Pauli's Exclusion Principle: The Origin and Validation of a Scientific Principle

by Michela Massimi

• ISBN13: 9780521839112
• ISBN10: 0521839114
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-09-19
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

There is hardly another principle in physics with wider scope of applicability and more far-reaching consequences than Pauli's exclusion principle. This book explores the principle's origin in the atomic spectroscopy of the early 1920s, its subsequent embedding into quantum mechanics, and later experimental validation with the development of quantum chromodynamics. The reconstruction of this crucial historic episode provides an excellent foil to reconsider Kuhn's view on incommensurability. The author defends the prospective rationality of the revolutionary transition from the old to the new quantum theory around 1925 by focusing on the way Pauli's principle emerged as a phenomenological rule 'deduced' from some anomalous phenomena and theoretical assumptions of the old quantum theory. The subsequent process of validation is historically reconstructed and analysed within the framework of 'dynamic Kantianism'. The variety of themes skilfully interwoven in this book will appeal to philosophers, historians, scientists and anyone interested in philosophy.

Table of Contents

Note on translation	x
Preface	xi
Epigraph	xiv
Introduction	1	(6)
1 The exclusion principle: a philosophical overview	7	(28)
1.1 Introduction	7	(2)
1.2 From Poincaré's conventionalism to Popper and Lakatos on the nature of the exclusion principle	9	(4)
1.3 From Reichenbach's coordinating principles to Friedman's relativized a priori principles	13	(8)
1.4 Constitutive versus regulative	21	(10)
1.4.1 Kant on the regulative principle of systematicity	25	(3)
1.4.2 Ernst Cassirer and the architectonic of scientific knowledge	28	(3)
1.5 The exclusion principle: a Kantian perspective	31	(4)
2 The origins of the exclusion principle: an extremely natural prescriptive rule	35	(43)
2.1 The prehistory of Pauli's exclusion principle	35	(17)
2.1.1 Atomic spectra and the Bohr -Sommerfeld theory of atomic structure	35	(8)
2.1.2 The doublet riddle and the riddle of statistical weights	43	(4)
2.1.3 The anomalous Zeeman effect and the mystery of half-integral quantum numbers	47	(5)
2.2 Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli on spectroscopic anomalies	52	(21)
2.2.1 Niels Bohr: nothing but a 'non-mechanical constraint'?	52	(3)
2.2.2 Heisenberg's first core model: the sharing principle. Does success justify the means?	55	(5)
2.2.3 Heisenberg's second core model: the branching rule and a new quantum principle	60	(5)
2.2.4 Pauli: from the electron's Zweideutigkeit to the exclusion rule	65	(8)
2.3 The turning point	73	(5)
3 From the old quantum theory to the new quantum theory: reconsidering Kuhn's incommensurability	78	(34)
3.1 The revolutionary transition from the old quantum theory to the new quantum theory	78	(3)
3.2 Reconsidering Kuhnian incommensurability	81	(22)
3.2.1 Kuhn on scientific lexicons: incommensurability as untranslatability	81	(5)
3.2.2 Kuhn's argument for untranslatability and Hacking's taxonomic solution to the new-world problem	86	(5)
3.2.3 Lexical taxonomies: the Aristotelian tradition and the nominalist criticism	91	(2)
3.2.4 How should we read lexical taxonomies? A Kantian reading	93	(4)
3.2.5 Reintroducing history in scientific lexicons: a lesson from the crisis of the old quantum theory	97	(6)
3.3 The prospective intelligibility of the revolutionary transition from the atomic core model to the electron's Zweideutigkeit	103	(9)
3.3.1 The electron's Zweideutigkeit and Pauli's exclusion rule as the conclusions of two nested demonstrative inductions	103	(9)
4 How Pauli's rule became the exclusion principle: from Fermi–Dirac statistics to the spin–statistics theorem	112	(33)
4.1 Introduction	112	(3)
4.2 Pauli's rule prescribes a new exclusion: Fermi–Dirac statistics	115	(4)
4.3 The non-relativistic quantum mechanics of the magnetic electron: Pauli's spin matrices	119	(3)
4.4 Group theory enters the scene	122	(1)
4.5 From quantum electrodynamics to quantum field theory: the exclusion principle re-expressed in terms of anticommutation relations	123	(5)
4.6 Towards relativistic quantum mechanics: the Dirac equation for the electron and the hole theory	128	(5)
4.7 Pauli against the hole theory: the Pauli–Weisskopf 'anti-Dirac' paper	133	(5)
4.8 Pauli's first proof of the spin–statistics theorem	138	(1)
4.9 Pauli's final proof of the spin–statistics theorem	138	(3)
4.10 How Pauli's rule gained the status of a scientific principle	141	(4)
5 The exclusion principle opens up new avenues: from the eightfold way to quantum chromodynamics	145	(39)
5.1 Introduction	145	(2)
5.2 From the eightfold way to quarks	147	(7)
5.3 Revoking or retaining the exclusion principle?	154	(18)
5.3.1 Revoking the strict validity of the exclusion principle: quarks as parafermions	154	(8)
5.3.2 Retaining the exclusion principle: coloured quarks and quantum chromodynamics	162	(10)
5.4 The Duhem–Quine thesis: epistemological holism and the validation of the exclusion principle	172	(12)
5.4.1 The validating role of negative evidence	175	(4)
5.4.2 Quinean underdetermination and the rationality of retaining a threatened principle	179	(5)
Conclusion	184	(5)
References	189	(15)
Index	204

Excerpts

"Pauli's Exclusion Principle proposes a philosophical framework for understanding the principle's origin in the atomic spectroscopy of the early 1920s, its subsequent embedding in quantum mechanics and later experimental validation with the development of quantum chromodynamics."--BOOK JACKET.