HERMANN, GRETE.

Über die Grundlagen physikalischer Aussagen in den älteren und den modernen Theorien.

Berlin, Offentliches Leben, 1937. 8vo. Offprint in the original wrappers. Wrappers with minor miscolouring and top left corner of front wrapper slightly bended, otherwise a very nice and clean copy. 90 pp.

First printing of Hermann's publication on the historical development and foundation of physics. Today she if famous for her pioneering work with respect to the interpretation of quantum theory, the present paper being her most extensive on the philosophical aspects of the development of research in physics.

Attempts to interpret and understand what was then new and very puzzling physics were of great contemporary importance when Grete Hermann entered the field, and her work in physics was mainly related to the interpretation of quantum mechanics. More specifically, her main work in physics was on the philosophical foundations of quantum mechanics, the significance of modern physics for the theory of knowledge, and causality in physics. She was one of the active early contributors to the historic debates on causality in quantum mechanics, and on the completeness of quantum mechanics and its description of reality.

Hermann's work during the 1930s reveals the influence of her background in the neo-Kantian school, yet it also owes much to the way in which Heisenberg and Weizsäcker had interpreted Bohr's doctrine of the indispensability of classical concepts in the description of experience.
Heisenberg has written that Grete Hermann came to Leipzig for the purpose of challenging the philosophical basis of atomic physics. Heisenberg devoted an entire chapter of his book "Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations" to a reconstruction of discussions that he had on quantum mechanics and Kantian philosophy with Grete Hermann and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker.

Order-nr.: 44831