Visions of Revolutions: Microphysics and Cosmophysics in the 1930s

TL;DR

The paper examines the 1930s perception of a crisis in microphysics and cosmology, analyzing whether it truly signaled a revolutionary shift or was mainly rhetorical, and finds it was largely temporary and not linked to social upheavals.

Contribution

It provides a historical analysis of the 1930s physics community's discourse on foundational crises and clarifies that the perceived revolution was mostly rhetorical rather than substantive.

Findings

The 1930s crisis was largely rhetorical, not a fundamental upheaval.

Perceived crisis was temporary and not linked to political or social upheavals.

Discussions of revolution in physics were more rhetoric than reflection of actual scientific upheaval.

Abstract

By 1930, at a time when the new physics based on relativity and quantum theory had reached a state of consolidation, problems of a foundational kind began to abound. Physicists began to speak of a new "crisis" and envisage a forthcoming "revolution" of a scale similar to the one in the mid-1920s. The perceived crisis was an issue not only in microphysics but also in cosmology, where it resulted in ambitious cosmophysical theories that transcended the ordinary methods of physics. The uncertain cognitive situation was, in some circles, associated to the uncertain political and moral situation. Did the problems of foundational physics demand a revolution in thinking that somehow paralleled the political revolutions of the time? I argue that although such ideas were indeed discussed in the 1930s, they were more rhetoric than reality. With the benefit of hindsight one can see that the perceived crisis was only temporary and not significantly related to social or ideological developments in the decade.