On Heisenberg's uncertainty relations and their epistemological significance [June 29, 1934]

Max von Laue

pp. 82-86

in: Klaus Hentschel (ed), Physics and national socialism, Basel, Birkhäuser, 1996

Abstract

Two years ago I indicated in this journal*^[1]that the conclusions drawn from the formalism of quantum mechanics, and in particular from the uncertainty relations,^[2]do not seem to necessarily indicate a failure of the causality principle, because the conceptual structures on which these conclusions are based stem from Newton's mechanics and, like all of classical mechanics, are of empirical origin. In my opinion this reasoning only refutes applying those [classical] concepts to atomic processes. There is one argument in the discussion of this subject, however, that I had not commented on at the time, which initially sounds quite convincing.