[MD] Some historical perspective

[plattholden at gmail.com]

All:

An essay about Einstein, Oppenheimer and the rise and fall of nuclear 
physics in popularity among media elites contains a passage which puts 
our present discussions about the reality of subjects and objects in 
historical perspective:

"As an example of the interdisciplinary and highly philosophical tone of 
Göttingen in the 1920s, Robert Jungk thus describes Born´s weekly 
"Seminar on Matter":

"These debates were concerned more and more with the most basic 
problems of epistemology. Had the discoveries of atomic physics 
abolished the duality between the human observer and the world 
observed? Was there no longer any real distinction between subject and 
object? Could two mutually exclusive propositions on the same topic 
both be regarded as correct from a loftier standpoint? Would one be 
justified in abandoning the view that the foundation of physics is the 
close connection of cause and effect? But in that case could there ever 
be any such thing as laws of Nature? Could any reliable scientific 
forecasts ever be made?"

The full article that those with interest in quantum physics will find of 
interest is at:

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-lost-prestige-of-nuclear-
physics

Platt