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Re: "quantization"



Igal Galili wrote:

Referring to:

"No one who has
deeply thought about this subject will deny that the world of sense
perceptions practically determines the theoretical system
uniquely..."

History of physics provides examples which show that uniqueness does
not
take place with regard to physical theories (e.g., Schrodinger's and
Heisenberg's formalisms in QM). One might talk about isomorphism of
these
theories, which would be still questionable, but at least, a more
encompassing claim.


Do you know of any other examples of non-unique theories? In
particular, any in which the two theories are not mathematically
equivalent? Also, what makes the isomorphism of the Schrodinger and
Heisenberg formulations questionable? The only thing that I can think
of is that the normalization of momentum and position states might do
something to the formulations that I am not aware of. They certainly
always give the same answers, otherwise we would regard one as right and
the other as wrong.

--
Maurice Barnhill, mvb@udel.edu
http://www.physics.udel.edu/~barnhill/
Physics Dept., University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716