Abstract
Complementarity is a concept introduced by Bohr which seems impossible for many to accept. According to Bohr, description of the atomic world presupposes “complementarity”: manners of description which complement one another. They are mutually exclusive, as in the case of a “particle description” versus a “wave description”. In complementarity some people see the core of the “confusion” in the basic philosophy of atomic theory. In a way it really is the case, because it introduces the idea of contradictory elements in reality. But it is just this revolutionary idea which opens the way to a new perspective on science. Thus, the way the researcher responds to complementarity reveals his ideological attitude.
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© 1988 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Laurikainen, K.V. (1988). The Reality of Opposites. In: Beyond the Atom. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-73852-4_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-73852-4_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-19456-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-73852-4
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