QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

saw that it had become clear that research in natural science was not targeting concrete reality, its
descriptions only touched a symbolic world of shadows. 569 Both the theory of quantum
mechanics and its first and still most generally accepted interpretation, the so-called Copenhagen
interpretation, were shaped in the same environment of astonishment. In the 1920s, under the
direction of Niels Bohr (1885-1962), the Copenhagen Institute collected together young talents
such as Werner Hesienberg (1901-1976) and Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), who were, in the light
of new experience, ready to re-evaluate the whole of the tradition of describing reality that had
been dominant since the turn of the modern era.
The international and openly interactive atmosphere at Copenhagen, the ”Copenhagen spirit”,
attracted many researchers for longer or shorter periods. By 1930, some 60 physicist from 17
countries had visited the institute 570 , in which the revolutionary theory of quantum mechanics
and its interpretation were developed hand in hand. Interpretation signified a radical departure
from both determinism and the idea of humans as detached observers, things which had become
familiar cornerstones of research in natural science. They were replaced by statistical laws and a
reality partly dependent on choices made by the observer, in which the behaviour of microscopic
objects was dependent on the experimental system employed. 571
The founding fathers of the Copenhagen interpretation, who were also largely responsible for the
construction of the theory, were convinced that quantum theory could not be satisfactorily
interpreted and understood within the prevailing mechanistic and deterministic framework of
classical physics. They proposed profound revisions to our ontological and epistemological
approaches to reality. The ideas of Niels Bohr in particular represented a radical reconsideration
of traditional metaphysics. In Bohr’s framework of complementarity, the role of the human
observer and his position in reality is understood in a new way that completely reconstructs
previous objective and dualistic approach based on the ideas of Descartes.
Bohr’s radical approach was challenged in many of the post-Copenhagen interpretations of
quantum mechanics such as David Bohm’s causal interpretation or the many-worlds’
interpretation, both of which, even when conceptualizing a new world-view, aim to maintain
familiar metaphysical presuppositions of determinism, reductionism and the detached observer.
569
Wilber 1985, 8,128. Quotations are based on books by Eddington (Nature of the Physical World, Macmillan
1929) and Jeans (The Mysterious Universe, Cambridge University Press 1931).
570
Pais 1985, 8.
571
Pagels 1986, 87.
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