🚀 go-pugleaf

The moderator provided one good historical reference (Pais's SUBTLE IS
THE LORD); Kuhn's books has already been mentioned; one more good ref
is Olivier Darrigol, _From C-Numbers to Q-Numbers : The Classical
Analogy in the History of Quantum Theory_, Univ California Press,
December 1992 ISBN: 0520078225.

Part of this discussion is beginning to sound familiar to me.  Some
months ago Martin Green started a similar thread about the
photo-electric effect.  A post by Gordon Pusch then mentioned that
similar ideas first appeared in the seventies, going under the term
Neoclassical Electrodynamics (NED); Ed Jaynes and collaborators were
cited.  He wrote: "For those interested, I strongly recommend reading
Jaynes' review-paper on the status of neoclassical electrodynamics in
``Coherence and Quantum Optics'' [eds. Mandel and Wolf; 1977]."

Gordon Pusch latter sent me some e-mail comparing NED to SED
(Stochastic Electrodynamics); I reposted it to s.p.r. with his
permission.

As I recall from Pusch's e-mail, NED had quantitative explanations for
the black-body formula, the photo-electric effect, and the Lamb shift,
but not yet the Compton effect.

As for the other issues Martin Green raises, a couple of quick
remarks.

(a) I don't claim that the Compton effect *proves* that photons exist,
if by "proves" we mean "it has been shown with rigorous logical
reasoning, enough to satisfy the most obsessive-compulsive
mathematician, that no semi-classical model can ever explain the
Compton effect".  (Heck, the existence of atoms hasn't been proved in
this sense.)

Historically, however, the Compton effect was the decisive turning
point.  Before, photon proponents swam against the tide; afterwards,
physicists threw brickbats at pure wave theories.

(b) About "groupthink" and the culture of physics and so forth: 
Kuhn offers a more sympathetic interpretation of the
sociology in the following quote.

  So long as the tools a paradigm supplies continue to prove capable of
  solving the problems it defines, science moves fastest and penetrates
  most deeply through confident employment of those tools.  The reason
  is clear.  As in manufacture so in science--- retooling is an
  extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it.  The
  significance of crises is the indication they provide that an occasion
  for retooling has arrived.   --Thomas Kuhn, _The Structure of
  Scientific Revolutions_.

Please note Kuhn's status as the most prominent *critic* of the
equation, "Science = Truth".

The moderator writes:

    This thread is in danger of becoming too non-concrete

Some concrete questions for the experts out there:

(a) Are there any other well-developed alternatives to QED besides NED
and SED?  ("Well-developed" = "has quantitative derivations of the
major results", at a minimum Planck's black-body formula and
Einstein's photo-electric formula.)

(b) Are there any known non-photonic explanations for the Compton
effect (and modern variants, e.g., tagged photon experiments)?