31 Classical and Quantum Descriptions C. F. von Weizsdcker CONTENTS The Problem Classical and Temporal Logic Quantum Theory of Probability Reality in Quantum Theory Concluding Remarks yaRene 1. THE PROBLEM 1.1 INTRODUCTION The title! ‘Classical and quantum descriptions’ is a technical version of the problem of a semantical interpretation of quantum theory. The question is: what does quantum theory mean? Hence the task is not to improve quantum theory by new additions, but to understand it. Its mathematical structure is not disputed. On the existing interpreta- tion — usually called the Copenhagen interpretation - there have been decades of discussion. They have their origin in the fact that we can only accept this interpreta- tion if we take some rather fundamental philosophical decisions. In this paper I do not try to argue for these decisions except for an attempt to contribute to a clarifica- tion of their meaning. I take a particular approach in starting from the idea of a quan- tum logic. This is in my view not a peculiar ‘empirical’ logic, but a specification of a general logic of temporal statements, that is of statements on facts and possibilities. Statements on facts are ‘classical descriptions’, statements on possibilities areembodied in the quantum state vectors. The problem is described in Section 1. Section 2 gives the general logical background. Section 3 interprets quantum theory as a refined theory of probability. Section 4 draws the consequences concerning the meaning of the concepts of reality, of fact and event in quantum theory. Thus in its main parts the paper contains no more than an analysis of the meaning of the given theory. I think that such an analysis may lead to rather far-reaching consequences both in philosophy and in the further development of physics. The next steps in physics may depend on our overcoming the apparently slight remaining semantical inconsistencies in present-day quantum theory. These problems are mentioned in the concluding remarks.636 C.F. VON WEIZSACKER 1.2 Bour’s View Niels Bohr held the view that every event about which we can meaningfully speak in physics, i.e., every actual or possible phenomenon or measurement, must be described in classical terms. If that is correct, and if quantum theory is correct, and if a ‘quantum description’ means a correct description of an event according to quantum theory, then a quantum description is a classical description. ‘Description’ according to Bohr means ‘classical description’. Bohr’s statement seems to lead to a paradox. Classical terms mean terms definable in classical physics. Bohr himself stressed that classical physics has been replaced by quantum theory for atomic events, and he admitted that the classical description of macroscopic bodies is probably to be explained as an approximation or a limiting case of an application of quantum theory for large quantum numbers. Are we hence not permitted to speak of events in the atom, and is the description of events or of phenomena confined to an essentially approximative language? Bohr himself was convinced that his statement was a necessary condition for understanding that quan- tum theory does not lead to paradoxes, and that the so-called paradoxes of quantum theory all arise from a lack of understanding of the truth expressed in his statement. Historically there were two reasons in favour of Bohr’s statement that did not depend on its use for solving paradoxes. First, quantum mechanics and quantum field theory were developed under the guidance of the correspondence principle. The quantities of classical particle mechanics and classical field theory were known, and certain operators in the Hilbert space of abstract quantum theory were given a physical meaning by being identified with those known and measurable quantities. In modern logic it is usual to distinguish between syntax and semantics. A formal system which is established by giving elementary symbols and syntactic rules for their combination is made a branch of logic or of mathematics by giving an interpretation to its formulae; the science formulating this interpretation is called semantics. In physics we can speak of an iteration of this process. The mathematics of Hilbert space presupposes a mathematical semantics of its symbols: the letter y means a complex vector, the letter H means a self-adjoined linear operator, etc. Yet for the physicist this is still an uninterpreted ‘formalism’. He will have to say that H is the Hamiltonian of a certain physical system, and that its eigenvalues can be measured by an instrument able to measure energies, etc. In this ‘physical semantics’ classical physics still plays an unchallenged role. It is true that non-classical observables like spin, iso spin, parity, strangeness have been added, but they cannot be measured except indirectly, by directly measuring classical quantities. Secondly, when Bohr was exposed to the question whether this role of classical physics was more than an historical fact, he turned to epistemological arguments. Physics is about what we can know, or what we can speak about. In order to be able to know an event in nature, we must be able either to experience it directly or to connect it with our experience in an unambiguous manner. Direct experience is always in space and time. Unambiguous conclusions from direct experience to events not directlyCLASSICAL AND QUANTUM DESCRIPTIONS, 637 observed can only be drawnifa strictly causal chain connects them. Space-time-descrip- tion and causality must go together in experiments. But they go together only in classical physics. Hence classical concepts are needed for all descriptions of phenomena in physics. Even if we accept the basic epistemology of the second argument, it is neither quite clear why an experiment should need the precise connection of space-time-description and causality nor why this connection should be available only in the historical form of classical physics. The second argument is essentially an attempt to give a structural rather than a historical description of the term ‘classical’. Yet this structure seems to need further clarification. This is the aim of the present paper. 1.3. EINSTEIN’s PRINCIPLE Heisenberg founded matrix mechanics in 1925 on the idea that the theory should only contain observable quantities. Einstein in a talk with Heisenberg called this philosophy nonsense, even if he might have held it himself in his younger days. He said: ‘Only the theory itself determines what is observable.’ (See Heisenberg, Der Teil und das Ganze, p. 92.) Bohr said: ‘Only classical quantities are observable.’ How to resolve this clash between these apparently mutually contradictory views? Heisenberg’s principle always remains a useful heuristic principle. What we already have observed, is certainly observable and must be included in the theory. For those quantities which are not actually observed we are so far free to assume their existence or their non-existence. Einstein’s principle says that only the final theory itself will decide this question. The theory may even change our description of what we had observed before we knew the theory. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle of 1927 was no longer positivistic. It was rather a consequence of what Heisenberg had learnt from Einstein. It is a consideration of consistency. Quantum mechanics does not offer a description of states in which both position and momentum would be simultaneously defined. Hence in the frame of this theory such states cannot possibly be observed; you cannot observe the non-existent. If somebody raises the objection that you may observe such states in, say, a gamma- ray microscope then Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle tells him why this is not exact- ly possible if quantum theory is correct. Bohr’s view is epistemological and a priori. Any observation is to be made in space and time and to be described causally. This seems undeniable. Our present question is how quantum theory accounts for this nature of all possible observations, that is how Einstein’s principle satisfies Bohr’s condition. 1.4 Tue Locic oF QUANTUM THEORY What is the essential difference between classical and quantum theory? We can leave aside non-classical observables for this step in our analysis, assuming that the dif- ference must admit of an expression in the case of the different treatment of the ‘same’ observable by the two theories. Hence in comparing the theories we will semantically identify the classical quantities with those observables of quantum theory that are