Abstract
As sketched in the previous chapter, Niels Bohr’s engagement in the development of quantum theory, especially in its crucial phase around the mid-1920s, proceeded with a critical examination of basic concepts such as continuity/discontinuity, space-time and causality, which underlie not only atomic physics, but the modern-scientific view of nature in general. This led to his introduction in 1927 of the idea of complementarity as an interpretation of quantum theory, newly established as quantum mechanics. While closely linked with Heisenberg’s uncertainty relations, Bohr’s complementarity is marked by its own distinctive philosophical notions and implications. Here and throughout this study (as noted in the Introduction), I use the term ‘complementarity’ to refer not only to Bohr’s concept of complementarity, but – following his own and many commentators’ usage – also to his overall philosophical thought revolving around this concept.
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Notes
- 1.
More specifically, the lecture was delivered at the International Congress of Physics in commemoration of the centenary of the death of Volta, on September 16, 1927. See Murdoch (1987, 55).
- 2.
I draw on the version published in Nature (Suppl.) 121 (1928): 580–90, and subsequently reprinted in Bohr’s 1934 book Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature – later Volume I of Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr (PWNB, 1:52–91). This version represents a considerable expansion of the text printed earlier in the conference proceedings, but retains the most basic ideas of the latter. See NBCW, 6:44, 110–12 and Faye (1991, 60).
- 3.
As Henry J. Folse comments, “Bohr presents virtually his entire argument in the six paragraphs which comprise the first section of the [Como] paper” (1985, 108).
- 4.
The relevant works also include the 1929 article “The Atomic Theory and the Fundamental Principles underlying the Description of Nature” (PWNB, 102–19) and “Faraday Lecture: Chemistry and the Quantum Theory of Atomic Constitution,” published in 1932 (NBCW, 6:371–408). Incidentally, my reconstruction of Bohr’s complementarity argument is more or less in accord with the following five-step summary by Max Jammer: “1. Indivisibility of the quantum action (quantum postulate)./ 2. Discontinuity (or individuality) of elementary processes./ 3. Uncontrollability of the interaction between object and instrument./ 4. Impossibility of a (strict) spatiotemporal and, at the same time, causal description./ 5. Renunciation of the classical mode of description” (1974, 101). Jammer’s account seems to me, however, not to focus enough on the complementary relation between observation and the definition of the state (see 1974, 91).
- 5.
In Bohr’s account, “the theory of relativity reminds us of the subjective character of all physical phenomena, a character which depends essentially upon the state of motion of the observer” (PWNB, 1:116; see Faye 1991, 166). Yet, in this theory, “the conception of the objective reality of the phenomena open to observation is still rigidly maintained.” Bohr emphasizes that this classical ideal “cannot be attained in the description of atomic phenomena” (PWNB, 1:97; cf. 2:25, 41).
- 6.
Bohr at times qualifies this notion of irrationality by a phrase such as “irrational from the point of view of the classical theories” (PWNB, 1:7; cf. 19).
- 7.
For similar passages from the ‘middle’ period, see, for example, PWNB, 2:30 and 39.
- 8.
According to Carsten Held, although Bohr “frequently equates ‘causality’ with ‘conservation laws’ and the latter with a measurement of energy and momentum,” these equations “are obscure and cannot hide the fact that Bohr’s original intentions are different” (1994, 882): In contrast to his mature formulations, Bohr’s terminology in his Como lecture allows of the view, held by Heisenberg and von Weizsäcker, that by causality Bohr means the “deterministic description of the time evolution of the ψ-function” (von Weizsäcker 1976, 293; see Held 1994, 883). For these physicists’ interpretations of complementarity, see Section 3.1 of this book. Admittedly, Bohr’s phrase “the definition of the state of a physical system” (PWNB, 1:56, my emphasis) might seem to suggest the above Heisenbergian reading, according to which the term ‘state’ refers to what is expressed by the state or wave function. In my view, however, the conceptual equivalence between the claim of causality (associated with state definition) and the use of the dynamical conservation laws, while not explicitly stated by Bohr, is reasonably indicated already in the Como paper, specifically by his discussion of the connection between complementarity and the uncertainty relations to be seen below as well as by his characterization of “the conservation theorems for energy and momentum” as “complementary to the space-time description” (PWNB, 1:60, 88). See also Jammer (1974, 95).
- 9.
On the differences between Bohr’s and Pauli’s views of classical concepts, see Hendry (1984, esp. 34, 130).
- 10.
For parallel passages including ones from later periods, see PWMB, 1:8, 17, 2:25f., 39, 3:3, and 11. In Edward MacKinnon’s account, Bohr had used the term ‘classical’ “in his own special sense since 1912.” That is, “[b]y ‘classical concepts’ he meant ordinary language terms, such as ‘wave’ and ‘particle,’ which are given specialized meanings in classical physics” (MacKinnon 1985, 106).
- 11.
Using quasi-Kantian terms, but in a relative deviation from Kant’s position, Bohr maintains that not only space and time, but also causality “may be considered as a mode of perception by which we reduce our sense impressions to order” (PWNB, 1:116f.). For prior studies on the possible Kantian background of Bohr’s complementarity, see Section 3.4.
- 12.
In Bohr’s account, “all new experience makes its appearance within the frame of our customary points of view and forms of perception,” and “we can by no means dispense with those forms of perception which colour our whole language and in terms of which all experience must ultimately be expressed” (PWNB, 1:1, 5).
- 13.
Although, in the text of the Como paper, this sentence directly follows the last indented quotation, I have reconstructed Bohr’s reasoning linking the two by the use of other passages from the same lecture as well as from other relevant works.
- 14.
- 15.
Dugald Murdoch designates complementarity in this sense as “kinematic-dynamic complementarity” in distinction to “wave-particle complementarity” (1987, 58).
- 16.
As Sandro Petruccioli points out, however, Bohr does not accept wave-particle dualism in the sense of the existence of two opposing attributes of physical reality. He rather holds that electrons, for example, “are neither waves nor particles,” but objects that accept a complementary mode of description (Petruccioli 1993, 173).
- 17.
According to Murdoch, however, this mode of correlation, supposed by Bohr, between the complementarity of space-time and causality and wave-particle complementarity does not invariably hold, and the two senses of complementarity are “logically independent notions” (1987, 67; cf. Folse 1985, 120; PWNB, 4:4f.).
- 18.
From the late 1930s onward, Bohr would prefer the term ‘indeterminacy’ to ‘uncertainty’ to designate Heisenberg’s relations (e.g. PWNB, 2:39; cf. 4:3).
- 19.
Heisenberg privileged the particle picture over the wave picture up until 1927, but, as some commentators point out, he soon shifted to the view of “equivalence” between the two pictures, which, however, still differed from Bohr’s idea of wave-particle duality (see Camilleri 2009, 76ff.).
- 20.
This is related to Bohr’s attitude toward the two versions of quantum mechanics, matrix and wave mechanics. As we saw in Chapter 1, instead of simply siding with either of the two, he viewed both theories equally as correspondence theories. In the Como paper, characterizing his approach as “harmoniz[ing] the apparently conflicting views taken by different scientists,” he notes that both matrix and wave mechanics represent “symbolic transcription[s] of the problem of motion of classical mechanics adapted to the requirements of quantum theory” (PWNB, 1:52, 75). See Beller (1999, 46, 117ff.).
- 21.
- 22.
- 23.
For parallel passages, see PWNB, 1:4, 70, 2:41, 61 and NBCW, 7:317.
- 24.
- 25.
It is worth mentioning the episode that, in the late 1920s, when Bohr lectured his friend, the psychologist Rubin, on the epistemological “lesson” of quantum mechanics, the latter responded: “But Niels! You told us all of that twenty years ago!” (NBCW, 6:xxvi). See Heisenberg (1967, 107) and Faye (1991, 62).
- 26.
See Faye (1991, 17). From 1932 onward, Bohr discussed complementarity with regard also to the phenomena of heat, that is, the “exclusive relation” between such thermodynamic concepts as temperature and “a detailed description of the behaviour of the atoms in the bodies concerned” (NBCW, 6:400; cf. PWNB, 2:97).
- 27.
See Paul Hoyningen-Huene, “Niels Bohr’s Argument for the Irreducibility of Biology to Physics,” in Faye and Folse (1994, 231–55, on 231f.).
- 28.
As he himself later notes, this insight of Bohr into an irreducible role of the notion of purpose in biology was originally inspired by the views of his father, the physiologist Christian Bohr (PWNB, 2:96). See Folse (1985, 45).
- 29.
This sentence was not included in Bohr’s original lecture, but added afterward for the version published in Nature (see NBCW, 6:112, 136). Jan Faye attributes this development primarily to Høffding’s influence on Bohr in their discussion during the period (Faye 1991, 60).
- 30.
After introducing the term ‘complementarity,’ Bohr replaced it by ‘reciprocity’ for a short time around 1929, but subsequently reverted to the former (see PWNB, 1:19). See also Murdoch (1987, 60).
- 31.
Folse points to a “striking similarity” between this account by Bohr and Kant’s account of free will (Folse 1985, 52f.; cf. Faye 1991, xiv). As we will see in Section 3.4, however, he denies an overall affinity between Bohr’s thought and Kantian philosophy.
- 32.
Bohr would amplify this point in subsequent years – well into what I call the ‘middle’ period. In 1938, he argues: In introspection, “the phenomena themselves and their conscious perception” are “mutually exclusive” and “complementary” to each other, as is illustrated by the fact that “if we try to analyze our own emotions, we hardly possess them any longer” (PWNB, 2:27). Faye points to a similarity of this view to Høffding’s account of the antinomy of “involuntary mental life” and “reflection” (Faye 1991, 95f.).
- 33.
Although this quotation is from his later work (1960), Bohr, already in a 1928 speech, referred to Møller’s novel in question and its description of the “poor licentiate,” which expresses “the struggle between opposites within our own mind” (NBCW, 10:234f.). According to Léon Rosenfeld (1967, 121) as well as Bohr’s son Aage (PWNB, 3:vi), Bohr was, from his youth, familiar with this novel and deeply interested in its implications for the problem of self-reflection. Incidentally it is also from his early years that, in considering the above situation concerning introspection, Bohr drew an analogy with multivalued functions of complex variables. See Archive for the History of Quantum Physics, pp. 1f. See also Folse (1985, 51f., 176f.).
- 34.
Bohr would later reformulate this complementarity as the relation between “the practical use of any word and attempts at its strict definition,” or between “the direct use of any word” and “an analysis of its meaning” (PWNB, 2:52, 4:91).
- 35.
This remark by Bohr appears in the context of a critique of positivism. In questioning the possibility of attaining unambiguous meanings, he is quoted as saying: “I object to positivism not because I would be less skeptical [than positivists] in this area, but because, on the contrary, I am afraid that, on principle, things could not at all be much better in natural science” than in religion (Heisenberg 1969, 162/135f., trans. mod.).
- 36.
Hans Bohr, “My Father,” in Rozental (1967, 325–39, on 328).
- 37.
Paul A. M. Dirac, “The Versatility of Niels Bohr,” in Rozental (1967, 306–09, on 309).
- 38.
We may also refer to the following expression by Bohr, though from the early ‘middle’ period: the “epistemological lesson which the opening of quite new realms of physical research has given us in the latest years” (PWNB, 2:24, my emphasis; cf. 3:12).
- 39.
In Jørgen Kalckar’s account, Bohr may have picked up this metaphor also from Møller’s work mentioned above, Adventures of a Danish Student. In it, with regard to his endless introspection, the licentiate says that “the spectator anew becomes an actor” (cited in NBCW, 6:xxii). See also Favrholdt (1992, 53).
- 40.
In a 1928 speech, as regards one’s intellectual life in general, Bohr remarks that “we are not just observers, but are participants ourselves” (NBCW, 10:234).
- 41.
The debate between Einstein and Bohr on quantum theory had begun in the 1920s, developed notably on the occasions of two Solvey Cogresses, the Fifth (1927) and the Seventh (1930). This development was reviewed by Bohr himself in 1949 (PWNB, 32–66). See also Jammer’s account in 1974, 108–58.
- 42.
As Arthur Fine points out, “[f]or reasons of language” this EPR paper was not actually written by Einstein, but by Boris Podolsky. Rather unsatisfied with the outcome, Einstein remarked that “the essential thing was, so to speak, smothered by the formalism (Gelehrsamkeit)” (cited in Fine 1986, 35).
- 43.
According to Fine, the EPR argument in the original text may be schematically reconstructed as follows:
$$\begin{array}{*{20}l} ({\textrm{INC}}){\textrm{\ v\ (NSV),}} \\ \sim{\textrm{(INC)}} \to\ \sim{\textrm{(NSV)}} \\ \therefore {\textrm{(INC)}}\\ \end{array}.$$Here (INC) stands for the assertion of the incompleteness of quantum mechanical description, and (NSV) for the statement that “observables represented by noncommuting operators cannot have simultaneous reality” (Fine 1986, 32; see also Jammer 1974, 181ff.; Murdoch 1987, 165ff.; Kaiser 1992, 229). In Fine’s view, however, the authors actually “establish the conditional ∼(INC) → ∼(NSV) simply by deriving the consequent ∼(NSV)” without using the assumption of completeness. For this reason, the above logical structure of their argument “seems strangely complex” (1986, 33f.). In view of this circumstance, with many commentators I represent the EPR argument in a reasonably simplified form. See, for example, Selleri (1990, 109–15).
- 44.
In Fine’s account, this EPR criterion of reality cannot be “a principle that Einstein put much stock by,” for “it never appears in any of his own published expositions of the EPR situation” (1986, 62).
- 45.
As Rosenfeld recalls, “This onslaught came down on us as a bolt from the blue. Its effect on Bohr was remarkable” (1967, 128).
- 46.
Niels Bohr, “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?,” Physical Review 48 (1935): 696–702; reprinted in NBPW, 4:73–82. Just as in the case of the EPR argument, my outline of Bohr’s reply here leaves aside various interpretive issues concerning the debate. See, for instance, Beller (1999, 145–67).
- 47.
This is worth comparing with his later, more ‘modest’ expression (from 1956): “a revision of the foundation for the unambiguous application of some of our most elementary concepts” (PWNB, 4:171).
- 48.
During World War II, Bohr’s writings on complementarity and related subjects are naturally rather scarce. In 1943, while Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany, he fled the country through Sweden to the United States, where he stayed until returning to Denmark in 1945. For a biographical account of Bohr’s life during the war, including his role in the atomic weapons program, see Pais (1991, 479–504).
- 49.
For parallel passages, see NBCW, 7:335; PWNB, 2:63f., 73, and 3:5. See also Pais (1991, 432).
- 50.
See MacKinnon (1985, 119) and Pais (1991, 432). In Bohr’s account, with this new terminology, “the observational problem is free of any special intricacy since, in actual experiments, all observations are expressed by unambiguous statements referring, for instance, to the registration of the point at which an electron arrives at a photographic plate” (PWNB, 2:64; cf. 51).
- 51.
Bohr would make this more explicit in the ‘late’ period by saying, for example, that “the interaction between the objects and the measuring instruments […] forms an integral part of the phenomena” (PWNB, 2:72; cf. 74, 98, 3:4).
- 52.
For parallel passages, see NBCW, 7:419; PWNB, 2:19, 40, 74, 90, 99, 3:5, 12, 25, and 92. This differs in terminology from the following remark by Bohr in 1937, for instance: “the aspects of quantum phenomena revealed by experience obtained under such mutually exclusive conditions must thus be considered complementary” (PWNB, 2:19, my emphasis). This statement, in which it is not phenomena themselves, but their aspects that are called complementary, indicates an earlier stage of his conception.
- 53.
Bohr would later speak of the complementary relation between different “experiences” as well (PWNB, 2:74). It is also noteworthy that, as Faye and Folse point out, wave-particle complementarity disappeared from Bohr’s complementarity argument in and after the 1940s (Faye and Folse 1998, 3). See also Held (1994, 872, 880ff.).
- 54.
See Held (1994, 886). Although, already in 1929, Bohr had spoken of “one and the same object” in the statement that “a complete elucidation of one and the same object may require diverse points of view which defy a unique description” (PWNB, 1:96), he had not formulated a relation between the single object and two phenomena.
- 55.
For parallel expressions, see PWNB, 2:17, 24, 33, 39, 58, and 62. In the ‘late’ period, Bohr would largely replace the term ‘individuality’ by “wholeness” (PWNB, 2:72, 85, 3:2).
- 56.
For parallel passages, see PWNB, 4:85, 101; and NBCW, 7:311f. For partly corresponding remarks from the ‘late’ period, see PWNB, 2:72, 90, and 99. See also Murdoch (1987, 91).
- 57.
For parallel passages, see PWNB, 2:25, 30, 39f., 47, 98, 4:86f., and 100.
- 58.
For parallel passages, see PWNB, 2:51, 61, 4:86, 174; and NBCW, 7:335.
- 59.
In the ‘middle’ period, Bohr often characterizes his idea of complementarity in terms of the conceptual pair of “analysis” and “synthesis” (PWNB, 2:18, 33, 47, 52, 58, 62f., 65, 68, 4:84, 88; NBCW, 7:335). He does not, however, elaborate the meanings of these terms, nor does he always use them in a clear-cut manner. On the one hand, he speaks of “analysis” and “synthesis” as corresponding to the two meanings of complementarity, “mutual exclusion” and joint completion, respectively (PWNB, 4:125). On the other, he also uses the term ‘analysis’ when characterizing the “individuality of quantum effects” as the impossibility of analysis (PWNB, 2:62; cf. 19, 4:128, 134; NBCW, 10:59). For accounts of Bohr’s ideas of analysis and synthesis, see Chevalley (1995, 20) and Falkenburg (1998, 105ff.).
- 60.
For Bohr’s ‘middle’-period complementarity argument with regard to biology and psychology, see PWNB, 2:20–22, 27ff., and 4:88–91. See also Folse (1985, 175ff.). Because of a relative scarcity of his relevant remarks, however, it seems to be difficult to approach thematically this part of his work in connection with, and in distinction from, his earlier or later thought concerning the same fields.
- 61.
Bohr admits that, at a 1936 conference, in particular, despite his efforts to clear up such misunderstandings, he “had in this respect only little success in convincing my listeners” (PWNB, 2:63).
- 62.
For parallel passages, PWNB, 2:20, 27, 91, and 4:83.
- 63.
In this connection, commentators have also suggested a possible role of the logical positivist Otto Neurath’s critique of Bohr’s ‘metaphysical’ mode of expression. See Section 3.4.
- 64.
In his Como paper, for example, Bohr noted that Heisenberg’s work “elucidate[s] many paradoxes appearing in the application of the quantum postulate” (PWNB, 1:73). Also in 1927, he wrote that quantum paradoxes “are deeply rooted in nature.” A letter from Bohr to Bidhubhusan Ray, January 22, 1927, cited in Bohr (1985, 138). See also Murdoch (1987, 46).
- 65.
Linked with this avoidance of paradoxical truth, Bohr stresses that quantum mechanics “fulfil[s] all demands on rational explanation with respect to consistency and completeness” (PWNB, 3:6). To be sure, his characterization of quantum mechanics as “a rational generalization of the classical theories” had itself been a constant claim since the ‘early’ period (PWNB, 1:70). While, however, he had earlier simultaneously pointed to the “irrationality” that the quantum postulate brought into the description of nature, he no longer speaks of irrationality – not even with the qualifying phrase “from the point of view of the classical theories” (PWNB, 1:7) – but exclusively emphasizes the rationality of quantum-mechanical description (see PWNB, 2:90, 100, 3:2).
- 66.
See also PWNB, 2:20, 33, 63, 65, 68, 3:6, 10, 14, 4:91, and 190. Bohr remarked in 1956 that “the relationship between cultures may […] be regarded as complementary” and, in particular, that contacts between them “may even lead to a common culture with a more embracing outlook” (PWNB, 4:178f., my emphasis).
- 67.
Bohr notes, for example, that “the very word ‘experiment’ refers to a situation where we can tell others what we have done and what we have learned” (PWNB, 2:72; cf. 39). Aage Petersen also recalls Bohr’s following remarks: “There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature” (Petersen 1963, 305).
- 68.
For comparison with Bohr’s ‘early’ view of mathematics, see PWNB, 1:97.
- 69.
For parallel passages, see PWNB, 2:50, 55f., 80, 3:6, and 78. See also Faye (1991, 189).
- 70.
This focus on the permanency of the results of observation is not, however, in itself new to Bohr’s thought. See, for example, letter from Bohr to Dirac, March 24, 1928 (NBCW, 10:495–96, on 495; cf. xxxvi).
- 71.
In this connection, it is also noteworthy that in the ‘late’ period Bohr tends to avoid using the expression ‘uncontrollable interaction.’ See Loren R. Graham, “The Soviet Reaction to Bohr’s Quantum Mechanics,” in Feshbach, Matsui, and Oleson (1988, 305–17, on 313). While still speaking of the “transfer, uncontrollable in principle, of momentum and energy” (PWNB, 3:11), Bohr may consider it misleading to call the interaction itself ‘uncontrollable.’ For, in his view, the way in which the phenomenon, including the object–instrument interaction, is conditioned by the experimental arrangement can itself be determined unambiguously, and is thus not uncontrollable.
- 72.
Bohr’s comparison between relativity and quantum theory underwent considerable historical changes and fluctuations. During the ‘early’ and ‘middle’ periods, he primarily stressed “the new epistemological situation” brought about by quantum theory in contrast to relativity theory (PWNB, 4:85; cf. 2:19, 25, 41, 4:87; NBCW, 10:60). When at times discussing their commonalities, he focused on the innovative or revolutionary character marking both theories (see PWNB, 2:64, 4:85f.; NBCW, 7:317). In the ‘late’ period, however, he came to emphasize that neither of the two theories deviates from the classical ideal of objectivity and unambiguity.
- 73.
As we have seen, Bohr himself had earlier associated complementarity with the “subjective character of all experience” as well as with an unavoidable “ambiguity in our use of language” (PWNB, 1:1, 19). While this does not mean that he had subscribed to subjectivism, it is worth reconsidering the question of how and in what sense the impression in question is misguided.
- 74.
Interview with Bohr conducted by Thomas S. Kuhn and Aage Petersen, November 17, 1962, in Archive for the History of Quantum Physics, p. 4.
- 75.
Letter from Pauli to Bohr, between April 6 and 26, 1954, in Niels Bohr Archives: Bohr Scientific Correspondence.
- 76.
Letter from Pauli to Bohr, February 15, 1955, in Niels Bohr Archives: Bohr Scientific Correspondence.
- 77.
Bohr continues as follows: “Just as Einstein himself has shown how in relativity theory ‘the ideal of the detached observer’ may be retained by emphasizing that coincidences of events are common to all observers, we have in quantum physics attained the same goal by recognizing that we are always speaking of well defined observations obtained under specified experimental conditions.” Letter from Bohr to Pauli, March 2, 1955, in Niels Bohr Archives: Bohr Scientific Correspondence. See also Folse (1985, 212–14).
- 78.
In subsequent works, he speaks, for example, of “a complementary relationship which is connected with our position as observers of nature” (PWNB, 2:92; cf. 94, 99), avoiding the phrase ‘detached observers.’
- 79.
It should be noted that, toward the end of his life, apparently in response to the recent development of molecular biology (as represented by the discovery of DNA), Bohr became rather reticent about the idea of complementarity in biology. Specifically, deviating from his long-held view on the physical analysis of the phenomena of life, he remarked that “we have no reason to expect any inherent limitation of the application of elementary physical and chemical concepts to the analysis of biological phenomena” (PWNB, 4:184; cf. 188). See Pais (1991, 443f.) and Beller (1999, 271).
- 80.
The quotation is from Bohr’s 1937 lecture entitled “Biology and Atomic Physics” (PWNB, 2:13–22).
- 81.
For parallel passages, see PWNB, 2:52, 77, 81, 93, and 4:177.
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Katsumori, M. (2011). An Overview of Bohr’s Complementarity. In: Niels Bohr's Complementarity. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 286. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1748-0_2
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eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)