QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

merges with the limits of what we can observe.
By regarding mathematics as an accurate and precise language which humans had developed on
the basis of natural language, Bohr moved what was prominent in natural science closer to
people. He emphasised that the theory of relativity gave new content to concepts such as ”space”
or ”time”. 745 When investigating the features of four-dimensional space-time, we could perhaps
understand them, even though the words we are using are usually used when referring to the
content they are assumed to possess in a classical context. Quantum mechanics obviously
demands a new and even-deeper interpretation of concepts if we want them to ”correspond” to
reality. The basis of classical description failed when as a result of the discovery of quantum of
action, it become obvious that nature has placed limits on our possibilities of speaking about
independent phenomena. 746 When the familiar space-time description cannot be employed when
observing phenomena in the microscopic world, the meaning of such fundamental concepts as
”particle”, ”property” or ”being” becomes obscure. Bohr believed that we will be forced to
abandon even more of the classical visualisable description of nature, especially in the region
where quantum theory and relativity theory meet.
In addition to the fact that we cannot speak of independent phenomena at any degree of
accuracy, we cannot fully isolate ourselves at an ontological level from the world we are
investigating. Complementarity generalises our earlier frame of reference by noting that the
quantum of action means that humans are an inseparable component of the world, and that our
concepts are tools we use in describing our experiences in different interactive situations. Since,
in modern natural science, elementary particles cannot be examined as the ultimate building
blocks of matter independently of a experimental context, Heisenberg concluded that also in
natural science, we are from the very beginning in the midst of a confrontation between man and
nature. Natural science is, as it were, ”between” nature and man, and mathematical and classical
concepts become devices in an endless chain of encounters between man and nature. The
customary division of the world into subject and object, into internal and external worlds, body
and soul, no longer offers adequate tools for the understanding of reality and the formation of
knowledge. 747
744 Bohr clearly did not believe that theoretical and classical language could be translated into one another in an
unequivocal manner. If he had, complementary descriptions would have been unnecessary.
745 Physics was able to produce new information concerning the foundations and limits of the descriptive concepts
we employ even though the concepts were required to describe our experiences in an objective and inter-subjective
manner.
746 Bohr 1939, 25 and 1967, 91.
747 March 1957, 95, 116. Heisenberg 1955, 12-13,18.
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