Why was Einstein against the Copenhagen Interpretation?

Einstein and Bohr (top) Heisenberg and Bohr (Copenhagen School)

We all know about the important contributions Einstein and Bohr made toward the development of quantum mechanics. However, Einstein was totally indifferent, if not hostile, to the Copengagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Why? This is an interesting question especially because both Bohr and Einstein were thinking within the framework of Kantianism, or the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Both quantum mechanics and relativity are observer-dependent scientific disciplines.

The easiest way to understand Kantianism is to watch TV grograms covering court proceedings, where witnesses say different things based on their subjective observations. The court's responsibility is to find the absolute truth based on what those witnesses say. Indeed, Kantianism plays a very important role in judicial philosophy. This kind of absolute truth was called the "Ding an Sich" (thing in itself) by Kant.

The Bohr-Einstein dispute is a fine structure within Kantianism. I think I studied enough about the subject to address this issue. After I give conference talks in Europe, I frequently meet the people who ask me whether I am a Taoist. I say No, because I have not read any books about Taoism, but I say I am an Einsteinist since I studied and am still studying about Einstein. Then what is Einsteinism? Then how is Einsteinism different from Kantianism?

Einstein had an early exposure to Kantianism in his life, and Kant's influence on Einstein is well known. In order to study this aspect in more detail, I made a trip to the Russian city of Kaliningrad in 2005, and constructed my own Kaliningrad page. Many of you have already been to this page, but I invite you to visit again because I added many more photos. Kalinigrad is changing.

Let us start with quantum mechanics. To some people, matter looks like a particle or a collection of particles. To some people, it looks like a wave or superposition of waves. Therefore, there must be an absolute theory called quantum mechanics with it own interpretation of physics, including probabilistic interpretation. This way of thinking reflects the orthodox version of Kantianism based on his "Ding an Sich."

Do we need an egg?

Let us take a simpler version of Kantianism. A Coca-Cola can looks like a circle to an observer who looks at it from the top, but it will look like a rectangle for an observers who looks at from its side. Based on these two observers, we may conclude the existence of a circular cylinder, which constitute Kant's "Ding an Sich."

We all know where John S. Bell stands in the Copenhagen school of of thought. He is uniformly respected by all of us for his critical mind. The collection of his articles "Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics" is one of the must-have books for physicists these days.

In his Lecture 9 entitled "How to teach special relativity," Bell uses a circle and an ellipse to illustrate the Lorentz boost. Yes, Einstein's relativity is also an observer-dependent science. Two observers in different Lorentz frames see things differently. In this case, do we really need an egg to entertain the original version of Kantianism?

Yes, Kant also studied spent many years to study physics. Like Einstein and before Einstein, he considered the possibility his "Ding an Sich" looking differently to observers in frames moving with different velocities. However, Kant was so obsessed with his Ding that he had to stick with the existence of the absolute frame of reference.

Einstein inherited Kant's idea of things looking differently to observers in different frames, but he had to get rid the absolute frame associated with the "Ding an Sich." For this revision of Kantianism, Einstein must have faced a hostile reaction from the existing science established at that time, like Galileo who received a punishment from the church.

We all know how important Michelson's experiment was to Einstein's theory. Yet, until his death in 1931, Michelson worked so hard to destroy Einstein's theory by proving the existence of the absolute frame. I suspect this was the reason why Einstein did not get the Nobel prize for his formulation of relativity. Even these days, there are people insisting on the absolute frame.


Click here for Einstein's Nobel prize.
We thank Max Wallis for sending us a very interesting mail.

The Copenhagen people persistently attempted preach their "Ding an Sich" to a person who suffered so much from getting rid of it. We can now understand why Einstein was not very happy with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.

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Let us go back to the question of why European colleagues are asking me whether I am a Taoist. Unlike Americans, Europeans still have some influence of Kantianism which dominated their intellectual life from 1840 to 1940. They are able to detect some Kantian element in my talks, but they choose to label me as a Taoist based on my Asian background.

Indeed, Kantianism and Taoism are very similar to each other. I say this based on the following three observations.

1. During the period 1985-90, I used to go to Princeton often to tell the stories Eugene Wigner wanted to hear. Click here for the content of my conversation with Wigner.

2. While I was in Kalingrad for two nights and three days, I visited the Kant Museum twice. There are many books about Kant and his philosophy written by Japanese philosophers, while there are no books in English. Quite understandably there are many books written in German and Russian. Click here for those books in the Kant Museum.

3. Kaliningrad was still a hazardous place when I went there in 2005. It was an East Prussian city of Koenigsberg. After World War II, Stalin renamed this area and started using this area as the major navel base for the Baltic fleet, and Kaliningrad was a secret city until the end of the Soviet Union. Yet, I had to go there to study about Kant, who was born and lived there for 80 years of his entire life. It is widely said that, in his books, Kant was talking about the life style of Koenigsberg during his time. The best way to study this point was to go there to look at the place and talk to the people who live there. While I was there I made the following observations.
   • The geography of Koenigsberg is very similar to that of Venice. It was the major stop-over place for all the ships navigating in the Baltic Sea. It was a meeting point for many different people with different viewpoints and different cultural background. The city became flourishing because the people there were able to figure out the common points from all those different opinions. This is what Kantianism is all about.

   • China's history is about 100,000 years old, but it started as pockets of isolated tribes spread over their vast land. About 5,000 years ago, those people came to the banks of their two great rivers and started developing their civilization. In order to communicate among those different tribes, they had to draw pictures. This is how Chinese developed their characters. In order to communicate verbally, they sang. This is why spoken Chinese has tones. How about different ideas. They noticed there is at least one different (yang) idea for one original(yang) idea. This is how the philosophy of Taoism was developed. The best way to live in this world is to find the harmony between ying and yang. The harmony is the key word.

     In both Koenigsberg and Chinese river banks, different groups of people came and created their respective philosophies. Their backgrounds are strikingly similar.

• Fine, then how did I become a Taoist? It is very difficult to teach or learn philosophy as an abstract concept. It is done through concrete applications. For instance, I can appreciate the mathematical beauty of group theory only through matrix algebras applicable to physical states. Likewise, Taoism appears to us through practical applications. In order to stress this point, I would like to list the following items.
  1. About 2400 years ago, a Chinese scholar named Sun Tsu wrote book entitled "Art of War." This book tells you how to win in the war. Here the best way to break the enemy defense. How? To break the harmony in the defense line. You do not have to read his book. Simply watch American football games. They are practicing Taoism using Sun Tsu's military art. My grandfather was able to read books written in Chinese. He was quite fond of Sun Tsu's book, and he used to tell me stories about Sun Tsu's military art.

  2. Chinese culture reached its peak during their Tang dynasty (600-900 AD). During this period, Chinese wrote many poems. Each Chinese character carries its own meaning. Thus the combination of those characters can express something very profound. Taoism was the central theme of those poems, emphasizing the harmony among the people and the harmony between the people and nature. There are still 50,000 Tang poems available today.

     During this Tang period, Koreans picked Chinese culture extensively, as they are picking up car-making and TV-making technologies from the United States these days. When I was a high-school students, I had to many Tang poems translated into the Korean language.

  3. Around 750, Tang's Emperor named Hyun Chung had an intimate connection with her female intern named Yang Kwi-hee (like Bill Clinton's Monica). Yang had her boyfriend named Ahn Lyu-shan who attempted to overthrow Tang's government. The story could be quite long and entertaining, but let me stop here. After this incident, the dynasty started declining, and it could not resist invasions from northern barbarians. The empire collapsed around 900 AD, and all the Chinese elites had to flee to south. There they started the Sung dynasty.

  4. During the Sung period, around 1200 AD, a Chinese scholar named Zhu Xi wrote a series of books on Taoism. In one of those books, he combined Confucianism and Taoism to create the political and social ideology known today as "neo-Confucianism." Confucianism tells you what to do, but it does not tell why. Zhu Xi's confucianism tell you why based on the harmony among the people.

     Around 1400 AD, Koreans picked up this neo-Confucianism, and it became the ideology of Korea's Yi dynasty which lasted more than 500 years until 1910 AD.

     Around 1600 AD, a Japanese warrior named Toyotomi Hydesyoi unified Japan, and he thought he was big enough to become the emperor of the midland, namely China. He sent 150,000 Japanese troop to the Korean Peninsula on his way to China, but those troops were stopped in Korea. After seven years, Toyotomi died, and Japanese troops went home. When they were going back, they kidnapped some Korean neo-Confucian scholars. Then Japanese started their own study of Zhu Xi's philosophy, and neo-Confucianism became the political doctrine of Japan's Tokugawa military dynasty which lasted until 1860. Tokugawa Iyeyasu was Toyotomi's subordinate, but he quietly consolidated his power while Toyotomi was crazy about his Korean war.

     If the Taoist influence is strong in Japanese thinking, there is a good reason. Because of the similarity between Taoism and Kantianism, Japanese were so quick to absorb the latter. Japan's Hideki Yukawa was a Taoist and read and studied the original Taoist books written 2400 years ago.

• I have never seen any of those Toist's books, but my brain must have been configured in the tradition of Toism. To me, Kantianism and Taoism appear to be the same. However, there is a difference. While the "Ding an Sich" is the ultimate goal of Kantianism, the harmony is the keyword in Taoism. The harmony can be achieved with or without the "Ding an Sich."

  In most of my papers or conference talks, I address the harmony among what Dirac said, what Wigner said, and what Feynman said about achieving the harmony between quantum mechanics and relativity. This is what my Einstein page is all about. This is why my colleagues sometimes ask me whether I am a Taoist, and I say I am an Einsteinist.

  In spite of all I said above, Americanism and Edisonism play the dominant role in my daily life. For instance, I had to make a trip to Kaliningrad to see what happened to Kant. When I do not have ideas, I start writing papers. Even for this webpage, the conclusion is quite different from what I had in mind when I started writing the day before yesterday. I find new ideas while writing. Sometimes my ideas are wrong, but it is OK. You need many wrong ideas before producing one correct one.

Y. S. Kim (2009.10.8)