From Data to Quanta

Slobodan Perovic is professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Belgrade. His work has been featured in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, Foundations of Science, and Synthese, among others.

• IntroductionPart 1: Preliminaries 2  From Laboratory to Theory3  From Classical Experiments to Quantum TheoryPart 2: Bohr’s Vision in Practice: the Old Quantum Theory 4  Spectral Lines, Quantum States, and a Master Model of the Atom5  The Correspondence Principle as an Intermediary Hypothesis 6  Reception7  The Scientific ModeratorPart 3: Toward Quantum Mechanics8  Quantum Corpuscles, Quantum Waves, and the Experiments9  The Uncertainty Principle as an Intermediary Hypothesis10  Metaphysical Principles and Heuristic Rules11 New Formalisms and Bohr’s Atom12  Complementarity Established and Applied Part 4: Aftermath13  Bohr and the “Copenhagen Orthodoxy” 14  Bohr’s Response to the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument15  The Mature Bohr and the Rise of Slick Theory and TheoreticiansAcknowledgmentsBibliographyIndex

"Perovic offers a novel and refreshingly unorthodox interpretation of Bohr's seminal contributions to quantum physics and their philosophical implications. Adopting a method of historically sensitive analysis, he argues convincingly that the great Dane came to his overarching hypotheses, including the complementarity principle, by inductive reasoning inherently based on experiments. He skillfully defends Bohr against the charges that his epistemological and methodological views were amateurish armchair philosophy. Perovic's book on Bohr's vision is recommendable from a scientific, historical, and philosophical perspective."--Helge Kragh, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen