Ambiguity: aspects of the wave–particle duality

As has become evident from historical studies, science does not proceed in the coherent and predictable way that basic science texts would have us believe. I will argue that an excellent counter-example is an episode from the historical development of quantum mechanics in which the incompatibility of the particle and the wave representations of the electron and light were destined to be encompassed by two mathematically equivalent, but conceptually quite different theories.I shall argue that the appearance of two such different, yet equivalent, quantum theories was not surprising at all and I claim even predictable. As Einstein himself wrote in 1909: ‘It is my opinion that the next phase in the development of theoretical physics will bring us a theory of light that can be interpreted as a kind of fusion of the wave and the [particle] theory.’ Certainly, the interpretative content of Werner Heisenberg's and Erwin Schrödinger's theories could not have been more different. By mid-1926, the theoretical foundations had been laid for a scientific and emotional battleground between the particle and the wave. I suggest that an important element in the debate was not the incompatibility itself but actually coming to terms with ambiguity in science. For, in the end, ambiguous and vague interpretations of the same phenomena became part of science, where science was supposed to give a clear and unambiguous description of nature.