Constituents of Matter / 3

3 THE CREATION OF QUANTUM MECHANICS

In the previous chapter we have followed the development of the corpuscular conception of matter from the experientially self-evident idea that things are made up of corpuscular constituents extending external mechanical and electromagnetic relationships to each other, through the ever increasing power of this construct to explain experiences related to the inside of things, all the way to the first signs of failure. The need to confront these failures became increasingly compelling the more irreconcilable became the difference between the predictions made by the corpuscular theory and the experience that theory was constructed to explain. We shall summarily describe below the community’s efforts to respond to that challenge, efforts which culminated with the creation of a quantum mechanics by Werner Heisenberg in the summer of 1925. Thereafter, the then current corpuscular theory ceased to be the universal theory and became merely the classical one.