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THE CORRESPONDENCE PRINCIPLE
The Correspondence Principle was first articulated in 1913, when Bohr was developing the Atomic Model. For Philosophical uses, it is described as "The Generalized Correspondence Principle". In 1918, the principle was finally named. -
THE GENERALIZED CORRESPONDENCE PRINCIPLE
Heinz Post defines The General Correspondence Principle, as follows: The most important heuristic restriction is the General Correspondence Principle. Roughly speaking, this is the requirement that any acceptable new theory L should account for the success of its predecessor S by ‘degenerating’ into that theory under those conditions under which S has been well confirmed by tests. Encyclopedia of Philosophy -
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
To put it more directly, from a philosophical standpoint the principle is defined as "a constraint on the development of new theories and as an account of how successor theories are related to their predecessors". Roughly meaning, it keeps newer theories from taking the credit of any progress which had been made prior to its development. -
IN PHYSICS.
In physics, Post's notion of ‘degenerating’ is seen as the limit of some parameter whereby the equations of a successor theory are recovered as the limit of the equations of predecessor theories. This brings into play Bohr's concept that the correspondence principle is defined as a statistical asymptotic agreement between two components; all theories, whether perceived as superior or inferior, are harmonic in some way and work toward the same progress.
