The Reciprocal Emergence of Determinacy and Indeterminacy in Opposition: The Construction of a New Ontological Principle and Its Scientific Corroboration
Qiaowei Sun
Abstract Traditional philosophy has long enshrined "determinacy" as the essential attribute of Being, while relegating "indeterminacy" to the status of a temporary defect of human cognition, a vague state awaiting elimination. The revolutionary development of quantum mechanics has thoroughly shattered this millennia-old cognitive presupposition: the superposition state of microscopic particles is not an "undetermined intermediate state," but an intrinsic property of Being itself; wave-particle duality is not a random mutation of particles, but the determinate manifestation of the same indeterminate ontological substance, emerging within different observational relations. This paper proposes a fundamentally new ontological principle: determinacy is the skeleton of Being that emerges from and is anchored by indeterminacy; indeterminacy, in turn, is the primordial matrix from which determinacy is generated, described, and manifested. These two dimensions do not exist in a relation of sequential dependence or hierarchical subordination, but constitute a reciprocal generative structure in which they define each other in opposition and emerge simultaneously in dynamic interaction. Taking quantum mechanical superposition and wave-particle duality as its core empirical evidence, this paper demonstrates the universal penetrative power of this ontological principle, and points out that eliminating indeterminacy is not the core task of philosophy; rather, modern philosophy must urgently break free from the shackles of traditional paradigms and return to the dynamic, authentic state of Being itself in order to reconstruct cognition. Keywords: Determinacy; Indeterminacy; Reciprocal Emergence in Opposition; Emergence; Manifestation; Desire/Contradiction; Ontology
•May 11, 2026•0 citations