Space-Time and Separability: Problems of Identity and Individuation in Fundamental Physics

On 15 June 1935, shortly after the appearance of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paper (Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, 1935), and before he knew that Bohr would himself be publishing a reply (Bohr, 1935), Wolfgang Pauli wrote a long, worried letter to Werner Heisenberg complaining about the damage the paper might do: “Einstein has again expressed himself publicly on quantum mechanics, indeed in the 15 May issue of Physical Review (together with Podolsky and Rosen — no good company, by the way). As is well known, every time that happens it is a catastrophe”. Since the EPR paper was published in an American physics journal, there was a danger, Pauli said, of a “confusion” in American public opinion, and he urged Heisenberg to publish a “pedagogical” reply in the same journal.1

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