Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Heisenberg: "concept of the soul [...] more natural and less forced"

Heisenberg said in his Physics and Philosophy that the probability wave concept in quantum mechanics "was a quantitative version of the concept of 'potentia' in Aristotelian philosophy" (p. 41) and that the "concept of the soul for instance in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas was more natural and less forced than the Cartesian concept of 'res cogitans,' even if we are convinced that the laws of physics and chemistry are strictly valid in living organisms." (p. 80).
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2 comments:

  1. Magister ChristianusDecember 2, 2010 at 10:11 AM

    This is great! Thank you for sharing it. I sent it immediately to a Catholic colleague of mine who is a big Heisenberg fan. I look forward to exploring his "Physics and Philosophy."

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  2. kkollwitzDecember 3, 2010 at 9:45 AM

    When you get down to the most fundamental realities at the subatomic level, stuff starts looking like God in a hurry.

    Hey, also confirming all you Heisenbergers have see "Copenhagen."

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