역사의 불확정성과 인식론적 실재 - 마이클 프레인의 『코펜하겐』

Abstract

Most criticism of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen by historians of physics derives from the suggestion that this play is an a history. Although this play depicts a historical event of Werner Heisenberg’s visit to Niels Bohr in 1941, it is not a history but a fiction. Reading historical reality as an objective reality results in ignoring the importance of imagination as “the only way into the protagonists’ heads.” This paper explores how Copenhagen’s interpretation of quantum mechanics serves as a metaphor for not only the indeterminacy of human thoughts and motives but also for that of history, by focusing on why Heisenberg went to Copenhagen and what he wanted to say to Bohr. Central to this inquiry is Frayn’s desire to show that there is no way that we can ever know everything about human or physical behavior. He aims at not depicting the physical world, but the psychological world of Heisenberg’s thoughts and motives in an ethically difficult period of history, which cannot be objectively proved. By divesting us of certainty, he undermines Newtonian laws of thought, allowing several possibilities of reading Heisenberg’s psychological world. As the subatomic particles are distorted by the very act of observing, there is no objective reality. With its subtle use of quantum mechanics, this play affirms the uncertainty of human motives and historical realities, through its open-ended and ambiguous structure.