QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

scientific method and its objectives have been questioned. 9 A less-dramatic approach is to view
the crisis raised by quantum mechanics as evidence of the ending of the current scientificphilosophical
paradigm. It was Niels Bohr’s belief that quantum mechanics demonstrated the
limitations in the traditional space-time description of classical physics. The mechanistic and
deterministic image of nature formed at the beginning of the modern era has provided the
background for all research carried out in that era, but its Reductionist and Meristic 10
methodology cannot necessarily explain all aspects of reality. It is quite possible that portraying
the whole of reality in the form of a model which assumes that the world consists of distinct and
individual parts and research objects cannot succeed. If quantum mechanics is able to reveal that
the earlier mechanistic-deterministic paradigm has limitations, the theory can also provide
indispensable material for developing a new and more successful way of handling and
conceiving reality.
In the twentieth century, modern physics presented radical challenges to earlier modes of
thinking and its mathematical tools served to overcame previous limitations, but the
metaphysical presuppositions which provide the background to the practice of science have not,
even between physicists, changed as radically as Niels Bohr, for example, hoped they would. At
the beginning of the 20th century, Bohr and Einstein engaged in an extended debate on the
foundations of quantum mechanics, a debate which has been compared to the dispute between
Leibniz and Newton in the 1600s concerning basic conceptions of reality. Although the debate
between Bohr and Einstein concerned the completeness and consistency of quantum mechanics,
the primary source of problems was their differing thoughts concerning language and scientific
description. Bohr saw quantum mechanics as complete and consistent, and since the theory was
indeterministic and could not be visualised in any single model, he was ready to abandon the
traditional way of assigning any visualisable model the status of representing reality. He stressed
the epistemological lesson provided by quantum theory together with the complementary manner
of description, and emphasised that the natural scientist should not be seen as a purely external
observer, but also as an active influencer who causes irreversible qualitative changes in the
visible world.
Even though Einstein also rejected classical physics, he did not want to reassess the classical
conception of reality on the basis of quantum mechanics. He attempted to hold on to most of
9
Horgan 1997. Laurikainen 1997.
10
Meristic or atomistic methodology is based on the assumption that material things and natural phenomena can,
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