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Philosophical Problems Concerning the Meaning of Measurement in Physics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Henry Margenau
Henry Margenau*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

The trouble with the idea of measurement is its seeming clarity, its obviousness, its implicit claim to finality in any inquisotory discourse. Its status in philosophy of science is taken to be utterly primitive; hence the difficulties it embodies, if any, tend to escape detection and scrutiny. Yet it cannot be primitive in the sense of being exempt from analysis; for if it were every measurement would require to be simply accepted as a protocol of truth, and one should never ask which of two conflicting measurements is correct, or preferable. Such questions are continually being asked, and their propriety in science indicates that even measurement, with its implication of simplicity and adroitness, points beyond itself to other matters of importance on which it relies for validation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , January 1958 , pp. 23 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1958

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Footnotes

†

Parts of this essay were presented at the Symposium of Measurement sponsored by the Philosophy of Science Association in New York, Dec. 29, 1956.

‡

Aided by the National Science Foundation through research grant NSF-02257.

References

1. For a careful statement of the usual argument see A. March, Quantum Mechanics of Particles and Wave Fields. Wiley, N. Y., 1951.Google Scholar
2. Albert Einstein, private letter from which an excerpt is published here (in translation) with permission of the literary executors of Professor Einstein's estate.Google Scholar
3. See an account by W. Heisenberg in Niels Bohr and The Development of Physics. Edited by Pauli, Rosenfeld and Weisskopf; McGraw Hill, 1955.Google Scholar
4. Band, W., A New Look at von Neumann's Operator and The Definition of Entropy. Unpublished.Google Scholar
5. Landé, A., Foundations of Quantum Theory, Yale University Press, 1955, and numerous later articles.Google Scholar