ABSTRACT
The culture of a revolutionary student milieu permeated by the ideas of Mach and Marx was the supporting social environment of the young Albert Einstein. The student revolutionaries, estranged from the dominem bourgeois culture, were generational rebels. The energies of generational tension are as universal, variegated, and fluctuating as those of sexuality. Dadaism was the direct expression of a generational insurrection, unrefracted through any political movement or ideology. A generational cleavage arose in the discussion that was provoked by Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy. Premises having a sociological source thus have pervaded the discussions of the philosophy of quantum theory. For instance, the daring corollary was drawn that the classical law of identity was abrogated by the new physics. The physicist choosing between complementary descriptions was enacting a Kierkegaardian drama in quantum theory.
