| Making a distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification, I examine the relationship between philosophy and the discovery of quantum physics. I do this by focusing on four of the most important contributors to quantum theory: Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger and Niels Bohr. Looking to the period immediately preceding the era in which quantum physics was developed, I first explore the scientific writings of Hermann von Helmholtz, Ernst Mach, Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann. In doing so, I uncover the integral role classic philosophy played in the scientific investigations of nineteenth-century German and Austrian physicists. After establishing the cultural link between scientific writing and philosophic training at that time and place in history, I investigate the formative philosophic influences on Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Bohr. By a close examination of some of their most important scientific papers, this dissertation reveals the way in which these early twentieth-century scientists continued an important nineteenth-century European tradition of integrating philosophic thought in their scientific creative thinking. |
