QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

ecause we are fettered by our forms of observation and language. We simply do not have tools
at our disposal which can encompass the whole of reality in a single picture or model. Reality
simply cannot by captured in this way. Bohr did not however remain a prisoner of Critical
idealism, since he believed that the human conception of the world could be developed and made
better step by step.
Bohr took a critical attitude to the Kantian concept that humans are irrevocably bound to a priori
observational prerequisites and categories of understanding. Even though time, space and
causality are natural and unavoidable methods of structuring the chaos of observational material
offered by the senses at the macroscopic level, research could, according to Bohr, reveal the
limits to usage of even these basic terms. The abstract formalisms and theories of science shall
however be interpreted, and hence normal classical language, coloured as it is by the world of
phenomena and observational prerequisities, can be said, in Bohr’s interpretation, to be searching
for a similar role to that which Kant’s a priori observations played in his philosophy. As the
range of experience exceeds by far the dimension of everyday phenomena, a common objective
description which will be available to all can only be preserved by holding on to classical
language, the use of which guarantees consistent inter-subjective communication. 650
In microscopic physics, however, humans gain knowledge which is not bound to everyday
language or a priori causal space-time description. This is knowledge which Kant would
obviously have considered it impossible to acquire. In interpreting this knowledge, we are of
course forced to employ classical language because we cannot understand reality by using
nothing but our conception of quantum theory. Since, according to the new knowledge we have
gained, the area of application of what was earlier considered to be a universally-applicable
concept has proved to be limited, we can learn to use language in a complementary manner.
Complementarity provides a frame wite enough to embrace the account of fundamental
regularities of nature which cannot be comprehended within a single picture. 652
It is unlikely that Bohr believed that we are categorically bound to our classical language, as has
sometimes been proposed. Even if we are trapped in the net of our language, it is a network that
can be developed step by step in accordance with new experience. In Bohr’s thinking, Kant’s
strict categories, which were a prerequisite for our observations, became gradually changing and
650 Bohr 1958, 67. Bohr 1967, 19.
652 Bohr 1963, 12.
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