The Importance of History in Physics

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It's really illuminating to go through this particular kind of history, because you see where people got certain attitudes. And quantum mechanics is harden, and it shows us a lot about physics and the physics community. But science is a human process, right? It's affected by all other human processes,. Which is not to say that science is just, you know, bullshit that people make up. Well, we certainly make choices along the way about how did you science, right? What questions we're going to tackle?"

There are many mysteries surrounding quantum mechanics. To me, the biggest mysteries are why physicists haven’t yet agreed on a complete understanding of the theory, and even more why they mostly seem content not to try. This puzzling attitude has historical roots that go back to the Bohr-Einstein debates. Adam Becker, in his book What Is Real?, looks at this history, and discusses how physicists have shied away from the foundations of quantum mechanics in the subsequent years. We discuss why this has been the case, and talk about some of the stubborn iconoclasts who insisted on thinking about it anyway.

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Adam Becker received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan. He is currently a science writer and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society at UC Berkeley. His book What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics comes out in paperback on Sept. 3, 2019.

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