Re: quantum theory - European vs American

["Dan Fiscus" <***>]

Mike,

I was reading "A Beautiful Mind" about John Nash (American
mathematician who won Nobel Prize for economics in 1994 for
his work on modeling bargaining done in 1940's, and was
featured in Hollywood movie of same name as the book) last night
and the author suggested that Nash suggested that trying to pick up
Einstein's critique of quantum theory and resolve or fix its problem of
"indeterminacy" was what set off his mental illness - 30 years of
schizophrenia, delusions, paranoia. So maybe after that Americans
just figured it was too much of a mind bender and they left it alone?
:-)

Dan

McIntyre, Mike S. wrote:
> John Kineman wrote:
>
>
>>This was VERY dissatisfying to the physicists who were forced to accept
>>it after Einstein, and particularly dissatisfying to Einstein who spent
>>the remainder of his life trying to disprove it (the famous "God doesn't
>>play dice" quote).
>
>
> Hi John,
>
> I just wanted to interject a brief comment here.  This level of dis-
> satisfaction on the part of ~European~ physicists seems not to have been
> shared by ~American~ physicists, i.e. there seems to have been a cul-
> tural subtext to this question that affected the reactions of the
> physicists.  European physicists, in general, had minds well-stocked
> with philosophical ideas dating back, in a relatively unbroken line, to
> the ancient Greeks.  In contrast, American physicists had much less
> training, or interest, in philosophy -- they thought of themselves as
> pragmatists.  The result was that Americans accepted quantum theory
> without so much as skipping a beat, and they frankly couldn't understand
> why the Europeans were so bugged about it.  Or, at any rate, this is the
> argument advanced by Nancy Cartwright in a chapter she wrote for a book
> called The Probabilistic Revolution.  Cartwright, as I understand her,
> favors the American point of view.  Even though I think my tendencies
> lie more with the Europeans, I think her exposition of the differences
> between the two points of view is very good.
>
> Best regards,
> Mike McIntyre