Concept

Wave–particle duality

Overview

Wave–particle duality is the concept in quantum mechanics that fundamental entities of the universe, like photons and electrons, exhibit particle or wave properties according to the experimental circumstances. It expresses the inability of the classical concepts such as particle or wave to fully describe the behavior of quantum objects. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, light was found to behave as a wave, then later was discovered to have a particle-like behavior, whereas electrons behaved like particles in early experiments, then later were discovered to have wave-like behavior. The concept of duality arose to name these seeming contradictions.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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But its permanence now is only approximate, not absolute. It is thought that an electron and a proton can meet and annihilate each other; in the stars this is supposed to be happening on a large scale.[14] And even while an electron or a proton lasts, it has a different kind of persistence from that formerly attributed to matter. A wave in the sea persists for a longer or shorter time: the waves that I see dashing…
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
Close in meaning to Wave–particle duality; the term itself is not named.
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All philosophers who have examined attentively the nature of matter, considered in itself, independently of all the forms which constitute bodies, have discovered in this substance, diverse properties proceeding from an absolutely unknown essence. Such are, (1) the capacity of taking on different forms, which are produced in matter itself, by which matter can acquire moving force and the faculty of feeling; (2)…
Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Man a Machine
Close in meaning to Wave–particle duality; the term itself is not named.
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A segregation of another kind occurs when rays of light traverse an obstructing medium. Those rays which consist of comparatively short undulations, are absorbed before those which consist of comparatively long ones; and the red rays, which consist of the longest undulations, alone penetrate when the obstruction is very great. How, conversely, there is produced a separation of like forces by the reaction of unlike…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
Close in meaning to Wave–particle duality; the term itself is not named.
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Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Deductive-nomological model.

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