A reinterpretation of Heisenberg’s Umdeutung in prescriptive-dynamical terms

Abstract

There has been a lot of discussion about Heisenberg’s Umdeutung paper of 1925, which is universally credited as the first formulation of modern quantum mechanics. Much of this discussion has been characterized by puzzlement over the manner in which Heisenberg arrived at his formulation, supposedly through Bohr’s atomic theory in conjunction with two philosophical principles, namely the Correspondence Principle and the Observability Principle. I provide textual, contextual, and philosophical evidence that the “prescriptive-dynamical framework” – recently advocated in the literature on independent grounds – is the perfect perspective from which to understand Heisenberg’s work and the significance of the two principles he utilized to arrive at it.