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The Burden of Fundamentality: Metaphysical Ambiguities and the Issue of Superdeterminism

Gabriele Cafiero, Luca Molinari, Jonte R. Hance

Published Oct 22, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.25405/ncl.34551255

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Abstract The vitalism-mechanism controversy was a preoccupation of Niels Bohr’s father, a professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen, and a frequent topic of discussion at the family residence. While the terms are now archaic, the distinction between a living organism, which must interact with its environment, and a detailed scientific description of that organism, which must treat the system as isolated or isolatable, remains ambiguous. Bohr dealt with fundamental ambiguities in biology in the same way that he dealt with fundamental ambiguities in quantum physics-by analyzing the conditions for observation required for unambiguous description and avoiding appeals to extra-scientific or metaphysical constructs.