Subject: Re: Dirac Citation, reductionism and an advertisement

From: "Jens Spanget-Larsen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 10:40:14 +0100

Dear Alexandre:

> To say that Dirac did NOT claim this, is certainly correct stricto sensu. To
> imply that Dirac did not believe in a reductionist approach of chemistry is
> another matter. Among the historians of science that interested themselves to
> the subject, i cannot think of someone not seeing Dirac as a strong
> reductionnist.

My comment was meant to emphasize that 'Dirac's dictum', taken at face value, 
essentially agrees with present day common sense (at least to me). I have 
allways felt that his statement was misinterpreted. - But what did Dirac 
"believe"? He died in 1984, 55 years after his 1929 statement. I wonder if he 
ever commented upon the subject during his later years? I have been told that 
Dirac was a rather special, eccentric person (complete lack of interest in art 
and literature), and after the mid-1930s he largely failed to produce any 
physics of lasting value, emphasizing an idiosyncratic conception of 
'mathematical beauty'. So it seems quite likely that he would have adopted a 
reductionist point of view.

Yours, Jens >--<

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