Paul Forman - Forman Thesis

Forman Thesis

Forman (1971) argued the remarkable scientific achievements in quantum physics in Weimar Germany in the 1920s involved the cross-product of the hostile intellectual atmosphere whereby many scientists rejected Weimar Germany as an illegitimate state and in which there were intellectual revolts against causality, determinism and materialism. The scientists adjusted to the intellectual environment by dropping Newtonian causality from quantum mechanics, thereby opening up an entirely new and highly successful approach to physics. Forman links the emergence of quantum mechanics, and Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation in particular, to the postwar revolt against rationalist and causal-realist philosophies of science. Many intellectuals felt those philosophies somehow contributed to the crisis of European (more specifically German) national identity. Forman concludes that:

"If the physicist were to improve his public image he had first and foremost to dispense with causality, with rigorous determinism, that most universally abhorred feature of the physical world picture. And this, of course, turned out to be precisely what was required for the solution of those problems in atomic physics which were then at the focus of the physicist’s interest."

The "Forman Thesis" has generated an intense debate for and against among historians of science. In support of Forman, Max Jammer and others cite anti-rationalist movements such as existentialism, pragmatism, and logical empiricism as showing a post-war cultural climate that was receptive to the kinds of argument advanced by Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac and others. Just as many scholars have challenged the Forman thesis.