From Dualism to Unity in Quantum Mechanics

Abstract

The doctrine of duality maintains that neither discrete particles nor continuous waves have an exclusive claim to physical reality, that both are rationalised pictures fitting different experimental situations which, being complementary, yield a more complete knowledge of a microphysical object only in their combination. I concede that a neutral stand toward the wave-particle controversy, leaning on the doctrine of duality, was justified during the earlier period of quantum theory when the evidence pointed sometimes in this, sometimes in the opposite direction. But I maintain that the continued cult of duality and complementarity represented as fundamental features of the microphysical world has become an all too convenient evasion of a serious proproblem of theoretical physics, viz. that of establishing a unitary theory of matter resting on a clear decision between particles or waves as the real constituents of matter. Realism is the only stand which can satisfy physicists in the long run (Einstein certainly was a physicist). Dialectical positivism practised by Bohr and Heisenberg may serve only as a temporary stopgap, as a comfortable excuse for indecision resting on an unfdled gap in our knowledge of theoretical interconnections between data. Actually, a decisive step in the direction of unitary theory was taken already thirty years ago by Max Born