Favorite Prefaces – III

Theory of Relativity
W. Pauli

(…) I do not conceal to the reader my scepticism concerning all attempts of this kind which have been made until now, and also about the future chances of success of theories [unified field theories] with such aims. These questions are closely connected with the problem of the range validity of the classical field concept in its application to the atomic features of Nature. The critical view, which I uttered in the last section of the original text with respect to any solution on these classical lines, has since been very much deepened by the epistemological analysis of quantum mechanics, or wave mechanics, which was formulated in 1927. On the other hand Einstein maintained the hope for a total solution on the lines of a classical field theory until the end of his life. These differences of opinion are merging into the great open problem of the relation of relativity theory to quantum theory, which will presumably occupy physicists for a long while to come. In particular, a clear connection between the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics is not yet in sight.

(…)

There is a point of view according to which relativity theory is the end-point of “classical physics”, which means physics in the style of Newton-Faraday-Maxwell, governed by the “deterministic” form of causality in space and time, while afterwards the new quantum-mechanical style of the laws of Nature came into play. This point of view seems to me only partly true, and does not sufficiently do justice to the great influence of Einstein, the creator of the theory of relativity, on the general way of thinking of the physicists of today. By its epistemological analysis of the consequences of the finiteness of the velocity of light (and with it, of all signal-velocities), the theory of special relativity was the first step away from naive visualization. The concept of the state of motion of the “luminiferous aether”, as the hypothetical medium was called earlier, had to be given up, not only because it turned out to be unobservable, but because it became superfluous as an element of a mathematical formalism, the group-theoretical properties of which would only be disturbed by it.

By the widening of the transformation group in general relativity the idea of distinguished inertial coordinate systems could also be eliminated by Einstein as inconsistent with the group-theoretical properties of the theory. Without this general critical attitude, which abandoned naive visualizations in favour of a conceptual analysis of the correspondence between observational data and the mathematical quantities in a theoretical formalism, the establishment of the modern form of quantum theory would not have been possible. In the “complementary” quantum theory, the epistemological analysis of the finiteness of the quantum of action led to further steps away from naive visualizations. In this case it was both the classical field concept, and the concept of orbits of particles (electrons) in space and time, which had to be given up in favour of rational generalizations. Again, these concepts were rejected, not only because the orbits are unobservable, but also because they became superfluous and would disturb the symmetry inherent in the general transformation group underlying the mathematical formalism of the theory.

I consider the theory of relativity to be an example showing how a fundamental scientific discovery, sometimes even against the resistance of its creator, gives birth to further fruitful developments, following its own autonomous course.

Note: This preface was written in 1956, two years before Pauli’s death. That edition is a book made from his original paper “Relativitätstheorie”, in Encyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften, Vol. VI9, (B. G. Teubner, Leipzig 1921), written when he extremely young (about 20 years old), and only six years after the publishing of Einstein’s General Relativity theory.