ROUND TABLE. On the Origins and Evolution of Niels Bohr's Concept of Complementarity

Abstract

The characteristic features of the scientific revolution in physics, in its acute phase of the development of quantum mechanics, manifested themselves at the boundary of the transition from determinism to indeterminism. However, from an understanding of the boundary preserving the commonality of what it divides, and from a semantic analysis of the words "complementarity and commonality," we can conclude that Niels Bohr's principle of complementarity may give way to a richer concept of the commonality of polar pairs of concepts, categories, principles, and paradigms. In other words, the focus shifts from the complementarity of two mutually exclusive concepts to their commonality, which has a common, ontological foundation in the context of E. Schrödinger and B. Russell's reflections on the transition from dualism to monism. In this case, the principle of complementarity is "subtracted," but only in the Hegelian sense, becoming a particular aspect of a more general principle in which, metaphorically speaking, Occam's razor is "sharpened." From this perspective, in the temporal dimension of a person for whom the Past and Future are betrothed, the present is interpreted as the continuation of a lifelong dialogue between the past and the future.

The paper discusses the compatibility of V.V. Nalimov's hypothetical discrete-continuous model of consciousness with the quantum spectrum of electrons in an atom. The possibility of expanding the spectrum of interdisciplinary research and initiating insights through the interpretation of oxymorons at the border of the subliminal zone of consciousness is discussed.

Speaker

Boris A. Medvedev
Saratov State University
Russia

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