The Philosophical Reception of Quantum Theory in France and German-speaking countries between 1925 and 1945: Conceptual Implications for the Contemporary Debate.

The present project aims to carry out systematic work on the philosophical foundations and implications of quantum theory, trying to integrate in a novel way a historical perspective with a theoretical one. This aim is justified by the structure of the team, consisting of experienced scholars in the areas of the history and philosophy of physics, history of philosophy, philosophy of science and metaphysics of science. The project focuses on two main lines of research, to be developed both in themselves and in their mutual influence. The first line is historical-critical, aiming to present and put into context, in a more documented way with respect to the previous literature, the main aspects of the debate on the philosophical implications of quantum theory, as developed in the German-speaking countries and France between 1925 and 1945. The second line is shaped around a conceptual and foundational dimension, where the underestimated contributions to the quantum theory of the philosophers mentioned above will be systematically connected to open questions in contemporary philosophy and metaphysics of the theory. The project is supposed to develop in two (interconnected) parts also from a temporal viewpoint. The first part of the project will involve mainly the TORINO unit, which is supposed to set the stage for further philosophical and metaphysical explorations, explicitly presented in the detailed formulation of the project. In all these stages, although the characterization of the main lines of investigations involves a major effort in terms of the history of the philosophical and scientific thought, a significant intervention from the units of ROME 3 and TRENTO is also contemplated, specifically at those points in which the attempts of reconstructing the views of the above ‘philosophers-scientists’ involves a true conceptual, and not only historical, component. The second part of the project will involve mainly the ROME 3 and TRENTO units, since the results obtained in the first, more historico-critically oriented part, will help to set the stage for a more conceptually and foundationally inclined analysis of the extent to which the overlooked contributions of the above mentioned ‘philosophers-scientists’ provided hints and stimuli that may still prove engaging in the current debate on the philosophical implications of quantum theory. In the wake of this renewed interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics an almost contemporary rebirth and development of analytic metaphysics emerged, and in the last decades the fusion of rigorously argued and logically-inspired metaphysics on one hand, and foundational and philosophical studies on the other, recreated the previous interactions between physicists and philosophers. Again, a significant interplay with the TORINO unit will prove useful also at this stage, in connection with the legacy of Reichenbach Schlick’s and Cassirer’ s work on causality and lawhood.