Atomfysik og menneskelig erkendelse / Essays 1932–1957 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge

Twenty-five years of occasional papers, from Light and Life (1932) to the pieces written for the collection itself in 1957. It contains the Discussion with Einstein, the fullest account Bohr gave of the argument that occupied him for two decades, and the essays extending the epistemological lesson to biology and to human cultures.

The text

Eight volumes are planned, four Danish and four English; this is volume II of each. Both sides are transcriptions of published texts, not translations made here: the English is Bohr’s own published English, most of it written by him in that language. The Danish follows Filosofiske Skrifter, Bind II (Forlaget Philosophia, København 2013, with the Niels Bohr Arkiv); the English follows Woodbridge, Conn.: Ox Bow Press, 1987. Reprint of Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, John Wiley & Sons, New York 1958.

#	Danish	English	First published
0	Forord	(Danish only)	Skrevet til Atomfysik og menneskelig erkendelse, København 1957. Dateret København, august 1957. Den engelske Preface står i Ox Bow-udgaven, s. v–vi
1	Indledning	Introduction	Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, John Wiley & Sons, New York 1958, pp. v–vi, 1–2
2	Lys og Liv	Light and Life	Nature 131 (1933) 421–423, 457–459
3	Biologi og Atomfysik	Biology and Atomic Physics	Celebrazione del secondo centenario della nascita di Luigi Galvani, I. Rendiconto generale, Tipografia Luigi Parma, Bologna 1938, pp. 68–78
4	Fysikkens Erkendelseslære og Menneskekulturerne	Natural Philosophy and Human Cultures	Congrès international des sciences anthropologiques et ethnologiques, compte rendu de la deuxième session, Copenhagen 1938, Ejnar Munksgaard, Copenhagen 1939, pp. 86–95; also Nature 143 (1939) 268–272
5	Diskussion med Einstein om erkendelsesteoretiske Problemer i Atomfysikken	Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics	P.A. Schilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher–Scientist, The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. VII, Evanston, Illinois 1949, pp. 201–241
6	Kundskabens Enhed	Unity of Knowledge	L. Leary (ed.), Unity of Knowledge, Doubleday & Co., New York 1955, pp. 47–62
7	Atomerne og den menneskelige Erkendelse	Atoms and Human Knowledge	Dædalus 87 (1958) 164–175; address to the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, Copenhagen, October 1955
8	Fysikken og Livets Problem	Physical Science and the Problem of Life	First printed in Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, John Wiley & Sons, New York 1958, pp. 94–101; based on a Steno Lecture to the Danish Medical Society, Copenhagen, February 1949

Status: skeleton. 9 pieces scaffolded; no text transcribed yet.

Editorial note

This edition’s one substantive addition to the existing printings is dual marginal pagination. Bohr is normally cited from the collected volumes — “PWNB II, p. 74” — but the arguments were first made in journals, congress proceedings and Festschriften, and it is that pagination the contemporary correspondence and the Niels Bohr Collected Works cite. A reader working between the two has had to convert by hand. Here both are marked:

• [n], bold, in the left margin — page n of the original publication named in that essay’s First published line above.
• |n|, italic, in the right margin — page n of the collected volume: Ox Bow Press in English, Philosophia in Danish.

Ox Bow is the touchstone for the English series — that is what a “PWNB II, p. n” citation means to a reader. As it happens the choice costs nothing for vols I–III: each was checked against the printed Ox Bow copy and each reproduces its source photographically, so Ox Bow and the first printings (Cambridge 1934, Wiley 1958, Interscience 1963) agree page for page.

Markers sit at the exact word the page turns on. They are set with marginnote rather than \marginpar so that they survive inside block quotations, lists and footnotes, where \marginpar silently drops them. Because the collected editions reset the type, the two series interleave irregularly; that is the point.

The Danish text is Philosophia’s, and Philosophia modernises

One departure from this repository’s usual practice has to be stated plainly. The Danish here follows Filosofiske Skrifter (Philosophia 2013), which keeps Bohr’s titles in their original orthography but modernises the prose — legemernes ligevægt og bevægelser where 1925 printed Legemernes Ligevægt og Bevægelser. So the Danish is not a diplomatic transcription of a first printing in the way the rest of this collection is.

That is deliberate. Most of these pieces were written and first published in English or German; Philosophia’s Danish is itself a translation, and for them there is no original Danish to be faithful to. Setting the minority that were first printed in Danish from their own first printings, while taking the rest from Philosophia, would produce a volume in two orthographies. Philosophia throughout is the coherent choice.

Within that text the transcription is diplomatic in the usual sense: set as printed, errors preserved and logged in a % comment at the site, never silently corrected.

Because of this, [n] on the Danish side marks the first printing of the text in whatever language it appeared: a Danish printing where one exists, otherwise the English or German article whose pagination the literature cites. Each essay’s First published line names it, so it is always clear which.

Links to the original printings

Each essay’s First published line carries a DOI, or two: the original article’s own DOI where the publisher has registered one, and the Niels Bohr Collected Works chapter, which reproduces essentially everything Bohr published. Both are live links in the PDF.

The Collected Works link matters most for the pieces that will never have a DOI of their own — the Danish articles in Fysisk Tidsskrift, Naturens Verden, Tilskueren and Ingeniøren, and the congress volumes and Festschriften. Every piece with a separate printing carries at least one resolvable link; only the prefaces, which were written for their volumes, carry none.

Where a piece appeared in more than one place, both are given: Bind I’s Atomteorien og Grundprincipperne, for instance, links its Danish first printing in the 1929 Naturforskermøde proceedings and its German printing in Naturwissenschaften 18. Where no DOI exists but the article is on JSTOR, a stable JSTOR URL stands in.

Each link was verified by matching the registered volume and page range against the citation recorded here, not merely by matching a title.

Rights

Unlike everything else in this collection, these texts are not public domain. Bohr died in 1962; the Danish edition (Philosophia 2013) and the English (Ox Bow Press) are both in copyright. Permission to publish has been obtained, and this volume is live on the site. The permission covers the eight volumes described here; further Bohr material — correspondence, the Collected Works, the unpublished manuscripts in the Niels Bohr Arkiv — is not covered by it and should not be added without checking.

All notes and essays · Catalog