Complementarity and the Scientific Method: A Criticism

Simon Saunders

T. Bergstein

Patrick A. Heelan

Heelan argues that the philosophy of complementarity, although successful in providing physicists with a common language with which to describe quantum phenomena, also contains a theory about scientific method and about human knowing which is open to criticism. Heelan here criticises the following points arising out of the philosophy of complementarity: psycho-physical parallelism; the view that quantum mechanical properties are to be defined classically; and the perturbation theory of measurement. In the course of the criticism, he elaborates the distinction between two types of concepts with different logical structures; viz., operational or observational concepts which state a similarity between things judged on the basis of appearance or utility to us, and explanatory concepts which state a similarity between things judged on the basis of a self-defining set of different relations between things. Heelan thus shows how a physical concept is definable by any appropriate measuring-process. The description of the measuring­process and, hence, the definition of the physical property involve the two classes of concepts described above, but in different ways. Thus one may regard the Indeterminacy Relations, not as stating limi­tations of our knowledge, but as describing more exactly the behaviour of individual systems.

Changsheng Hu

Bohr was one of the greatest scientists of the last century. The essay systematically reveals method of complementarity and its characteristics on the basis of complementarity principle by studying his Scientific creations. This method has certain methodological significance to the scientific and creative activities in our country.

Simon W. Saunders

Abstract: Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics has been criticized as incoherent and opportunistic, and based on doubtful philosophical premises. If so Bohr’s influence, in the pre-war period of 1927-1939, is the harder to explain, and the acceptance of his approach to quantum mechanics over de Broglie’s had no reasonable foundation. But Bohr’s interpretation changed little from the time of its first appearance, and stood independent of any philosophical presuppositions. The principle of complementarity is itself best read as a conjecture of unusually wide scope, on the nature and future course of explanations in the sciences (and not only the physical sciences). If it must be judged a failure today, it is not because of any internal inconsistency. Despite the expenditure of much effort, I have been unable to obtain a clear understanding of Bohr’s principle of complementarity (Einstein). Bohr’s point- and the central point of quantum mechanics- is that no elemen-

Henry J. Folse