read 23 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

An Excellent Summary of the Quantum Dilemma! March 13, 2007
76 out of 79 found this review helpful

The Quantum and its resulting uncertainty has haunted physics since Max Planck first brought the idea up (with a certain amount of distaste) in 1900. Einstein added to the trend in 1905, although he did not like the result either. Niels Bohr at first did not appreciate the prospect, but eventually put his own interpretation on it. Werner Heisenberg followed the quantum theory to the Uncertainty Principle, which essentially tolled the death knell to classical deterministic physics.

David Lindley has produced a new rendition of this story in "Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science." While this story has been told by various authors before, it has never had a clearer or more succinct exposition than this one. Here are all the players, not only Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg and Planck, but the Curies, Pauli, Dirac, Born, Schroedinger and many others. In the end we are left with the triumph of quantum physics, but also with a much more uncertain universe where the old mechanistic model simply will not answer the ultimate questions. Quantum mechanics won't answer them either, but in a quantum universe these questions may make no sense anyway! Perhaps (we may hope)they can't be answered because the questions are not yet properly formulated! Only if we can unite quantum theory with relativity (the unified theory) can we hope to answer anything in a definitive way and this has not so far been accomplished!

Lindley's book is not a comprehensive treatment of the problem, but a short history of the idea and an explanation of why quantum theory matters. A good introduction for the reader who lacks the mathematics (as I do) to deeply probe the field, "Uncertainty" should be read by anyone who would like to understand one of the major ideas of modern science. Among other things, the reader will gain some comprehension of the difficulties involved in the scientific endeavour and of the often complex personalities who practice this arcane activity.

5 out of 5 stars

The Philosophy of Quantum Physics April 14, 2007
39 out of 39 found this review helpful

In Uncertainty, Mr. Lindley has written a very user-friendly history of the philosophical changes that came about in physics through the growth of our understanding of quantum physics. As a teacher of physics, I am always looking for books on the subject that are readily understandable by the average intelligent reader. This one certainly fits the bill.

Please note, however, that the focus here is more on theory and philosophy than what might be termed "hard science." There is very little talk of experiments and there is nary an equation in the entire book. Instead, this is a story of theorists and their attempts to interpret and give meaning to the strange things that were happening in physics in the first decades of the twentieth century. Moreover, it is a story of how some of the greatest minds in science disagreed strenuously over these things.

Despite the subtitle, many more names flow through this narrative than Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg. We also get insight into Pauli, Dirac, Born, Schrodinger, and many others. In fact, Einstein really plays little more than a supporting role here. (I suppose having his name on the cover--and first, no less--means more readers are likely to pick it up.) Readers looking for a lot on Einstein will have to look elsewhere. (Relativity theory is barely mentioned in this book on quantum mechanics.) It is Heisenberg who really is center stage. Not at all surprising since it is his uncertainty principle that gives this book its title.

In the end, Lindley gives us a lot of good history, a bit on personalities and a bit more on scientific philosophy as it relates to quantum theory. He also offers real insight into how the scientific mind works and how theory is hashed out by its practitioners in a way that should be accessible to most readers. Anyone interested in modern physics would find this book worth reading.

4 out of 5 stars

A Highly Readable Introduction to the History of Quantum Physics April 15, 2007
28 out of 30 found this review helpful

It is unlikely that any three decades in human history witnessed as great a degree of fundamental and revolutionary change in our scientific understanding of the world than those from 1900 to 1930. From Max Planck's conjectures about light quanta in 1900 and Henri Becquerel's and Marie Curie's turn-of-the-century explorations of radiation and x-rays through Einstein's exposition of special and general relativity and his theories about the photoelectric effect to the initial developments of the modern atomic model and the introduction of the probabilistic world of quantum physics, 19th Century scientific understanding of the physical world was utterly subverted and demolished by a handful of mostly European scientists. In a certain sense, the culmination of these revolutionary theories was that of Werner Heisenberg, propounding what has become popularly known as the Principal of Uncertainty.

In his aptly named new book, UNCERTAINTY, David Lindley introduces us to the giants who made this revolution - Heisenberg and Einstein, of course, but also Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, Arnold Sommerfeld, Erwin Schrodinger, Paul Dirac, Hendrik Kramers, and Max Born. Lindley's approach more or less traces the chronological history of the events leading to quantum physics and Heisenberg's formal statements of the ultimate uncertainty of measurement at the atomic level. At the same time, he provides excellent insight into the scientific and philosophical turmoil that these conjectures raised and the difficulties of acceptance they encountered. So much of this science was counterintuitive, and worse still, so much of it directly contradicted two thousand years of human belief about universal absolutes and the ultimate nature of science itself. Lindley presents these ideas in an easily understandable, non-mathematical way accessible to virtually any interested reader. To his credit, the author also presents the principals in this story in a decidedly human way, complete with their certainties and doubts and individual peculiarities. Thus, for example, we see Niels Bohr as an almost comical figure, a man for whom "his determination not to say anything straightforward or concise" while striving to reconcile classical physics with the quantum world "seem[ed] almost a phobia."

While UNCERTAINTY hardly constitutes a philosophical dissertation on the implications of Heisenberg's underlying principle, Lindley takes enough steps in that direction to expose the reader neatly to some of the resultant paradoxes and conundrums. For example, he presents the infamous enigma of Schrodinger's half-dead and half-alive cat (nicely crediting Einstein for the original notion, which he proposed as a quantum-rigged bomb in a letter to Schrodinger).

Perhaps most significant to the reader's appreciation, however, is Lindley's observation, almost casually and in passing, of one of Bohr's key arguments about uncertainty. According to Bohr, "all measurements amount to disturbances of what's being measured. The new thing about quantum mechanics...is really that measurement defines what is being measured....measuring one aspect of a system closes the door on what else you can find out, and thus fatally restricts the information that any future measurement might yield." Apply the same notion to today's external world - students' standardized test results under NCLB, crime statistics from the local police department, yardsticks of ostensible success in Iraq - and one can appreciate the validity of Bohr's arguments even as applied to the world at large.

UNCERTAINTY offers those interested in science and philosophy, or those who seek to understand the world around them, an entertaining and readily approachable introduction to the events and people who revolutionized our collective world view in the first thirty years of the 20th Century. I recommend this book to anyone who is making their first forays into this area and wants to learn how these ideas were conceived and developed.

3 out of 5 stars

too much - and not enough June 24, 2007
25 out of 36 found this review helpful

David Lindley clearly wanted to make quantum physics more entertaining - being afraid, probably, that by itself it's not entertaining enough.

The book is full of totally irrelevant biographical and historical details. Example: "In recollection of his wife, a singer who had aquired the nickname Storm on account of her tempestous personality, Kramers came home one day 'insanely excited'" [pg 98]. No relevance to the subject matter whatsoever in this case - like in most other instances.

Even though The Keables Guide says "flowery language" is a phrase to avoid in writing about literature, I have to say exactly this about Lindley's style. Colloquialisms, more appropriate in the New York Post than in a book about science, however popular, are used all over - along with words like "amanuensis".

When discussing philosophical implications of the Uncertainty Principle, Spengler deserves more than two pages. Goedel is not mentioned at all.

For a person never exposed to quantum mechanical concepts, the book would be too difficult and convoluted. For somebody already familiar with the basics - nothing new in this book can be found.

Almost two chapters are dedicated to discussing a preposterous idea that Uncertainty Principle (and the whole body of quantum mechanics) came about as a direct result of the turmoil during the years of Weimar Republic, just like some well known forms of art. Spengler is also brought into the picture to add to the confusion.

5 out of 5 stars

Elegant and exciting September 1, 2007
16 out of 16 found this review helpful

I read two graduate texts on quantum mechanics recently. The first took an historical approach, beginning with Planck's work on black-body radiation, then Einstein's treatment of Brownian motion and light quanta, proceeding on to Bohr's atom, Compton scattering, the Zeeman effect, and so on. The second started out by saying (I paraphrase), "Here's Schroedinger's equation. The rest of the book goes through various solutions, with different potentials."

I find it completely incredible that this little equation can have so many implications, none of them ever having been found to be wrong. Lindley's book is about the "meaning" of quantum mechanics, a project that most physicists consider irrelevant at best. I still remember listening to Feynman's Cal Tech lectures on quantum mechanics, where his urged his student not to try to figure what the equation "means." Rather, he urged them just to solve it and get an intuitive "feel" for how it works. Quantum mechanics doesn't "mean" anything. It just is.

This stance is not enough for many people, including virtually all of its creators, who worked in the dizzying years of discovery, 1900 to 1927. Bohr' model did fit some of the specroscopic data on hydrogen very well, but he spent most of his intellectual (as opposed to organizational) energy thereafter ruminating on the principle of complementarity and the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The next generation of physicist could not have cared less. When asked about Bohr's interpretation, Dirac replied that there were no equations, so there was nothing of interest there.

This may be the bast book ever written on the topic, despite its elementary nature. Lindley handle complex topics (e.g., Mach and Carnap) with ease and brevity, yet capturing the essence of the issues. His descriptions are what might be termed "stream of consciousness" physics, because he has the ability to enter and explore highly heterogeneous modalities of consciousness, without ever leaving the physics far out of the picture. After you have read this wonderful book, try Abraham Pais' biographies of Einstein and Bohr. They are more work, but more than worth the effort.

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