Les tensions actuelles de l'histoire des sciences

Pietro Redondi

doi:10.3406/ahess.1981.282767

Les tensions actuelles de l'histoire des sciences

Annales Histoire Sciences Sociales ◽

10.3406/ahess.1981.282767 ◽

1981 ◽

Vol 36 (4) ◽

pp. 572-590

Author(s):

Pietro Redondi

Keyword(s):

Quantum Theory ◽

Thomas Kuhn ◽

History Of ◽

History Of Quantum Theory

Les débats passionnés soulevés dans l'épistémologie anglo-américaine au milieu des années soixante par La Structure des révolutions scientifiques Kuhn, 1962), connaissent actuellement en France un intérêt remarquable. Les spécialistes de l'histoire des sciences préfèrent aujourd'hui associer le nom de Thomas Kuhn à l'Archive for the History of Quantum Theory, qu'il a patiemment réunie, et à son histoire des origines de la physique quantique (Kuhn, 1978). Pour tous les sociologues, épistémologues, historiens et scientifiques qui ont lu La Structure, le nom de Kuhn restera au contraire indissociablement lié à l'apparition d'un puissant modèle sociologique de l'histoire des sciences, dont ce petit-grand livre fut le véhicule.

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Quantum Narratives and the Power of Rhetorical Omission

Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences ◽

10.1525/hsns.2018.48.1.24 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 48 (1) ◽

pp. 24-55

Author(s):

José G. Perillán

Keyword(s):

Quantum Theory ◽

Scientific Community ◽

Fundamental Principle ◽

International Scientific Community ◽

Physics Community ◽

Pilot Wave ◽

History Of ◽

Quantum Interpretation ◽

History Of Quantum Theory ◽

Pedagogical Discourses

John S. Bell openly questioned the dominance of an orthodox quantum interpretation that had seemingly raised the principle of indeterminism from an epistemological question to an ontological truth in the late 1920s. He understood the inevitability of indeterminism to be a theoretical choice made by the founding architects of quantum theory, not a fundamental principle of reality necessitated by experimental facts. As a result, Bell decried the general lull in quantum interpretation debates within the physics community, and in particular, the complete omission of Louis de Broglie’s deterministic pilot wave interpretation from all theoretical and pedagogical discourses. This paper reexamines the pilot wave’s rise, abandonment, and subsequent omission in the history of quantum theory. What emerges is not a straightforward story of victimization and hegemonic marginalization. Instead, it is a story that grapples with tensions between the polyphony of individual voices and a physics community’s evolving identity and consensus in response to particular sociopolitical and scientific contexts. At the heart of these tensions sits an international scientific community transitioning from a politically fractured and intellectually divergent community to one embracing a somewhat forced pragmatic convergence around rationally reconstructed narratives and concepts like the impossibility of determinism. The story of the pilot wave’s omission gives us a window into the inherent power that theoretical choice and a congealing rhetoric of orthodoxy have on a scientific community’s consensus, pedagogical canons, and the future development of science itself.

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