FROM THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE: Cassirer's conception of causality and dererminism and the responses of contemporary physicists

Abstract

Abstract of graduation talk (topics and themes covered in thesis are much wider):

In the 1930s, Ernst Cassirer’s Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik (1937) was one of the very few defences of a neo-Kantian philosophy of science. As its main representative, Cassirer received enthusiastic responses from leading physicists. Moreover, three important physicists reviewed his daring book.

With the development of quantum mechanics the philosophical concepts of causality and determinism faced a serious trial. QM harmed the possibility of a precise and complete prediction and only assigned probabilities to multiple possible measurement outcomes. But against announcements of the bankruptcy of causality and determinism, Cassirer argued that they were advanced to more sophisticated forms. Firstly, Cassirer understood causality as the general postulate that our nature displays an intelligible orderliness according to law. Secondly, he argued that the sometimes celebrated title of indeterminism led to either scepticism or metaphysics. Cassirer argued that QM did not attack the “determinateness of law” at all, for the laws of the theory are necessary and always apply. However, all commentators found that Cassirer’s causality came across as too general. Also, it was asked whether his formulations could protect physics against the “indeterminateness” of individual (atomic) processes and their apparent “Willkürlichkeit”.

I will explore the aims of Cassirer’s philosophy and compare them with the critique of his commentators and conclude that Cassirer nevertheless met what C. F. von Weizsäcker called the “needs of the physicists”.

Contact: heijden.pvd@gmail.com