QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

epresents essential aspects of the information concerning that object. 635 Complementary
phenomena represent regularities which the classical, single-picture description suitable for
causality cannot attain. They are mutually completing but at the same time mutually exclusive.
Together, they provide all the knowledge of atomic objects available from the experimental
system being employed.
...the impossibility of combaining phenomena observed under different
experimental arrangements into a single classical picture implies that such
apparently contradictory phenomena must be regarded as complementary in the
sense that, taken together,they exhaust all well-defined knowledge about the atomic
objects. Indeed any logical contradiction in these respects is excluded by the
mathematical consistency of the formalism of quantum mechanics, which serves to
express the statistical laws holding for observations made under any given set of
experimental conditions. 636
Complementarity does not therefore in any way indicate a limitation of quantum mechanical
descriptions, it should be taken as a rational generalisation of the idea of causality.
Complementarity is closely connected with a change in the position of the observer. Classical
physics adopted the viewpoint of Cartesian dualism in which an immaterial and knowing subject
investigated world events as if it were completely isolated. To Bohr, the observer was quite
clearly a part of reality. The wholeness of humans is both part of reality and a shaper of it, both
audience and actor at one and the same time. Immersed in the world, people do not have
complete knowledge of the fundamental nature of reality or a comprehensive external view of its
full extent. We can only strive to understand and participate in the phenomena that we encounter
to the best of our ability.
4.3.3. The relationship between complementarity and eastern philosophy, Pragmatism, and
Kantian categories
Connections with eastern philosophy have been pointed out in Bohr’s complementarity. 637
According to the Indian professor D.S.Kothar, the core of the in-depth ethical and spiritual
insight brought forth by Upanisadism, Buddhism and Jainism is the same as Bohr’s
635 Bohr 1963, 26.
636 Bohr 1963, 25.
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