Rewriting the Quantum “Revolution”

This paper is a critical analysis of the structure of the quantum revolution. I consider the factual question of how, historically and theoretically, the classical gave way to the quantum, and I argue for an answer that shows, contra Thomas Kuhn's influential philosophy of science, that it is the logic, and not the sociology and psychology, of research that correctly explains the classical-to-the-quantum paradigm shift. My approach is based not on archival studies but on a careful reading, in their original historical context, of Max Planck's and Albert Einstein's well-known papers; the burden of my argument, which at points will be outspoken, consists, then, in identifying and removing the impediments that prevent us from reading these papers in themselves. For this task I critically consider both the main, and mutually antagonistic, accounts of the origin of the quantum theory currently available in the literature-namely, the orthodox story, according to which Planck inaugurated the quantum theory in 1900, and that proposed by Thomas Kuhn in Black-Body Theory and Quantum Discontinuity-and I show that both of them are essentially incorrect. Both overlook the scientific status of the probabilistic kinetic theory of heat as of 1900, of which both Planck and Einstein were acutely aware. The orthodox story will be refuted by showing that Planck did not postulate energy discreteness to derive his black-body radiation law in 1900; and Kuhn, though he argued, as I do here, against the orthodoxy, did so on different grounds, and his own alternative is refuted by showing that Planck's black-body radiation formula did not trigger a Kuhnian "crisis" in classical physics. This conceptual housekeeping will serve its purpose by removing the obstacles that make it impossible to analyze Planck's and Einstein's papers in themselves; once this is done, my conclusions follow.