Re: Theory acceptance-- Bohr

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Davetracer@xxxxxxx 

In a message dated 6/30/2005 11:00:45 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, 
tesla@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
Original poster: stork <stork@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hello Matt,

>The three principles laid out have been generally accepted by all branches
>of mainstream science for almost a century.

As predicted, no source citation.  Just "generally accepted" blah, blah
blah.  Is this what you tell your students?

  I believe that #2
>is a generalization to all science of Bohr's quantum/classical
>"correspondence principle" ca 1920. These can be thought of as three
>screening rules for membership to the "Club of Respected Scientific 
Theories".

Thank you Matt.  Yet another ill defined generalization ascribed to
Bohr.  Neils Bohr has become just another foot note in physics history. He
founded the so called Copenhagen School of quantum mechanics.  An entirely
statistical approach to QM which eshewed experimental data unless it agreed
with their statistical approach.  Bohr was a rather boorish lout who
bullied his colleagues and was detested by the likes of Einstein,
Shrodinger and Dirac.  The Copenhagen School and its statistical approach
is a historical dead end and no longer followed in Quantum Mechanics.


    Certainly the Nobel Prize Committee found Bohr to be a "boorish lout" 
when they awarded him the Nobel Prize in 1922 for figuring out much about 
the structure of the atom. [ ?hunh? ] It was Bohr who figured out the odd 
behavior of uranium was caused by two isotopes, U-235 and U-238. Bohr and 
Einstein's famous debates took place in Copenhagen and could be described 
as "trying to figure out what quantum mechanics is!", because QM does not 
easily lend itself to mental pictures. I do not think you can fairly 
characterize it the way you have.

   I believe you are possibly mistaking the many-worlds [Everett] QM idea 
with the single-world QM idea. I have personally never seen evidence he was 
detested, as you say; really, quite the opposite. Bohr also came up with 
the idea of "complementariness" which proved quite important in making 
progress in QM; he is hardly a footnote in history. It still pops up now 
and again.

    Bohr was also involved in protecting Danish Jews during World War II 
and frankly smuggling a number of them out of Denmark. Denmark reached an 
interesting agreement with the Nazis, something like, "Leave our Jews alone 
and we won't fight". Later, when this agreement was broken, the smuggling 
went into high gear, including Mr. Bohr himself. Lots of people owe Niels 
their lives, and the once-in-a-thousand-years collection of stellar minds 
at the Manhattan Project happened partly because of Bohr.

    Bohr worked hard for world peace along with folks like Einstein, Ted 
Taylor, and others.

    Just one good source on Bohr is "The Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. 
It gives you a good feel for the man. He sounds like someone I would have 
liked to have met.

    -- just my opinion,

    David