In all the attempts at unification we encounter two distinct methodological approaches: a deductive-hypothetical and an empirical-inductive method. As Dirac pointed out, however,
“The successful development of science requires a proper balance between the method of building up from observations and the method of deducing by pure reasoning from speculative assumptions, [...].” ([232], p. 1001)
In an unsuccessful hunt for progress with the deductive-hypothetical method alone, Einstein spent decades of his life on the unification of the gravitational with the electromagnetic and, possibly, other fields. Others joined him in such an endeavour, or even preceded him, including Mie, Hilbert, Ishiwara, Nordström, and others3 . At the time, another road was impossible because of the lack of empirical basis due to the weakness of the gravitational interaction. A similar situation obtains even today within the attempts for reaching a common representation of all four fundamental interactions. Nevertheless, in terms of mathematical and physical concepts, a lot has been learned even from failed attempts at unification, vid. the gauge idea, or dimensional reduction (Kaluza-Klein), and much still might be learned in the future.
In the following I shall sketch, more or less chronologically, and by trailing Einstein’s path, the history of attempts at unifying what are now called the fundamental interactions during the period from about 1914 to 1933. Until the end of the thirties, the only accepted fundamental interactions were the electromagnetic and the gravitational, plus, tentatively, something like the “mesonic” or “nuclear” interaction. The physical fields considered in the framework of “unified field theory” including, after the advent of quantum (wave-) mechanics, the wave function satisfying either Schrödinger’s or Dirac’s equation, were all assumed to be classical fields. The quantum mechanical wave function was taken to represent the field of the electron, i.e., a matter field. In spite of this, the construction of quantum field theory had begun already around 1927 [52, 173, 177, 174, 178]. For the early history and the conceptual development of quantum field theory, cf. Section 1 of Schweber [321], or Section 7.2 of Cao [28]; for Dirac’s contributions, cf. [189]. Nowadays, it seems mandatory to approach unification in the framework of quantum field theory.
General relativity’s doing away with forces in exchange for a richer (and more
complicated) geometry of space and time than the Euclidean remained
the guiding principle throughout most of the attempts at
unification discussed here. In view of this geometrization, Einstein considered the role of
the stress-energy tensor (the source-term of his
field equations
) a weak spot of the theory
because it is a field devoid of any geometrical significance.
Therefore, the various proposals for a unified field theory, in the period considered here, included two different aspects:
In a very Cartesian spirit, Tonnelat (Tonnelat
1955 [356], p. 5) gives a
definition of a unified field theory
as
“a theory joining the gravitational and the electromagnetic field into one single hyperfield whose equations represent the conditions imposed on the geometrical structure of the universe.”
No material source terms are taken into account5 . If however, in this context, matter terms appear in the field equations of unified field theory, they are treated in the same way as the stress-energy tensor is in Einstein’s theory of gravitation: They remain alien elements.
For the theories discussed, the representation of matter oscillated between the point-particle concept in which particles are considered as singularities of a field, to particles as everywhere regular field configurations of a solitonic character. In a theory for continuous fields as in general relativity, the concept of point-particle is somewhat amiss. Nevertheless, geodesics of the Riemannian geometry underlying Einstein’s theory of gravitation are identified with the worldlines of freely moving point-particles. The field at the location of a point-particle becomes unbounded, or “singular”, such that the derivation of equations of motion from the field equations is a non-trivial affair. The competing paradigm of a particle as a particular field configuration of the electromagnetic and gravitational fields later has been pursued by J. A. Wheeler under the names “geon” and “geometrodynamics” in both the classical and the quantum realm [412]. In our time, gravitational solitonic solutions also have been found [234, 26].
Even before the advent of quantum mechanics proper, in 1925-26, Einstein raised his expectations with regard to unified field theory considerably; he wanted to bridge the gap between classical field theory and quantum theory, preferably by deriving quantum theory as a consequence of unified field theory. He even seemed to have believed that the quantum mechanical properties of particles would follow as a fringe benefit from his unified field theory; in connection with his classical teleparallel theory it is reported that Einstein, in an address at the University of Nottingham, said that he
“is in no way taking notice of the results of
quantum calculation because he believes that by dealing with
microscopic phenomena these will come out by themselves. Otherwise
he would not support the theory.” ([91], p. 610)
However, in connection with one of his moves, i.e., the 5-vector version of Kaluza ’s theory (cf. Sections 4.2, 6.3), which for him provided “a logical unity of the gravitational and the electromagnetic fields”, he regretfully acknowledged:
“But one hope did not get fulfilled. I thought
that upon succeeding to find this law, it would form a useful
theory of quanta and of matter. But, this is not the case. It seems
that the problem of matter and quanta makes the construction fall
apart.” 6
([96
], p. 442)
Thus, unfortunately, also the hopes of the eminent mathematician Schouten , who knew some physics, were unfulfilled:
“[...] collections of positive and negative
electricity which we are finding in the positive nuclei of hydrogen
and in the negative electrons. The older Maxwell theory does not
explain these collections, but also by the newer endeavours it has
not been possible to recognise these collections as immediate
consequences of the fundamental differential equations studied.
However, if such an explanation should be found, we may perhaps
also hope that new light is shed on the [...] mysterious quantum
orbits.” 7
([301],
p. 39)
In this context, through all the years, Einstein vainly tried to derive, from the field equations of his successive unified field theories, the existence of elementary particles with opposite though otherwise equal electric charge but unequal mass. In correspondence with the state of empirical knowledge at the time (i.e., before the positron was found in 1932/33), but despite theoretical hints pointing into a different direction to be found in Dirac’s papers, he always paired electron and proton8 .
Of course, by quantum field theory the dichotomy between matter and fields in the sense of a dualism is minimised as every field carries its particle-like quanta. Today’s unified field theories appear in the form of gauge theories; matter is represented by operator valued spin-half quantum fields (fermions) while the “forces” mediated by “exchange particles” are embodied in gauge fields, i.e., quantum fields of integer spin (bosons). The space-time geometry used is rigidly fixed, and usually taken to be Minkowski space or, within string and membrane theory, some higher-dimensional manifold also loosely called “space-time”, although its signature might not be Lorentzian and its dimension might be 10, 11, 26, or some other number larger than four. A satisfactory inclusion of gravitation into the scheme of quantum field theory still remains to be achieved.
In the period considered, mutual reservations may have existed between the followers of the new quantum mechanics and those joining Einstein in the extension of his general relativity. The latter might have been puzzled by the seeming relapse of quantum mechanics from general covariance to a mere Galilei- or Lorentz-invariance, and by the statistical interpretation of the Schrödinger wave function. Lanczos , in 1929, was well aware of his being out of tune with those adherent to quantum mechanics:
“I therefore believe that between the
‘reactionary point of view’ represented here, aiming at a complete
field-theoretic description based on the usual space-time structure
and the probabilistic (statistical) point of view, a compromise
[...] no longer is possible.” 9
([197
], p. 486,
footnote)
On the other hand, those working in quantum theory may have frowned upon the wealth of objects within unified field theories uncorrelated to a convincing physical interpretation and thus, in principle, unrelated to observation. In fact, until the 1930s, attempts still were made to “geometrize” wave mechanics while, roughly at the same time, quantisation of the gravitational field had also been tried [283]. Einstein belonged to those who regarded the idea of unification as more fundamental than the idea of field quantisation [95]. His thinking is reflected very well in a remark made by Lanczos at the end of a paper in which he tried to combine Maxwell’s and Dirac’s equations:
“If the possibilities anticipated here prove to
be viable, quantum mechanics would cease to be an independent
discipline. It would melt into a deepened ‘theory of matter’ which
would have to be built up from regular solutions of non-linear
differential equations, - in an ultimate relationship it would
dissolve in the ‘world equations’ of the Universe. Then, the
dualism ‘matter-field’ would have been overcome as well as the
dualism ‘corpuscle-wave’.” 10
([197
], p. 493)
Lanczos’ work shows that there has been also a smaller subprogram of unification as described before, i.e., the view that somehow the electron and the photon might have to be treated together. Therefore, a common representation of Maxwell’s equations and the Dirac equation was looked for (cf. Section 7.1).
During the time span considered here, there also were those whose work did not help the idea of unification, e.g., vanDantzig wrote a series of papers in the first of which he stated:
“It is remarkable that not only no fundamental
tensor [first fundamental form] or tensor-density, but also no
connection, neither Riemannian nor
projective, nor conformal, is needed for writing down the [Maxwell]
equations. Matter is characterised by
a bivector-density [...].” ([367], p. 422, and
also [363
, 364
, 365
, 366
])
If one of the fields to be united asks for less “geometry”, why to mount all the effort needed for generalising Riemannian geometry?
A methodological weak point in the process of the establishment of field equations for unified field theory was the constructive weakness of alternate physical limits to be taken:
A similar weakness occurred for the equations of
motion; about the only limiting equation to be reproduced was
Newton’s equation augmented by the Lorentz force. Later, attempts
were made to replace the relationship “geodesics freely falling point particles” by more general
assumptions for charged or electrically neutral point particles -
depending on the more general (non-Riemannian) connections
introduced11
. A main hindrance for
an eventual empirical check of unified field theory was the
persistent lack of a worked out example leading to a new
gravito-electromagnetic effect.
In the following Section 2, a
multitude of geometrical concepts (affine, conformal, projective
spaces, etc.) available for unified field theories, on the one
side, and their use as tools for a description of the dynamics of
the electromagnetic and gravitational field on the other will be
sketched. Then, we look at the very first steps towards a unified
field theory taken by Reichenbächer
, Förster (alias
Bach), Weyl,
Eddington, and Einstein (see Section 3.1). In Section 4, the main ideas are
developed. They include Weyl’s generalization of
Riemannian geometry by the addition of a linear form (see
Section 4.1) and the reaction to
this approach. To this, Kaluza’s idea concerning a
geometrization of the electromagnetic and gravitational fields
within a five-dimensional space will be added (see Section 4.2) as well as the
subsequent extensions of Riemannian to affine geometry by Schouten, Eddington, Einstein, and others (see
Section 4.3). After a short
excursion to the world of mathematicians working on differential
geometry (see Section 5), the research of Einstein and his assistants is
studied (see Section 6). Kaluza’s theory received a great
deal of attention after O. Klein intervention and extension
of Kaluza’s paper (see Section
6.3.2). Einstein’s treatment of a special
case of a metric-affine geometry, i.e., “distant parallelism”, set off an
avalanche of research papers (see Section 6.4.4), the more so as, at
the same time, the covariant formulation of Dirac’s equation was a
hot topic. The appearance of spinors in a geometrical setting, and
endeavours to link quantum physics and geometry (in particular, the
attempt to geometrize wave mechanics) are also discussed (see
Section 7). We have included this
topic although, strictly speaking, it only touches the fringes of
unified field theory. In Section 9, particular
attention is given to the mutual influence exerted on each other by
the Princeton (Eisenhart, Veblen), French (Cartan), and the Dutch (Schouten, Struik) schools of mathematicians,
and the work of physicists such as Eddington, Einstein, their collaborators, and
others. In section 10, the reception of unified
field theory at the time is briefly discussed.