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(1991) The new aspects of time, Dordrecht, Springer.
It is true that all previous considerations presuppose that microphysical indeterminacy has an objective status and therefore is not a mere result of temporary technological limitations of our present measurements. I discussed this particular problem at length in a chapter entitled `The End of the Laplacean Illusion"1 in my previous book in which I listed all the facts supporting the objective status of indeterminacy: not only the general bankruptcy of all the ideas constituting the classical deterministic model of the physical reality, but also the peculiar character of radioactive explosions, whose statistical character and indeterminacy cannot by their very nature depend on the intervention of the observer. I also pointed out that this character is not confined to radioactive processes only. The emissions of photons have essentially the same "radioactive" character, and this is true of spontaneous disintegrations of all recently discovered "particles' as well. I also pointed out that resistance to the concept of the objective contingency of microphysical events is due mainly to the tenacity of certain classical beliefs, including the belief in the LaplaceanSpinozist concept of causality, which is still wrongly regarded as the only type of rational order.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-2123-8_15
Full citation:
Čapek, M. (1991). Bergson and Louis de Broglie, in The new aspects of time, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 286-295.
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