SOURCE: Logan, Jonothan. “‘A Strange New Quantum Ethics.’” American Scientist 88, no. 4 (July-August 2000): 356-59.

In the following review, Logan faults Copenhagen for altering historical facts and misconstruing the moral issues raised by the real life events on which it is based.

“Copenhagen Tames Complexity of Science” was the title of a recent review of Michael Frayn's latest play—meant, no doubt, as a compliment. Audiences in New York, where the play opened in April after a long run in London, do seem dazzled by the heady counterpoint of history, quantum mechanics and postmodern epistemology electrifying the air between the play's characters—Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr and Bohr's wife Margrethe. The play is quick, clever and artfully plotted. What's disturbing is that Copenhagen “tames” history, too, altering the facts and rearranging the moral landscape the real Bohr and Heisenberg inhabited.

The subject of the play is Heisenberg's famous September 1941 visit...