The Logic of Identity: Distinguishability and Indistinguishability in Classical and Quantum Physics (original) (raw)
The notion that particles can be indistinguishable in a fundamental sense, which poses a challenge to traditional notions of individuality and identity, has first come up in the context of classical statistical mechanics. In particular, the Gibbs paradox has been interpreted as a sign of the untenability of the classical concept of a particle and as a premonition that quantum theory is needed to make sense of the situation. These ideas have been criticized in the literature, and completely classical solutions of the Gibbs paradox have been proposed. We shall argue, however, that although the criticism was justified, the proposed solutions have not gone to the heart of the matter. As we shall show, the solution of the Gibbs paradox in classical physics is in fact unrelated to fundamental distinguishability issues; only distinguishability in a pragmatic sense plays a role (in this we develop ideas of van Kampen [10]). With regard to quantum mechanics we shall show that the paradox survives in basically the same form even here, in spite of the quantum mechanical (anti-)symmetrization postulates.
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